candidate for the Presidency. He died while actively engaged in his profession, at Washington, February 18th, 1834. He Dr. Wirt's life was one of varied usefulness and importance. was a courtly Southern gentleman of the old school; and his writings have a pleasing flavor of good breeding and easy elegance, with something of the formality and sententiousness of his time. As an author he is lucid and polished, rising on occasion to real eloquence. His works make an impression of candor and integrity; qualities which seem to have been reflected in his character. A man of much local reputation and influence, his written words, both for thought and style, are worthy of an audience not confined to his locality and period. MR PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HENRY From Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry› R. HENRY'S conversation was remarkably pure and chaste. He never swore. He was never heard to take the name of his Maker in vain. He was a sincere Christian, though after a form of his own; for he was never attached to any particular religious society, and never, it is believed, communed with any church. A friend who visited him not long before his death, found him engaged in reading the Bible. "Here," said he, holding it up, "is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed; yet it is my misfortune never to have found time to read it, with the proper attention and feeling, till lately. I trust in the mercy of Heaven that it is not yet too late." He was much pleased with Soame Jenyns's view of the internal. evidences of the Christian religion; so much so, that about the year 1790 he had an impression of it struck at his own expense, and distributed among the people. His other favorite works on the subject were Doddridge's 'Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,' and Butler's 'Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed.' This latter work he used at one period of his life to style, by way of pre-eminence, his "Bible." The selection proves not only the piety of his temper, but the correctness of his taste, and his relish for profound and vigorous disquisition. His morals were strict. As a husband, a father, a master, he had no superior. He was kind and hospitable to the stranger, and most friendly and accommodating to his neighbors. In his dealings with the world he was faithful to his promise, and punctual in his contracts, to the utmost of his power. Yet we do not claim for him a total exemption from the failures of humanity. Moral perfection is not the property of man. The love of money is said to have been one of Mr. Henry's strongest passions. In his desire for accumulation, he was charged with wringing from the hands of his clients, and more particularly those of the criminals whom he defended, fees rather too exorbitant. He was censured too for an attempt to locate the shores of the Chesapeake, which had heretofore been used as a public common; although there was at that time no law of the State which protected them from location. In one of his earlier purchases of land, he was blamed also for having availed himself of the existing laws of the State, in paying for it in the depreciated paper currency of the country; nor was he free from censure on account of some participation which he is said to have had in the profits of the Yazoo trade. He was accused too of having been rather more vain of his wealth, toward the close of his life, than became a man so great in other respects. Let these things be admitted, and "let the man who is without fault cast the first stone." In mitigation of these charges, if they be true, it ought to be considered that Mr. Henry had been, during the greater part of his life, intolerably oppressed by poverty and all its distressing train of consequences; that the family for which he had to provide was very large; and that the bar, although it has been called the road to honor, was not in those days the road to wealth. With these considerations in view, charity may easily pardon him for having considered only the legality of the means which he used to acquire an independence; and she can easily excuse him, too, for having felt the success of his endeavors a little more sensibly than might have been becoming. was certainly neither proud, nor hard-hearted, nor penurious: if he was either, there can be no reliance on human testimony; which represents him as being, in his general intercourse with the world, not only rigidly honest, but one of the kindest, gentlest, and most indulgent of human beings. While we are on this ungrateful subject of moral imperfection, the fidelity of history requires us to notice another charge against Mr. Henry. His passion for fame is said to have been |