e. He was particularly fascinated by Livy, which he read in the
English translation; and then it was, as he himself related it to
Judge Hugh Nelson, that he made the rule to read Livy through "once at
least in every year during the early part of his life."[17] He read
also, it is apparent, the history of England and of the English
colonies in America, and especially of his own colony; for the latter
finding, no doubt, in Beverley and in the grave and noble pages of
Stith, and especially in the colonial charters given by Stith, much
material for those incisive opinions which he so early formed as to
the rights of the colonies, and as to the barriers to be thrown up
against the encroaching authority of the mother country.

There is much contemporaneous evidence to show that Patrick Henry was
throughout life a deeply religious person. It certainly speaks well
for his intellectual fibre, as well as for his spiritual tendencies,
that his favorite book, during the larger part of his life, was
"Butler's Analogy," which was first published in the very year in
which he was born. It is possible that even during these years of his
early manhood he had begun his enduring intimacy with that robust
book. Moreover, we can hardly err in saying that he had then also
become a steady reader of the English Bible, the diction of which is
stamped upon his style as unmistakably as it is upon that of the elder
Pitt.

Such, I think it may fairly be said, was Patrick Henry when, at the
age of twenty-four, having failed in every other pursuit, he turned
for bread to the profession of the law. There is no evidence that
either he or any other mortal man was aware of the extraordinary gifts
that lay within him for success in that career. Not a scholar surely,
not even a considerable miscellaneous reader, he yet had the basis of
a good education; he had the habit of reading over and over again a
few of the best books; he had a good memory; he had an intellect
strong to grasp the great commanding features of any subject; he had a
fondness for the study of human nature, and singular proficiency in
that branch of science; he had quick and warm sympathies, particularly
with persons in trouble,--an invincible propensity to take sides with
the under-dog in any fight. Through a long experience in offhand talk
with the men whom he had thus far chiefly known in his little
provincial world,--with an occasional clergyman, pedagogue, or
legislator, small plant