your fields, and is remembered no more." 1

Verily, this man had a heart. We may read it throughout his life. No merely intellectual eloquence could have given birth to the expressions, or produced the effects recorded of Henry. We shall always find this to be the secret of the highest power, that which moves the wills of men through their affections. No actor can play a part by the side of the child of nature.

Many anecdotes are given of Henry's verbal felicities and turns in debate. His tribute to Colonel Innis is one of the happiest. It reads, in its force and elegance, like the sentence of a Roman

his life. Death found him, less than two months after, though oppressed by bodily infirmities, rallying at the call of Washington to the service of his country. In the spring he was elected to the House of Delegates in the Federal interest, to which he had now, greatly to the disappointment of some of his early followers, become attached. His conversion was attributed to the attentions of government in the offer of the French mission and the Secretaryship of State. It does not appear to have been difficult to stimulate anew his personal regard for Washington. He made his last speech in the cause of the government at the gathering at the Charlotte March court.' The poet: The poet: "That honorable gentleman is "old man eloquent" did not live to take his seat in the Legislature. He died June 6, 1799. A touching incident, recorded of his appearance at the election scene to which we have just alluded, seemed premonitory of the event. The people greeted him, on his arrival upon the ground, and followed him about with admiration. A Baptist preacher, in a pharisaical spirit, with an ignorant appreciation of the time-worn-patriot and the honorable scene, taking offence at the pleasing sight, asked the people aloud why they thus followed Mr. Henry about. "Mr. Henry," said he, "is not a god !" "No," said Henry, with touching pathos and eloquence, "no, indeed, my friend; I am but a poor worm of the dust as fleeting and unsubstantial as the shadow of the cloud that flies over

endowed with great eloquence-eloquence splendid, magnificent, and sufficient to shake the human mind." His vivid intellect condensed expression into the language of poetry.

In that last election speech, of which we have spoken, he was picturing the evils of sedition, when he summoned Washington in arms to repress the disorders of the State. "Where," he asked, "is the citizen of America who will dare to lift his hand against the father of his country?" A drunken man in the crowd threw up his arm and exclaimed, that "he dared to do it." "No," answered Henry, towering aloft, "you dare not do it; in such a parricidal attempt, the steel would drop from your nerveless arm!" In the protracted argument in the question of British debts, numerous exam

Garland corrects an error of Wirt as to the time. Life of John Randolph, I. 130.

1 Wirt, in his warm, eloquent style, has preserved this and other anecdotes of Henry with consummate felicity.

ples occurred of this dramatic action, but, like many truisms, greatly overwhich supplied voice, tone, gesture, looked. commensurate with the most varied emotions, from the sublime to the pathetic, from the impassioned to the humorous and sarcastic. He was, said John Randolph, with bold but perhaps pardonable extravagance, "Shakspeare and Garrick combined."

The amiable qualities found their home in the breast of Henry. He was a most companionable man; not standing overmuch on his choice of company; generous in the appreciation of others, though opponents; courteous, with a certain native humility, while he was moving senates and thundering in debate. He was a favorite with his friends, and must have been a welcome man to fall in with on his travels through the State.

To his relatives, Henry was most endeared. His early marriage had domesticated his affections. His parents lived to be witnesses of his rising repu

tation.

Henry was a sincere believer in Christianity. He published an edition of Soame Jenyn's Evidences of Christianity at his own expense for distribution, read Doddridge with unction, and was so taken with Butler's Analogy, that we are told he at one time called the book his Bible.

Wirt, in the enumeration of these and kindred virtues, hints at a passion for money which grew upon him with years; but a man with fifteen children, serving the public for a pittance, may readily be expected to look after fees from his clients; and something may be allowed for the reaction from a youth of improvidence and want.

In person, Henry was nearly six feet, spare and worn, with a slight stoop; habitually grave in aspect, but of great flexibility of countenance, readily lighting up with emotion; earnest, deeply set eyes, blue or grey, assuming darker colors; his features generally of extraordinary mobility. His voice was full, clear and melodious, under perfect management and control. As was his voice, so was his gesture, unaffected and easy, rising with the occasion, not falling below it or travelling aside— the indication of the self-centred, natu

He had a numerous family, six children by his first marriage, of whom two survived him, and nine by his second alliance, with Miss Dandridge, who all outlived him. Biography, in its eagerness for great events, should not pass by by the secret springs of character at home and by the fireside a common reflection, ral man within.

SAMUEL ADAMS.

zealous Puritans, and it is said intended their son for the church. At any rate, he was early sent to that "learned and lashing" Master John Lovell, who then presided over the Boston Latin school, and who left a smarting memory of himself in the minds of all well edu cated Bostonians, when he was driven out with his brother loyalists by the Revolution. His portrait, painted by his pupil Smybert, the son of Berkeley's friend, may be seen at Harvard. Our New England grandfathers shuddered before it as a whole generation of Englishmen trembled on passing the chilling marble of Busby in Westminster Abbey. Lovell was a good scholar, something of a poet, one of the contributors to the "Pietas et Congra tulatio," that sighing and rejoicing tribute in which the Harvard muses rang out the old reign of George II. and rang in his glorious successor; and

THE Adams family, a parent stem | money or social influence. They were which has borne from age to age eminent fruit in Massachusetts, is traced to the earliest annals of the colony. By the aid of tombstone inscriptions and town records, we may read the name in direct ascent to Henry Adams, who, upon that notable defection at Mount Wollaston, becomes a grantee of land in 1640, in the town created upon the spot, henceforth to be known as Braintree. His son Joseph adheres to the place through a long life, following the calling of a brewer, and leaving a son, John, who removes to Boston. This is the grandfather of Samuel Adams, of the Revolution, as he is called, appropriating that designation in the family by priority of birth and his unmistakable principles. He was thirteen years older than his fellow-worker in the cause, John Adams, to whom he was related in descent from Joseph Adams, the great-grandfather of them both. The two patriots may be distinguished, also, as the Boston or the Braintree Adams.

Samuel Adams was born in Boston, September 27, 1722. His parents are spoken of as plain, respectable people, by which is to be understood that they bore a good character, and were not distinguished for the possession of

1 Dunlap, in his " Arts of Design in the United States," has an anecdote related by Judge Cranch of this Lovell portrait, painted by Nathaniel Smybert, in the Harvard Gallery. "I remember," writes the Judge, "that one of his first portraits was the picture of his old master, Lovell,

drawn while the terrific impressions of the pedagogue were yet vibrating upon his nerves. I found it so perfect a likeness of my old neighbor, that I did not wonder when my young friend (the artist) told me that a sudshudder."

den, undesigned glance at it, had often made him