the forest with his gun, or over the brook with his angling-rod. "His companions frequently observed him lying along, under the shade of some tree that overhung the sequestered stream, watching for hours, at the same spot, the motionless cork of his fishingline, without one encouraging symptom of success, and without any apparent source of enjoyment, unless he could find it in the ease of his position, or in the illusions of hope; or, which is mo-t probable, in the stillness of the scene, or the silent workings of his own imagination." This love of solitude in his youth was a marked trait in his character.

May 1786 Pidenny

Fac-simile of the signature of Patrick Henry.

The wants of a large family compelled his father to find employment for his sons. At the age of fifteen Patrick was put behind the counter of a country merchant, and the year following entered into business with his elder brother, William, with whom was to devolve its chief management; but such were his idle habits, that he left the burden of the concern to Patrick, who managed wretchedly. The drudgery of business became intolerable to him, and then, too, he could not find it in his heart" to disappoint any one who came for credit; and he was very easily satisfied with apologies for non-payment. He sought relief from his cares by having recourse to the violin, flute, and reading. An opportunity was presented of pursuing his favorite study of the human character, and the character of every customer underwent this scrutiny.

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One year put an end to the mercantile concern, and the two or three following Patrick was engaged in settling up its affairs. At eighteen years of age he married Miss Shelton, the daughter of a neighboring farmer of respectability, and commenced cultivating a small farm; but his aversion to systematic labor, and want of skill, compelled him to abandon it at the end of two years. Selling off all his little possessions at a sacrifice, he again embarked in the hazardous business of merchandise. His old business habits still continued, and not unfrequently he shut up his store to indulge in the favorite sports of his youth. His reading was of a more serious character; history, ancient and modern, he became a proficient in. Livy, however, was his favorite; and having procured a copy, he read it through at least once a year in the early part of his life. In a few years his second mercantile experiment left him a bankrupt, and without any friends enabled to assist him further. All other means failing, he determined to try the law. His unfortunate habits, unsuitable to so laborious a profession, and his pecuniary situation unfitting him for an extensive course of reading, led every one to suppose that he would not succeed. With only six weeks' study, he obtained a license to practise, he being then twenty-four years of age. He was then not only unable to draw a declaration or a plea, but incapable, it is said, of the most common and simple business of his profession. It was not until his twenty-seventh year, that an opportunity occurred for a trial of his strength at the bar. In the mean time the wants and distresses of his family were extreme. They lived mostly with his father-in-law, Mr. Shelton, who then kept a tavern at Hanover court-house. Whenever Mr. Shelton was from home, Henry took his place in the tavern, which is the identical public-house now standing at Hanover court-house. The occasion on which his genius first broke forth, was the controversy between the clergy and the legislature and people of the state, relating to the stipend claimed by the former. The cause was popularly known as the parsons' cause. A decision of the court on a denurrer in favor of the claims of the clergy, had left nothing undetermined but the amount of damages in the cause which was pending. Soon after the opening of the court, the cause was called. The scene which ensued is thus vividly described by Wirt :

The array before Mr. Henry's eyes was now most fearful. On the bench sat more than twenty clergymen, the most learned men in the colony, and the most capable, as well as the severest critics before whom it was possible for him to have made his debut. The court-house was crowded with an overwhelming multitude, and surrounded with an immense and anxious throng, who, not finding room to enter, were endeavoring to listen without, in the deepest attention. But there was something still more awfully disconcerting than all this; for in the chair of the presiding magistrate, sat no other person than his own father. Mr. Lyons opened the cause very briefly: in the way of argument he did nothing more than explain to the jury, that the decision upon the demurrer had put the act of 1750 entirely out of the way and left the law of 1748 as the only standard of their damages; he then concluded with a highly

wrought eulogium on the benevolence of the clergy. And now came on the first trial of Patrick Henry's strength. No one had ever heard him speak, and curiosity was on tiptoe. He rose very awkwardly, and faltered much in his exordium. The people hung their heads at so unpromising a commencement; the clergy were observed to exchange sly looks with each other; and his father is described as having almost sunk with confusion from his seat. But these feelings were of short duration, and soon gave place to others of a very different character. For now were those wonderful faculties which he possessed for the first time developed; and now was first witnessed that mysterious and almost supernatural transformation of appearance, which the fire of his own eloquence never failed to work in him. For as his mind rolled along, and began to glow from its own action, all the exuvie of the clown seemed to shed themselves spontaneously. His attitude by degrees became erect and lofty. The spirit of his genius awakened all his features. His countenance shone with a nobleness and grandeur which it had never before exhibited. There was a lightning in his eyes which seemed to rivet the spectator. His action became graceful, bold, and commanding; and in the tones of his voice, but more especially in his emphasis, there was a peculiar charm, a magic, of which any one who ever heard him will speak as soon as he is named, but of which no one can give any adequate description. They can only say that it struck upon the ear and upon the heart, in a manner which language cannot tell. Add to all these, his wonder-working fancy, and the peculiar phraseology in which he clothed its images; for he painted to the heart with a force that almost petrified it. In the language of those who heard him on this occasion." he made their blood run cold, and their hair to rise on end."

It will not be difficult for any one who ever heard this most extraordinary man, to believe the whole account of this transaction which is given by his surviving hearers; and from their account, the courthouse of Hanover county must have exhibited, on this occasion, a scene as picturesque as has been ever witnessed in real life. They say that the people, whose countenances had fallen as he arose, had heard but a very few sentences before they began to look up; then to look at each other with surprise, as if doubting the evidence of their own senses; then, attracted by some strong gesture, struck by some majestic attitude, fascinated by the spell of his eye, the charm of his emphasis, and the varied and commanding expression of his countenance, they could look away no more. In less than twenty minutes they might be seen, in every part of the house, on every bench, in every window, stooping forward from their stands, in death-like silence; their features fixed in amazement and awe, all their senses listening and riveted upon the speaker, as if to catch the last strain of some heavenly visitant. The mockery of the clergy was soon turned into alarm, their triumph into confusion and despair, and at one burst of his rapid and overwhelming invective, they fled from the bench in precipitation and terror. As for the father, such was his surprise, such his amazement, such his rapture, that, forgetting where he was, and the character which he was filling, tears of ecstasy streamed down his cheeks, without the power or inclination to repress them.

The jury seem to have been so completely bewildered, that they lost sight not only of the act of 1748, but that of 1758 also; for, thoughtless even of the admitted right of the plaintiff, they had scarcely left the bar when they returned with a verdict of one penny damages. A motion was made for a new trial; but the court, too, had now lost the equipoise of their judgment, and overruled the motion by a unanimous vote. The verdict, and judgment overruling the motion, were followed by redoubled acclamation, from within and without the house. The people, who had with difficulty kept their hands off their champion from the moment of closing his harangue, no sooner saw the fate of the cause finally sealed than they seized him at the bar, and, in spite of his own exertions and the continued cry of "order," from the sheriffs and the court, they bore him out of the court-house, and raising him on their shoulders, carried him about the yard in a kind of electioneering triumph.

From this time Mr. Henry's star was in the ascendant, and he at once rose to the head of his profession in that section. In the autumn of 1764, having removed to Roundabout, in Louisa county, he was employed to argue a case before a committee on elec tions of the House of Burgesses. He distinguished himself by a brilliant display on the right of suffrage. Such a burst of eloquence from a man of so humble an appearance, struck the committee with amazement, and not a sound but from his lips broke the deep silence of the room.

In 1765, he was elected a member of the House of Burgesses, when he introduced his celebrated resolutions on the Stamp Act. Among his papers there was found, after his decease, one sealed and thus endorsed:

"Enclosed are the resolutions of the Virginia Assembly, in 1765, concerning the Stamp Act. Let my executors open this paper." On the back of the paper containing the resolutions was the following endorsement: "The within passed the House of Burgesses in May, 1765. They formed the first opposition to the Stamp Act, and the scheme of taxing America by the British parliament. All the colonies, either through fear, or the want of opportunity to form an opposition, or from influence of some kind or other, had remained silent. I had been for the first time elected a burgess a few days before, was young, inexperienced, unacquainted with the forms of the house and the members who composed it. Finding the men of weight averse to opposition, and the commencement of the tax at hand, and that no person was likely to step forth, I determined to venture; and alone, unaided and unassisted, on the blank leaf of an old law-book, wrote the within. Upon offering them to the house, violent debates ensued. Many threats were uttered, and much abuse cast on me by the parties for submission. After a long and warm contest, the resolutions passed by a very small majority, perhaps one or two only. The alarm spread throughout America with astonishing quickness, and the ministerial party were overwhelmed. The great point of resistance to British tixation was universally established in the colonies. This brought on the war, which finally separated the two countries, and gave independence to ours. Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. Reader, whoever thou art, remember this; and in thy sphere, practise virtue thyself, and encourage it in others. "P. HENRY."

It was in the midst of the above-mentioned debate that he exclaimed, in tones of thunder, "Cæsar had his Brutus-Charles the First his Cromwell-and George the

Third-(Treason!' cried the speaker-Treason! treason!' echoed from every part of the house. Henry faltered not for a moment; taking a loftier attitude, and fixing on the speaker an eye of fire, he finished his sentence with the firmest emphasis)-"may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." Henceforth Mr.

[The Hanover Court-House is over a century old, and is built of imported brick. It is the building in which Patrick Henry made his celebrated speech in " The Parsons' Cause."]

Henry was the idol of the people of Virginia, and his influence as one of the great champions of liberty, extended throughout America. In 1769 he was admitted to the bar of the general court. Without that legal learning which study alone can supply, he was deficient as a mere lawyer. But before a jury, in criminal cases particularly, his genius displayed itself most brilliantly. His deep knowledge of the springs of human action, his power of reading in the flitting expressions of the countenance what was pass. ing in the hearts of his hearers, has rarely been possessed by any one in so great a degree. In 1767 or '68, Mr. Henry removed back to Hanover, and continued a member of the House of Burgesses until the close of the revolution, acting upon its most important committees, and infusing a spirit of bold opposition in its members to the pretensions of Britain. He was a delegate to the first Colonial Congress, which assembled Sept. 4, 1774, at Philadelphia.

Upon Lord Dunmore's seizing the gunpowder at Williamsburg, in the night after the battle of Lexington, Henry summoned volunteers to meet him; and marching down towards the capitol, compelled the agent of Dunmore to give a pecuniary compensation for it. This was the first military movement in Virginia. The colonial convention of 1775 elected him the colonel of the first regiment, and the commander of "all the forces raised and to be raised for the defence of the colony." Soon resigning his command, he was elected a delegate to the convention, and not long after, in 1776, the first governor of the commonwealth, an office he held by successive re-elections until 1779, when, without an intermission, he was no longer constitutionally eligible. While holding that office he was signally serviceable in sustaining public spirit during the gloomiest period of the revolution, providing recruits, and crushing the intrigues of the tories.

On leaving the office of governor, he served, until the end of the war, in the legislature, when he was again elected governor, until the state of his affairs caused him to resign in the autumn of 1786. Until 1794 he regularly attended the courts, where his great reputation obtained for him a lucrative business. "In 1788 he was a member of the convention of Virginia which so ably and eloquently discussed the constitution of the United States. He employed his masterly eloquence, day after day, in opposition to the proposed constitution. His hostility to it proceeded entirely from an apprehension that the federal government would swallow the sovereignty of the states; and that ultimately the liberty of the people would be destroyed, or crushed, by an overgrown and ponderous consolidation of political power. The constitution having been adopted, the gov ernment organized, and Washington elected President, his repugnance measurably abated. The chapter of amendinents considerably neutralized his objections: but, nevertheless, it is believed that his acquiescence resulted more from the consideration of

a citizen's duty, confidence in the chief magistrate, and a hopeful reliance on the wisdom and virtue of the people, rather than from any material change in his opinions."

In 1794 Mr. Henry retired from the bar. In 1796 the post of governor was once more tendered to him, and refused. In 1798 the strong and animated resolutions of the Virginia Assembly, in opposition to the alien and sedition laws, which laws he was in favor of," conjured up the most frightful visions of civil war, disunion, blood, and anarchy; and under the impulse of these phantoms, to make what he considered a virtuous effort for his country, he presented himself in Charlotte county as a candidate for the House of Delegates, at the spring election of 1799," although he had retired to private life three years previously.

His speech on this occasion, before the polls were opened, was the last effort of his eloquence. "The power of the noon-day sun was gone; but its setting splendors were not less beautiful and touching." Mr. Henry was elected by his usual commanding majority, and the most formidable preparations were made to oppose him in the Assembly. But "the disease which had been preying upon him for two years now hastened to its crisis; and on the 6th of June, 1799, this friend of liberty and man was no more." By his first wife he had six children, and by his last, six sons and three daughters. He left them a large landed property. He was temperate and frugal in his habits of living, and seldom drank any thing but water. He was nearly six feet in height, spare, and raw-boned, and with a slight stoop in his shoulders; his complexion dark and sallow; his countenance grave, thoughtful, and penetrating, and strongly marked with the lines of profound reflection, which with his earnest manner, and the habitual knitting and contracting of his brows, gave at times an expression of severity. "He was gifted with a strong and musical voice, and a most expressive countenance, and he acquired particular skill in the use of them.... He could be vehement, insinuating, humorous, and sarcastic, by turns, and always with the utmost effect. He was a natural orator of the highest order, combining imagination, acuteness, dexterity, and ingenuity, with the most forcible action, and extraordinary powers of face and utterance. As a statesman, his principal merits were sagacity and boldness. His name is brilliantly and lastingly connected with the history of his country's emancipation."

In private life, Mr. Henry was as amiable as he was brilliant in his public career. He was an exemplary Christian, and his illustrious life was greatly ornamented by the religion which he professed. In his will he left the following testimony respecting the Christian religion: 'I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion. If they have that, and I had not given one shilling, they would be rich; and if they have not that, and I had given them the whole world, they would be poor.””

HARDY.

HARDY was formed in 1786, from Hampshire, and named from Samuel Hardy, a member of Congress from 1783 to 1785. He was a young man of promising talents, who died suddenly. Its mean length is 42, breadth 17 miles. The surface of the county is traversed, in a NE. direction, by the South Branch and other tributaries of the Potomac; with lateral chains of mountains intervening, and extending in the same direction with the rivers. The surface is much broken, and, for the most part. very rocky and sterile; but tracts of excellent land lie on the streams, and in the mountain-valleys. There are some valuable banks of iron ore in the county. Pop., whites 6,100, slaves 1,131, free colored 391; total, 7,622.

Trout Run, or Wardensville, is a small village on Trout Run, in the eastern section of the county, 26 miles from the county-seat. It was laid off in 1827. In the place and vicinity are several

flour mills and iron works. Moorefield, the county-seat, is 178 miles NW. of Richmond, and 50 miles southwesterly from Winchester. This village is situated on the South Branch of the Potomac, at the junction of the south fork, in a valley of surpassing fertility, and contains a population of about 400. It was established by law, in 1777, on land belonging to Conrad Moore, from whom it derived its name. The act appointed, as trustees to lay out the town, Garret Vanmeter, Abel Randall, Moses Hutton, Jacob Read, Jonathan Heath, Daniel M'Neil, and Geo. Rennock. Petersburg is a small village on the South Branch of the Potomac.

On the Wappatomaka have been found numerous Indian relics, among which was a highly finished pipe, representing a snake coiled around the bowl. There was also discovered the under jaw-bone of a human being (says Kercheval) of great size, which contained eight jaw-teeth in each side, of enormous size; and, what is more remarkable, the teeth stood transversely in the jaw-bone. It would pass over any man's face with entire ease.

The FAIRFAX STONE, the southern point of the western boundary between Maryland and Virgima, is on the westerly angle of this county. It was planted Oct. 17, 1746

There are several natural curiosities in this county worthy of note. They are the Regurgitary Spring, the Lost River, and the Devil's Garden.

The Regurgitary Spring is on the summit of a high mountain, a few miles from Petersburg. It flows and ebbs every two hours. When rising, it emits a noise similar to the gurgling of liquor from the bung-hole of a barrel, which continues two hours, and sends out sand and pebbles. It then ebbs two hours, at the end of which time the water entirely disappears.

It

The Devil's Garden. A strip of ground between two lofty ranges of mountains, rises gradually for about three miles, when it abruptly terminates at its southern extremity by an isolated and perpendicular pile of granitic rocks, of about 500 feet in height. At this place there is a figure in solid rock, resembling, in its upper part, the bust of a man. is on a piece of ground thickly strewn with rocks, which, from the dark frowning appear. ance of the image, standing as the presiding deity of this savage spot, has given rise to the name it bears. Near his "satanic majesty," a door opens into a cavern, containing about a dozen rooms. The Lost River is so called from having, in the aggregate, a subterranean passage of three miles under several mountains.

This section of the country suffered severely in the Indian wars, previous to the revolution. Some incidents of bravery deserve a record:

Near Petersburg, a party of Indians attacked, just before daybreak, the dwelling of Samuel Bingham. Himself, wife, and parents, slept below, and a hired man in the loft above. A shot was first fired into the cabin, wounding his wife. Bingham sprang to his feet, bade the others to get under the bed, and requested the hired man to come down to his assistance, who, however, did not move. As the Indians rushed in at the door, he laid about him, with his rifle, with so much desperation that he finally cleared the room. Daylight appearing, he discovered that he had killed five, and the remaining two were seen retreating. He having broken his rifle in the mêlée, seized one which had been left by the Indians, and wounded one of the fugitives. Tradition relates that the other fled to the Indian camp, and reported that they had a fight with a devil, who had killed six of his companions, and that if they went, he would kill them all.

There was a memorable battle fought with the Indians, called the battle of Trough Hill. The whites were surrounded, and greatly outnumbered, but they fought with Spartan-like bravery; and cutting their way through the savages, retreated to Fort Pleasant with the loss of many killed and wounded. In retreating, they were obliged to swim a river. Some, too badly wounded for this, loaded their rifles and deliberately awaited the approach of the savages from behind some cover, and dealt certain death to the first who approached, and then calmly yielded to the tomahawk.