like the rubens dexter of Jove; and hear him open his throat in deep and tragick tone; I feel myself involuntarily braced and in an attitude of defence, as if I were going to take a bout with Mendoza.

The Virginians boast of an orator of nature, whose manner was the reverse of all this; and he is the only orator of whom they do boast, with much emphasis. I mean the Celebrated Patrick Henry, whom I regret that I came to this country too late to see. I cannot, indeed, easily forgive him, even in the grave, his personal instrumentality in separating these fair colonies from Great Britain. Yet I dare not withhold, from the memory of his talents, the tribute of respect to which they are so justly entitled.

I am told that his general appearance and manners were those of a plain farmer or planter of the back country; that, in this character, he always entered on the exordium

of an oration; disqualifying himself, with looks and expressions of humility so lowly and unassuming, as threw every heart off its guard and induced his audience to listen to him, with the same easy openness with which they would converse with an honest neighbour: but, by and by, when it was little expected, he would take a flight so high, and blaze with a splendour so heavenly as filled them with a kind of religious awe, and gave him the force and authority of a prophet.

You remember this was the manner of Ulysses; commencing with the look depressed and hesitating voice. Yet I dare say Mr. Henry was directed to it, not by the example of Ulysses, of which it is very probable, that, at the commencement of his career, at least, he was entirely ignorant: but either that it was the genuine, trembling diffidence, without which, if Tully may be believed, a great orator never rises; or else

that he was prompted to it by his own sound judgment and his intimate knowledge of the human heart.

I have seen the skeletons of some of his orations. The periods and their members are short, quick, eager, palpitating, and are manifestly the extemporaneous effusions of a mind deeply convinced, and a heart inflamed with zeal for the propagation of those convictions, They afford, however, a very inadequate sample of his talents: the stenographer having never attempted to follow him, when he arose in the strength and awful majesty of his genius.

I am not a little surprised to find eloquence of this high order so negligently cultivated in the United States. Considering what a very powerful engine it is in a republick, and how peculiarly favourable to its culture, the climate of republicks has been always found, I expected to have seen in America more

votaries to Mercury than even to Plutus. Indeed it would be so sure a road both to wealth and honours, that if I coveted either, and were an American, I would bend all my powers to its acquirement, and try whether I could not succeed as well as Demosthenes in vanquishing natural imperfections. Ah! my dear S..... .., were you a citizen of this country! You, under the influence of whose voice a parliament of great Britain has trembled and shuddered, while her refined and enlightened galleries have wept and fainted in the excess of feeling!-what might you not accomplish? But, for the honour of my country, I am much better pleased that you are a Briton.

On the subject of Virginian eloquence, you shall hear farther from me.

In the mean

......, my friend, my

time, adieu, my S.....

father.

7

TO THE EDITOR OF THE VIRGINIA ARGUS.

Sir,

As the theory of the earth derives importance from its dignity, if not from its utility, and has of late years given birth to many ingenious speculations, I shall offer no apology for troubling you with the following remarks, which were suggested by an essay, in last Wednesday's Argus, entitled "The British Spy."

Sea shells and other marine productions, differing in no respect from those which now exist in their native element, have been found in every explored part of the globe. They are found, too, in the highest as well as in the lowest situations: on the loftiest mountains of Europe, and the still loftier Andes of South America. To go no farther from