try was agitated, than the war horse can sleep under the sound of the trumpet.

He was a republican and a philanthropist from the earliest dawn of his character. He read with a sort of poetic illusion, which identified him with every scene that his author spread before him. Enraptured with the brighter ages of republican Greece and Rome, he had followed, with an aching heart, the march of history which had told him of the desolation of those fairest portions of the earth; and had seen, with dismay and indignation, that swarm of monarchies, the progeny of the Scandinavian hive, under which genius and liberty were now, every where crushed. He loved his own country with a passion not less intense, deep, and holy, than that of his great compatriot: and with this love, he combined an expanded philanthropy which encircled the globe. From the working of the strong energies within him, there arose an early vision, too, which cheered his youth and accompanied him through life-the vision of emancipated man throughout the world. Nor was this a dream of the morning that passed away and was forgotten. On the contrary, like the Heaven-descended banner of Constantine, he hailed it as an omen of certain victory, and girded his loins for the onset, with the omnipotence of truth.

On his early studies we have already touched. The study of the law he pursued under George Wythe; a man of Roman stamp, in Rome's best age. Here he acquired that unrivalled neatness, system, and method in business, which, through all his future life, and in

every office that he filled, gave him, in effect, the hundred hands of Briareus; here, too, following the giant steps of his master, he travelled the whole round of the civil and common law. From the same example, he caught that untiring spirit of investigation which never left a subject till he had searched it to the bottom, and of which we have so noble a specimen in his correspondence with Mr. Hammond, on the subject of British debts. In short, Mr. In short, Mr. Wythe performed for him, what Jeremiah Gridley had done for Mr. Adams; he placed on his head the crown of legal preparation : and well did it become him. Permit me, here, to correct an error which seems to have prevailed. It has been thought that Mr. Jefferson made no figure at the bar: but the case was far otherwise. There are still extant, in his own fair and neat hand, in the manner of his master, a number of arguments which were delivered by him at the bar, upon some of the most intricate questions of the law: which, if they shall ever see the light, will vindicate his claim to the first bonors of the profession. It is true he was not distinguished in popular debate; why he was not so, has often been matter of surprise to those who have seen his eloquence on paper, and heard it in conversation. He had all the attributes of the mind, and the heart, and the soul, which are essential to eloquence of the highest order. The only defect was a physical one: he wanted volume and compass of voice for a large deliberative assembly; and his voice, from the excess of his sensibility, instead of rising with his feelings

and conceptions, sunk under their pressure, and became guttural and inarticulate. The consciousness of this infirmity repressed any attempt in a large body, in which he knew he must fail. But his voice was all sufficient for the purposes of judicial debate; and there is no reason to doubt that, if the service of his country had not called him away so soon from his profession, his fame as a lawyer would now have stood upon the same distinguished ground which he confessedly occu. pies as a statesman, an author, and a scholar.

It was not until 1764, when the Parliament of Great Britain passed its resolutions preparatory to the stamp act, that Virginia seems to have been thoroughly startled from her repose. Her Legislature was then in session; and her patriots, taking the alarm, remonstrated promptly and firmly against this assumed power. The remonstrance, however, was, as usual, disregarded, and the stamp act came. But it came to meet, on the floor of the House, an unlooked-for champion, whom Heaven had just raised up for the good of his country and of mankind. I speak of that untutored child of nature, Patrick Henry, who had now, for the first time, left his native forests to show the metal of which he was made, and "give the world assurance of a man.'

The Assembly met in the city of Williamsburg, where Mr. Jefferson was still pursuing the study of the law. Mr. Henry's celebrated resolutions against the stamp act were introduced in May, 1765. How they were resisted, and how maintained, has been already stated

to the world, in terms that have been pronounced extravagant, by those who modestly consider themselves as furnishing a fair standard of Revolutionary excellence. The coldest glow-worm in the hedge, is about as fair a standard of the power of the sun. To the present purpose, it is only necessary to remark, that Mr. Jefferson was present at this debate, and has left us an account of it, in his own words. He was then, he says, but a student, and stood in the door of communication between the House and the lobby, where he heard the whole of this magnificent debate. The opposition to the last resolution was most vehement; the debate upon it, to use his own strong language, "most bloody :" but, he adds, torrents of sublime eloquence from Henry, backed by the solid reasoning of Johnson, prevailed; and the resolution was carried by a single vote. I well remember, he continues, the cry of treason," by the Speaker, echoed from every part of the House, against Mr. Henry I well remember his pause, and the admirable address with which he recovered himself, and baffled the charge thus vociferated.

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He here alludes, as you must perceive, to that memorable exclamation of Mr. Henry, now become almost too familiar for quotation: "Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles

the First his Cromwell, and George the Third"Treason!" cried the Speaker. "Treason! trea"son!" echoed the House ;)-may profit by their ex"ample. If this be treason, make the most of it." While I am presenting to you this picture of Mr. Jefferson in his youth, listening to the almost super-hu

man eloquence of Henry on the great subject which formed the hinge of the American Revolution, are you not forcibly reminded of the parallel scene which had passed only four years before, in the Hall of Justice in Boston: Mr. Adams catching from Otis, "the breath of life ?” How close the parallel, and how interesting the incident! Who can think of these two young men, destined themselves to make so great a figure in the future history of their country, thus lighting the fires of their own genius at the altars of Henry and of Otis, without being reminded of another picture, which has been exhibited to us by an historian of Rome: The younger Scipio Africanus, then in his military noviciate, standing a youthful spectator on a hill near Carthage, and looking down upon the battle-field on which those veteran generals, Hamilcar and Massanissa, were driving, with so much glory, the car of war! Whether Otis or Henry first breathed into this nation the breath of life, (a question merely for curious and friendly speculation,) it is very certain that they breathed into their two young hearers, that breath which has made them both immortal.

From this day forth, Mr. Jefferson, young as he was, stood forward as a champion for his country. It was now, in the fire of his youth, that he adopted those mottoes for his seals, so well remembered in Virginia: "Ab eo libertas, a quo spiritus," and "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." He joined the band of the brave who were for the boldest measures: and by the light, the contagious spirit and vigor of his conversation, as well as by his enchanting and powerful