Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/446

 4<22 SKETCHES OF THE

dating their measures to this imaginary identit}^; by his mode of considering subjects, no circumstance was either sunk, or magnified, or distorted, in order to bend (he case to a fanciful hypothesis; nor, in deciding what was proper to be done in America, did he look to see what had been found expedient at Athens, or Rome. On the contrary, knowing well the people with whom he had to deal, of what they were capable, and what was necessary to their happiness, liow much they could bear, and how much achieve, and looking immediately at the subject, (whatever it might be,) with that piercing vision, that solid judgment and ready resource, which characterized his mind — ^he seemed to seize, in every case, rather " luckily than laboriously,^^ the course w^hich of all others was surest of success. In short, this habit made him an original, sound, and practical states- man, instead of being a learned, dreaming, and visionaiy theorist. Not that Mr. Henry was deficient in histori- cal knowledge: he had enough of it, for all the useful purposes either of analogy or illustration; but he never permitted it to intercept his proper view of a subject, or to take the lead in suggesting what was fit to be done. This he chose rather to derive from the nature of the case itself, and the character of the people among whom that case occurred.

This habit of relying more on his own meditations than on books, was also, perhaps, of service to him as an orator: for by this course, he avoided the beaten paths and roads of thought; and instead of exhibiting in his speeches old ideas newly vamped up, and ancient beauties tricked off in modern tinsel, his arguments, sentiments, and figures, had all that freshness and no- velty which are so universally captivating.

In what did his peculiar excellence as an orator con-

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