The reader of the Sketches of Patrick Henry will, doubtless, find more than one occasion to remark, that the author has not sufficiently winnowed the improbabilities, not to say the impossibilities, of the story which has reached him through the excited popular imagination. But I think every candid reader will also say, that Mr. Wirt has made out of all these untoward materials, a most agreeable, stimu lating, and well-sustained picture of the life of the most extraordinary man this country has produced. The style is, with some few exceptions, remarkably pure and transparent, the narrative is clear and unembarrassed, flowing so smoothly as to transport the reader, almost unconsciously, to the end of the volume. It abounds in good thoughts, eloquently expressed, and imparts lessons of wisdom which may be profitably studied by young and old. The concluding section of the work contains a beautiful dissertation upon the characteristics of Henry's oratory, which is quite Ciceronian in its style and thought, and will be admired as long as this volume shall find a reader, or a scholar shall delight in vivid portraitures of genius.

But, notwithstanding these commendations, the Life of Patrick Henry has not added to the fame of Wirt. It is even to be regretted that he undertook this task. As an entire performance, it disappoints the reader, not in relation to Henry, but in relation to the author. The Life of Patrick Henry by William Wirt,—of the great orator of Virginia by a kindred votary of the art, is an announcement which prepares the reader to expect much more than has been performed. We make no allowance for defective supplies of information, for the fleeting life of great speeches even on the greatest occasions. We have heard something of the marvellous powers of the gifted sage, in the few anecdotes which have reached us of his sway over the hearts and minds of an heroic generation. We suppose these to be but some scattered scintillations from a great orb of light, of which the biographer is prepared to open all its effulgence. We read, and we discover that these forerunning anecdotes are, in truth, all; that the magnificent idol of the temple is shrouded from view, by a cloud which has been penetrated only by these rare flashes of light which are but so many unsatisfactory and tantalizing revelations. We perceive and commiserate the sedulous and ambitious labour of the author to compensate us for this disappointment, in the glowing exerVOL. II.

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cise of his own imagination to supply the meagreness of authentic details. We cannot help feeling that the labour expended by him in this enterprise would have built him up, on a more auspicious field, a nobler monument of literary renown, with which his name might have been fondly associated in generations to come.

The Reviewer of the North American complains, unreasonably, of the minuteness with which Mr. Wirt dwells upon the history of the period in which Henry acted. A reconsideration of this topic would, doubtless, suggest to him the injustice of his censure. Henry's fame, at least all of it that does not specifically belong to the triumphs of his eloquence,-is especially identified with the influence he exerted over the course of public events in Virginia, and, to a certain extent, in the colonies at large, to which the history given in the biography refers. Henry's prominence in leading off upon the road that lay in the direction of open rebellion and flagrant war, when the Stamp Act first alarmed the Colonies, is one of the brightest passages of his history. His actual resort to arms and the embodiment of troops, in the affair of the seizure of the gunpowder at Williamsburg; his proposal to organize the militia, and his early declaration, "We must fight,"-furnish topics in the illustration of his character, upon which his biographer could not lay too much stress; and it certainly would have been impossible to give to these events their proper value and significance, without a history, somewhat in detail, of the public transactions with which they were connected.

The Reviewer, more legitimately, questions the accuracy of some of Mr. Wirt's statements in regard to the origin and movement of the Revolution. Upon the authority, in part of Mr. Jefferson, and, in part, of what in Virginia was held to be authentic history, it is asserted in the biography, that Henry "gave the first impulse to the ball of the Revolution." This assertion was, perhaps, too strongly made. It is difficult to assign such an exclusive agency to any one man in the Colonies, during the agitation which preceded the war of the Revolution, as to entitle him to this merit. Henry, undoubtedly, moved in advance of his compeers in Virginia. In looking to the transactions of Massachusetts at that date, we are led to remark how closely he seems to have followed in the path of the Northern leaders, and how intensely his sympathies were kindled with their spirit. A

most interesting parallel may be seen in the career of James Otis and Patrick Henry, throughout all these movements. Whether the effect of accident, or design, the one seemed to march in the footsteps of the other. It is a curious coincidence in the history of these two men, that, in the progress of the revolutionary prelude, they should each have become conspicuous for the identity of their views upon the chief topic of agitation; for the equal boldness with which these views were presented; for the resemblance in the occasions which called forth each; for the apprehensions which each inspired; and for the control which each exerted over his associates. The parallel is sustained even to that startling point in the history of each, when either was checked in the Colonial legislature, to which he belonged, by the cry of "Treason!”

Throughout this path, in each movement, Otis had the advantage of priority of date over his comrade. The clock of the Revolution was only set a little forward in Massachusetts. In Virginia it kept as regular time, and struck with the same precision the hours that bore the cause of freedom onward, witnessing the same inevitable progress of brave and wise men to the consummation of their great work.

Mr. Jefferson took occasion, in view of the precedence of Otis in these events, to qualify the remark he had made to Mr. Wirt. "I well recollect to have used some such expression in a letter to him," -Mr. Wirt,- he writes to Dr. Waterhouse on the 3d of March, 1818," and am tolerably certain that our own State (Virginia,) being the subject under consideration, I must have used it with reference to that only." He repeats this afterwards in a letter to Mr. Adams on the 17th of May in the same year. His authority, therefore, may be regarded as settling the point of dispute which has been raised against the accuracy of Mr. Wirt's narrative in this particular. The point, however, is of little importance either to the fame of the individuals or of the States concerned. The merit of the action of both consists in its adaptation respectively to the actual state of affairs, the wise employment of occasion to work for the great end proposed:-it derives nothing from the time in which it became proper for either to give a hand to the enterprise.

The Reviewer has not made out so clear a case upon another point of objection to the statements in the Sketches. This refers to the

Committees of Correspondence, which were established in 1773, between the several Colonies. It will be recollected, from what we have had occasion to notice in a former chapter, and which may be seen also in the Sketches of Henry, that the proposition to establish the Committees was moved, in the House of Burgesses of Virginia, by Dabney Carr. The resolutions were offered on the 12th of March, 1773. One of the resolutions is in these words:

"Be it resolved, that a Standing Committee of Correspondence and Inquiry be appointed, to consist of eleven persons, to wit: the Hon. Peyton Randolph. Esq., Rob't C. Nicholas, Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley Digges, Dabney Carr and Thomas Jefferson, Esquires, any six of whom to be a committee, whose business it shall be to obtain the most early and authentic intelligence of all such acts and resolutions of the British Parliament, or proceedings of administration, as may relate to or affect the British Colonies in America; and to keep up and maintain a correspondence and communication with our sister colonies respecting those important considerations; and the result of such their proceedings, from time to time, to lay before this house."

In reference to this proceeding, it is remarked in the biography, that "this house had the merit of originating that powerful engine of resistance, corresponding committees between the Legislatures of the different colonies;" — which remark is qualified by a note which affirms, upon subsequently acquired information, that, "the State of Massachusetts is entitled to equal honour; the measures were so nearly coeval in the two states, as to render it impossible that either could have borrowed it from the other." To which it is added, that "Mrs. Warren, in her very interesting history of the revolution, admits that the measure was original on the part of Virginia.”

The Reviewer charges "this whole statement" with being erroneous. "The truth is"-he adds-" the plan originated in Boston, more than four months before it was meditated in Virginia. It was devised by Mr. Samuel Adams and Mr. James Warren, of Plymouth, and the first committee was appointed, on the motion of Mr. Adams, at a town meeting held November 2d, 1772.”

In the evidence which the Reviewer presents to sustain his objection to the accuracy of Mr. Wirt's statement, he is very far from making

out his case. The Boston proceeding to which he refers, suggested a committee of twenty members, who were instructed "to state the rights of the colonists, and of this province in particular, as men, as christians and as subjects; to communicate and publish the same to the several towns in this province and to the world, as the sense of this town, with the infringements and violations thereof which have been, and, from time to time, may be made; also requesting of each town a free communication of its sentiments on this subject."

There is nothing in these instructions to the Boston committee which will warrant the inference of a purpose to establish and maintain a correspondence amongst the colonies. In fact, these instructions seem to point out no other course of action than that which was already in progress in several of the colonies-the statement, namely, of their rights and their grievances, the collecting of information as to the proceedings of the day, and the promulgation of the result of their labours by free communication. The idea of interchange of opinions, in the way of correspondence with the other colonies, is not broached in the instructions. Nor was any suggestion made by the committee, in their report of the 19th of the same month, when they responded to the duties assigned them in the resolutions of the town meeting.

The Virginia Resolutions were not even, therefore, an extension of the plan "adopted by the town of Boston the year before,” as Dr. Holmes intimates in his Annals;-they contained an original proposition to bring the colonies into conference, and no doubt, as Mr. Wirt remarks, "led eventually to a Congress of the colonies."

The effect of the Virginia proceedings is amply illustrated, and, in view of the question between the biographer and his reviewer, interpreted by the next public meeting in the town of Boston, which took place on the 5th of May, 1773. Certain resolutions of instruction to the representatives of the town, adopted on that occasion,† recommend "to their most serious consideration, whether an application to the English colonies on this continent, correspondent to the plan proposed by our noble, patriotic sister colony of Virginia (which in our opinion is a wise and salutary proposal) will not secure our threatened liberties," &c.

*Vol. 2. p. 180, edition of 1826.

† Ib.