Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/60

36 volence of his disposition; the integrity of his life; his real devotion to their best interests; that uncommon sagacity which enabled him to discern those interests in every situation; and the unshaken constancy with which he pursued them, in spite of every difficulty and danger that could threaten him. From the point of time of which we are now speaking, it is very certain that he suffered no gale of fortune, however high or prosperous, to separate him from the people. Nor did the people, on their part, ever desert him. He was the man to whom they looked in every crisis of difficulty, and the favourite on whom they were ever ready to lavish all the honours in their gift.

Middleton, in his life of Cicero, tells us that the first great speech of that orator, his defence of Roscius the actor, was made at the age of twenty-seven; the same age, he adds, at which the learned have remarked, that Demosthenes distinguished himself in the assembly of the Athenians: "As if this were the age" (I quote his own words) "at which these great genios regularly bloomed towards maturity." It is rather curious, than important, to observe, that Mr. Henry furnishes another instance in support of this theory; since it was precisely in the same year of his life, that his talents first became known to himself and to the world. Nor let the admirer of antiquity revolt at our coupling the name of Henry, with those of Cicero and Demosthenes: it can be no degradation to the orator either of Greece or Rome, that his name stands enrolled, on the same page, with that of a man of whom such a judge of eloquence as Mr. Jefferson has said, that "he was the greatest orator that ever lived." But the taste of professional fame, which Mr. Henry had derived from the " parsons' cause," exquisite as it