growth, and
who was quick neither to love nor to cease from loving, never forgot
that proof of his friend's friendship. Thenceforward, until that one
year in which they both died, the letters which passed between them,
while never effusive, were evidently the letters of two strong men who
loved and trusted each other without reserve.

Not long before the close of the governor's second term in office, he
had occasion to write to Richard Henry Lee two letters, which are of
considerable interest, not only as indicating the cordial intimacy
between these two great rivals in oratory, but also for the light they
throw both on the under-currents of bitterness then ruffling the
politics of Virginia, and on Patrick Henry's attitude towards the one
great question at that time uppermost in the politics of the nation.
During the previous autumn, it seems, also, Lee had fallen into great
disfavor in Virginia, from which he had so far emerged by the 23d of
January, 1778, as to be then reelected to Congress, to fill out an
unexpired term.[286] Shortly afterward, however, harsh speech against
him was to be heard in Virginia once more, of which his friend, the
governor, thus informed him, in a letter dated April 4, 1778:--

"You are again traduced by a certain set who have drawn in
others, who say that you are engaged in a scheme to discard
General Washington. I know you too well to suppose that you
would engage in anything not evidently calculated to serve
the cause of whiggism.... But it is your fate to suffer the
constant attacks of disguised Tories who take this measure
to lessen you. Farewell, my dear friend. In praying for your
welfare, I pray for that of my country, to which your life
and service are of the last moment."[287]

Furthermore, on the 30th of May, the General Assembly made choice of
their delegates in Congress for the following year. Lee was again
elected, but by so small a vote that his name stood next to the lowest
on the list.[288] Concerning this stinging slight, he appears to have
spoken in his next letters to the governor; for, on the 18th of June,
the latter addressed to him, from Williamsburg, this reply:--

MY DEAR SIR,--Both your last letters came to hand to-day. I
felt for you, on seeing the order in which the balloting
placed the delegates in Congress. It is an effect of that
rancorous malice that has so long followed you, through that