The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-22

make the more eneot1ve ne transported TO the
shelter OF the grave. There is curious in
genuity Of envious persons in making the
most extravsgant concessions of certain vir-
tues or qualities in their rivals, only that with
better grace and deeper effect they may
wound other parts of their characters or lives.
OF this common deception or hypocrisy we
think Mr.. Jefferson has furnished melan-
choly instance in the estimate of Patrick
Henry which he has left to the world; that is,
if the Inconsistencies and contradictions of
this estimate mean anything else than an
utter looseness of conception, the maudlin
incoherence of an incapable witness-of
which hypothesis we must certainly acquit
''the sage Of Monticello" "Henry was great
orator, says Mr.. Jefferson rapturously: but
then, after that was said the great orator was
ignorant, was fond of low company herded
with overseers, changed his shirt but once
fortnight, and was so brutally dull that he
had to confess that he could not find resolu-
ton in whole winter to read few chapters
that had been recommended to him in Humes
History of England" He suffered from
''incorngible idleness;" ''his rrlia passion
was fiddling, dancing, and pc 3Antry." Now,
in this testimony it requires no deep sight to
detect the marks of man at cross purposes,
attempting to disguise an almost fierce envy
or contempt under the preface of an insin-
cere compliment. And besides this suspicion
of Mr.. Jefferson's sincerity, his testimony in
some instances is SO utterly at variance with
well -ascertained facts, that we may apply to
it the rule, fdLsus 6n emo, fGysu8 jle 0nat-
bus, and declare the whole story which
he told to Mr.. Webster at Monticello of his
quondam contemporary to be utterly worth
less.
So far from Patrick Henry being the dul-
lard here represented, we have been told by
one who knew him we'll in Richmond, that
he was such student in his law office that
he was known, in preparing for single cafe
of litigation, to have shut himself up for
three days. during which he did not see his
family, and his food was handed by servant
through the Office door Mr.. Writ will have
his hero mostly an ''inspirational speaker"
while the Richmond witness makes him per-
feet jag, whose preparations must have stunk
most unpleasantly of the lamp.
At the very time Mr.. Jefferson has the orator
unable to digest the plain and agreeable prose
of Hume, Mr.. Writ has him reclined under
the forest trees, in true pastoral style, read
ing Livy in the original Latin. Another
witness comes forward to Mr.. Jetierson's aid,
and another Governor of Virginia reports
above the dialect of the negro. Mr.. Randall,
in his Life of Jefferson" thus introduces
Patrick Henry:-HHe talked like q back
woodsman about man s 11n5t6rdL parts being
improved by lGrnGn, about the yearM, etc."
And this added in foot-note
Page of Virginia used to relate on
the testimony of his own ears that
such was the pronunciation of the
subject of this sketch. What then, shall we
believe of this mess of inconsistencies, and
is the 'forest-born Demosthenes, after ALL a
mythical parsonage? Even as to the article
of dress, there is contradiction of testimony
and MIR. Jefferson's cruel description is mani
festly false. So far from the great orator
being clownish or unclean in his dress, he
seems to have been eccentrically luxurious in
it, and on occasions to have practised pecu-
liarity in it of the weakest and most bizarre
description. The diamond he displayed was
worthy of Fisk, Jr. His usual attire in the
Legislature of Virginia was ''stunning"-the
body of his dress black, white cravat, and q
red velvet mantle thrown over the shoulders!
Really, as we collect the evidences of Mr..
Henrys appearance and manners, there is
painfully increasing suspicion that there was
an element of charlatanry in them, or, at any
rate, that the man was not really as he is in
the picture-books of our day and in the plea
SAINT traditions of an admiring posterity. AS
to his qualities as an orator, we have a theory
of our own-one the merit of which is that
it is curiously consistent with each extreme
in which he is represented by his contempo-
vance and plainly that we have no idea that
Patrick Henry was an orator in the sense that
Cicero, or Burke, or Mirabeau was, and that
the few certain hist orical evidences which we
have on the subj ject completely exclude such
a supposition.
The most important fact in his life which
touches this question is one but little known
to readers, or that has been slightly esti-
mated by his partial biographer. 1t is that
this man, for whom so much has been claimed
as an orator, sat for two years in the Con-
tinental Congress, when the early questions
of the Revolution we're being debated, when
the most inspiring themes were appealing to
mind and heart-sat for these two whole
years without ever venturing to speak once
to an assembly so we'll qualified to hear him,
if he had indeed been a great orator, and SO
well disposed to entertain him, if indeed a
great reputation had preceded him. If the
delegate from Virginia was really the incom-
parable orator that had infamed the House of
Burgesses at Williamsburg, how could he
have remained for two years this fgurehead
in Congress-, and that when questions
calculated to stir mems hearts to their depths
required him to speak? 1t is the quality of
true eloquence that it cannot contain itself,
that 1t dares all assemblies, that it recognizes
the variety and numbers of its audiences only
to draw inspiration from them. Was Patrick
Henry afraid of the reputation he had
made on obscure occasions in Virginia?
Did he fear to risk it before an assembly
which Lord Chatham declared to exceed
intellectually any parliament in Europe? Was
he another instance of that phenomena n
which we see so habitually in our meaner
Congress of to-day: men coming there with
great local regulations, and with great expec-
tations of their constituents, and never being
heard of afterwards? We will not pursue
these painful yet obvious and unavoidable
surmises; yet certain it seems, if Patrick