He was indeed a
mere child of nature, and nature seems to have been too proud and too
jealous of her work, to permit it to be touched by the hand of art. She
gave him Shakespeare's genius, and bade him, like Shakespeare, to depend
on that alone. Let not the youthful reader, however, deduce from the
example of Mr. Henry, an argument in favor of indolence, and the
contempt of study. Let him remember that the powers which surmounted the
disadvantage of those early habits, were such as very rarely appear upon
this earth. Let him remember, too, how long the genius even of Mr. Henry
was kept down, and hidden from the public view, by the sorcery of those
pernicious habits; through what years of poverty and wretchedness they
doomed him to struggle; and let him remember, that at length, when in
the zenith of his glory. Mr. Henry himself, had frequent occasions to
deplore the consequences of his early neglect of literature, and to
bewail the ghosts of his departed hours.
* * * * *
From "Eulogium on Adams and Jefferson."
=_176._= JEFFERSON'S SEAT AT MONTICELLO.
Approaching the house on the east, the visitor instinctively paused, to
cast around one thrilling glance at this magnificent panorama, and then
passed to the vestibule, where, if he had not been previously informed,
he would immediately perceive that he was entering the house of no
common man.
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