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My Lord of Worcester's Letter abt my Share in his Engine. Dear friend,-I knowe not with what face to desire a curtesie from you, since I have not yet payed you the five pownds, and the mayne businesse soe long protracted, whereby my reallity and kindnesse should with thankefullnesse appeare; for though the least I intende you is to make up the somme allready promised, to a thousand pownds yearly, or a share ammounting to farr more, (which to nominate before the perfection of the woorke were but an individuum vagum, and therefore I deferre it, and vpon noe other score,) yet, in this interim, my disapointments are soe great, as that I am forced to begge, if you could possible, eyther to helpe me with tenne pownds to this bearer, or to make vse of the coache, and to goe to Mr. Clerke, and if he could this day helpe me to fifty pownds, then to paye your selfe the five pownds I owe you out of them. Eyther of these will infinitely oblige me. The alderman has taken three day's time to consider of it. Pardon the great troubles I give you, which I doubt not but in time to deserve by really appearing 28th of March, 1656. Your most thankfull friend, WORCESTER.

To my honored friend,
Collonell Christopher Coppley,

These.

ANNE CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND MONTGOMERY,

"Lived (says Wood) like a princess, in Westmoreland, was a great lover and encourager of learning and learned men, hospitable, charitable to the poor, and of a most generous and public temper." She had all the courage and liberality of the other sex, united to all the devotion, order, and economy (perhaps not all the softness) of her own. She was the oldest, but most independent, courtier in the kingdom: had known and admired Queen Elizabeth; had refused what she deemed an iniquitous award of King James; re-built her dismantled castles, in defiance of Cromwell; and repelled, with disdain, the interposition of a profligate minister, under Charles the Second. *

The letter, which she is said to have written to Sir Joseph Williamson, then secretary of state, who sent to nominate to her a member for the borough of Appleby, was first printed in a paper written by Lord Orford for The World, and again introduced by that noble writer, in his article relative to this high-spirited woman. It is worthy of remark, that no authority is given, in either place, for the authenticity of the document, and, excellent and to the point as it is, we cannot but suspect it to have been, at least, heightened by the poignant pen of the contributor. However this may be, it will well bear repetition.

I have been bullied by an usurper; I have been neglected by a court; but I will not be dictated to by a subject; your man sha'nt stand. ANNE, DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND MONTGOMERY.

We have given place to the above, by way of introducing two other letters not generally known, one by a royal, the other from a noble, personage. The first is from QUEEN ELIZABETH to Heton, Bishop of Ely, who, it seems, had promised to exchange some part of the land belonging to his newly-acquired see, for a pretended equivalent; but demurred

when he entered on the office, either from a hope of enjoying his dignity without the penalty, or from a sense of shame at so palpable an injustice towards the church, probably the latter, because the letter is said to be preserved in the Episcopal Register of Ely, as a sort of proof of the compulsion.

Proud Prelate, I understand you are backward in complying with your agreement: but I would have you know, that I who made you what you are, can unmake you; and if you do not forthwith fulfil your engagement, by God! I will immediately unfrock you.

Your's, as you demean yourself, ELIZABETH.

* Whitaker's Deanery of Craven, p. 277.

The second is of a very different nature. It was written by JOHN, SECOND EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, at that time Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to Dr. Craddock, the Archbishop of Dublin, who had been suddenly seized with a putrid sorethroat, which for some days threatened

the worst consequences, and then as suddenly left him. Lord Buckinghamshire, who had not once sent to enquire after his Grace, during his illness, wrote him the following very concise yet elegant note on the day of his recovery :—

MY LORD-The enquiries of a Lord Lieutenant after the health of an Archbishop, might be deemed equivocal-but his sincere congratulations, on the recovery of a respected friend, cannot be misinterpreted.

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.

composition, that our readers shall have it. The billet was found by the Secretary at War on his table, after the loss of Minorca to the French, and is perfect of its kind.

We know not what punishment will be inflicted on us for inserting, as a climax to these royal and noble epistles, the letter of an unfortunate lieutenant of foot; but it seems to us so characteristic, and so spirited a SIR-I was a Lieutenant with General Stanhope when he took Minorca, for which he was made a Lord. I was a Lieutenant with General Blackney when he lost Minorca, for which he was made a Lord. I am a Lieutenant still. Sir, &c. &c.

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A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF PATRICK HENRY,

THE ORATOR OF VIRGINIA.

"Henry was the greatest orator that ever lived-he it was who gave the first impulse to the ball of the Revolution."-Jefferson.

ONE of the most extraordinary men, and perhaps one of the least known in Europe, who flourished in America during her revolutionary struggle, was the celebrated Patrick Henry. A revolution is naturally the parent of genius, confined, however, chiefly to the military profession. This is not surprising. There are so many incitements, and so many opportunities, both for signalizing and strengthening the warrior's talent, that it is almost impossible its possessor should either lie dormant or undistinguished. Besides, in military life the tedious preliminaries requisite in civil professions may be dispensed with, and genius and enterprise can soon master the difficulties which mere form flings in the way. Hence it is, that in every great national contest we see the chiefs of the army almost invariably springing from the very lowest to the highest stations, and taking by storm that glory and renown to which, under other circumstances, they would have looked only as a forlorn hope. Not so, however, is it with the eminences of civil life. A long and often painful probation is necessary to their attainment. The offices of state are to be acquired, and indeed sustained, only by ample preparation; distinction in the senate is the result of blended ability and acquirement; and musty records, and mountain tomes, are the uninviting steps which lead to the woolsack. To all these rules, however, Henry was an exception. He was a phenomenon even in a revolution. While Washington, through toil, privation, and defeat, struggled into immortality; while Franklin, by persevering industry, schooled himself into the distinctions of philosophy and politics; America saw with wonder one of her untutored children rushing from the woods, in the hunter's garb, and with the peasant's manners; a foundling of liberty; a pupil of nature; without friend, or patron, or almost acquaintance, guiding her sages, awing

her aristocracy, heading her bar, spell-binding her senate, and irresistibly hurrying her charmed hemisphere to a premature and unhopedfor emancipation! such a man was Patrick Henry: the growth of a century-a century, it may be, of revolutions.

He was born in Hanover county, in the colony of Virginia, on the 29th of May, 1736, of poor but respectable connexions. His father kept a sort of grammar school, where he was taught the rudiments of Latin, which, with some slight smattering of arithmetic, constituted the entire stock of his information. In his youth, and indeed during every period of his life, he was idleness personified. Restrained but little by his parents, he was almost continually in the forests chasing the deer, or stretched along the banks of some mountain lake intently watching the cork of his fishing-line. A love of solitude was his reigning passion, and even in the society of his schoolfellows he participated but little in the boisterous amusements of the vacation hour. Always thoughtful— always abstracted, he was still nevertheless an attentive observer of the passing scene; and when the crowd had separated of which he seemed to have formed but a heedless member, there was scarcely an observation worth recording which he could not repeat, or a remarkable character which he could not ac

curately delineate. Those personal sketches formed, it is said, a peculiar characteristic of his boyhoodthey were the result of observation; and while they marked the sagacity of his mind, they were not inconsistent with the indolence of his habits. But to study of any kind he had an invincible aversion; and when he was not basking listlessly beneath the sunbeam, he was to be seen in the woods like one of their primeval inhabitants, as wild and as active as the animal he was chasing. Not one omen of his future greatness was dis

coverable. His conversation was dull, his dress slovenly, his manner awkward, and his habits altogether such as shut out hope, even from the ever open heart of parental partiality. Who could have imagined that beneath this rude, uncouth, and unpromising exterior, a treasure lay concealed which was in after times to constitute at once the wealth and the ornament of his country!

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His father had nine children; and at the age of fifteen, Patrick was placed behind a counter in a country village. At the end of a year, fancying himself an adept in his calling, he took a store, and in conjunction with a brother quite as indolent and as thriftless as himself, commenced business as a merchant. It seems scarcely necessary to add, that in a few months the establishment was dissolved, and in as many years the debts in which it had involved them were not entirely liquidated. During the short period of his commercial life, he is said to have almost forgotten its duties in a singular, and as it then appeared, a profitless occupation, that of minutely examining the characters and dispositions of his different customers. To such a trait of character we should scarcely consider ourselves justified in adverting if it did not form a principal topic with all his biographers. These investigations he conducted with an address infinitely above his years. When he found his visitors inclined to talk before him unreservedly, he was all attention-not a remark escaped him-he listened to them in breathless silence. If, on the other hand, they manifested any reserve, he called forth all his energies to excite them; and by hypothetic cases drawn from his fancy, or real incidents drawn from his reading, he delighted to involve them in debate, and thus discover how different men would act in any given situation. By these means, he studiously initiated himself in the knowledge of human nature, and gained that first practical perception of character which afterwards enabled him to exercise an unrivalled mastery over the hearts of mankind.

Misfortunes seldom teach the children of genius prudence. At the age of eighteen, notwithstanding

the embarrassments in which his unfortunate commercial speculation had involved him, Henry married a Miss Shelton, the portionless daughter of a farmer in the neighbourhood. With the assistance of their parents, however, they obtained a small farm, purchased two slaves, and assiduously applied themselves to pursuits which were necessary to their very subsistence. Upon this farm the future Cincinnatus of the senate was to be seen under a vertical sun, with his spade in his hand, digging a barren soil for scanty bread, embarrassed with debt, encumbered with a family, unknown to the world, and little dreaming of the important part he was soon to act upon its theatre. How involved and intricate are the mysteries of Providence! This humble peasant was, at no very distant time, to guide the distracted councils of his country, awaken energies of which she was unconscious, and shake a mighty monarch on his throne by the power of his eloquence!

The agricultural speculation turned out even still more ruinous than the commercial one; and at the end of two years it was relinquished altogether. In utter despair, Henry turned to merchandize again, and again became a bankrupt. This happened before he was four-and-twenty. It is impossible, perhaps, to imagine a situation much more deplorable than his was at that moment. With a wife and family, borne down by debts, having exhausted the repeated contributions of his friends, and without a single shilling in the world to avert the approach of famine! Such, without any hyperbole, was his melancholy situation. Yet, amid all these calamities, he never drooped; he seemed as if sustained by some internal power, and "neither, (says Mr. Jefferson who then became acquainted with him) in his conduct nor in his countenance, was there to be found any trace whatever of his misfortunes.' It is singular enough that, up to this period, no one ever suspected him of the extraordinary talent with which he was gifted; adversity itself seemed incapable of striking from him one spark of genius he was looked upon as even less

than an ordinary man-as one, in short, who had attempted many things, and failed in all. In this desperate emergency, "the world was all before him, where to choose," and he determined on an experiment, which, situated as he was, seemed to border upon madness. Incapable as a farmer, and incapable as a merchant, he became a candidate for the bar! Forbidding in his appearance, uncouth in his address, without one particle of legal knowledge, and with very little reading of any other kind, he presented himself on six weeks' preparation before the three examiners, whose signatures are preliminary to a call in America. Two seem to have signed for him out of pure good-nature; with the third, Mr. John Randolph, he found considerable difficulty. Mr. Randolph, in addition to profound legal knowledge, was a very polished gentleman, and afterwards became King's Attorney General for the colony. He revolted at the very appearance of the candidate, and absolutely refused even to examine him; this resolution, however, he abandoned on understanding that he had obtained the two previous signatures. In a very short time he discovered the rashness of his anticipations. Ignorant of every principle of common or municipal law, Henry astonished the examiner by the strength of his mind, the subtlety of his argument, and the splendour of his illustrations. "You defend your opinions well, Sir," said Mr. Randolph; "but now to the law and the testimony; hereupon, opening the authorities, he proceeded-" Behold the force of natural reason; you have evidently never seen these books nor this principle of the law; yet you are right and I am wrong; and from the lesson you have given me, you must excuse me for saying it, I will never trust to appearances again. Mr. Henry, if your industry be only half equal to your genius, I augur that you will do well, and prove an ornament and an honour to your profession." Such was his introduction to the bar of Virginia!

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It is not to be wondered at, that, profoundly ignorant as he was of even the elementary principles of his profession, unacquainted with the commonest form, and unable to draw the tritest plea, he should

have remained in obscurity for three years. During this, his family suffered the extreme of want. He was reduced to live in the house of his father-in-law, who kept a small tavern adjoining the County Court of Hanover; and occasionally, during the landlord's absence, Henry fulfilled his duties, attended to the guests, and acted in the double capacity of host and waiter. About this time it was, that a dispute of a singular nature arose, between the American clergy and the parishioners, with respect to the commodity in which the former were to be paid their stipends. It is not necessary to enter into the minutiæ of that dispute; suffice it to say, that some law objections taken by the clergy in its progress had been so fully sustained, that the question resolved itself into a mere calculation of damages; and the advocate retained for the parish, after various unsuccessful struggles, retired, disheartened, from the contest. In this dilemma Henry was applied to on the part of the people, and, as it appears, rather from necessity than choice. When the momentous day of trial arrived, the whole county of Hanover seemed to have assembled; it was, in fact, a case in which every one was interested. The first person whom the young advocate encountered in the court yard was his own uncle, a clergyman of the established church, who, as plaintiff in a similar cause, was personally interested against the success of his nephew. When Henry saw him, he candidly expressed his regret at the circumstance. Why so," said the uncle? "Because, Sir," answered Henry, "you know that I have never yet spoken in public, and I fear that I shall be too much overawed by your presence to be able to do justice to my clients; besides, Sir, I shall be obliged to say some hard things of the clergy, and I am very unwilling to give pain to your feelings." To this the uncle good-humouredly replied-"Why, Patrick, as to your saying hard things of the clergy, I advise you to let that alone; take my word for it, you will do yourself more harm than you will them; and as to my departure, I fear, my boy, that my presence could neither do you good nor harm in such a cause; however, since you seem to think otherwise, and to desire it so earnest

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