devoted to law and letters only the time he could
rescue from its drudgery. In a letter, written in April, 1839, replying
to the request of a relative who offered to purchase his slave Sallie,
subject to the provisions of his father's will, which manumitted her if
she would go to Liberia, he said: "But if she is under my control." (he
did not know that she had been set to his share,) "I will _not consent
to the sale_, though he wishes to purchase her subject to the will." And
so Sallie was not sold, and Henry Winter Davis, the tutor, toiled on and
waited. He never would hold any of his slaves under his authority, never
would accept a cent of their wages, and tendered each and all of them a
deed of absolute manumission whenever the law would allow. Tell me, was
that man sincere in his opposition to slavery? How many of those who
have since charged him with being selfish and reckless in his advocacy
of emancipation would have shown equal devotion to principle? Not one;
not one. Ah! the man who works and suffers for his opinions' sake places
his own flesh and blood in pledge for his integrity.

Notwithstanding his irksome and exacting duties, he kept his eye
steadily on the University of Virginia, and read, without assistance, a
large part of its course. He delighted especially in the pungent pages
of Tacitus and the glowing and brilliant, dignified and elevated epic of
the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. These were favorites which
never lost their charm for him. When recently on a visit at my house, he
stated in conversation that he often exercised himself in translating
from the former, and in transferring the thoughts of the latter into his
own language, and he contended that the task had dispelled the popular
error that Gibbon's style is swollen and declamatory; for he alleged
that every effort at condensation had proved a failure, and that at the
end of his labors the page he had attempted to compress had always
expanded to the eye, when relieved of the weighty and stringent fetters
in which the gigantic genius of Gibbon had bound it.

About this time--the only period when doubts beset him--he was tempted
by a very advantageous offer to settle in Mississippi. He determined to
accept; but some kind spirit interposed to prevent the despatch of the
final letter, and he remained in Alexandria. At last his aunt--second
mother as she was--sold some land and dedicated the proceeds to his
legal studies. He arrived at t