tic look would call him by some name of contempt;
'this Butterwood Tom Harvey,' 'this would-be constable,'
etc. By such expressions, his contempt for the man was
communicated to the hearers. I own I felt it gaining on me,
in spite of my better judgment; so that before he was done,
the impression was strong on my mind that Butterwood Harvey
was undeserving of the smallest credit. This impression,
however, I found I could counteract the moment I had time
for reflection. The only part of the speech in which he
manifested his power of touching the feelings strongly, was
where he dwelt on the irruption of the company into Ford's
house, in circumstances so perilous to the solitary wife.
This appeal to the sensibility of husbands--and he knew that
all the jury stood in this relation--was overwhelming. If
the verdict could have been rendered immediately after this
burst of the pathetic, every man, at least every husband, in
the house, would have been for rejecting Harvey's testimony,
if not for hanging him forthwith."[431]

A very critical and cool-headed witness respecting Patrick Henry's
powers as an advocate was Judge Spencer Roane, who presided in one of
the courts in which the orator was much engaged after his return to
the bar in 1786:--

"When I saw him there," writes Judge Roane, "he must
necessarily have been very rusty; yet I considered him as a
good lawyer.... It was as a criminal lawyer that his
eloquence had the finest scope.... He was a perfect master
of the passions of his auditory, whether in the tragic or
the comic line. The tones of his voice, to say nothing of
his matter and gesture, were insinuated into the feelings of
his hearers, in a manner that baffled all description. It
seemed to operate by mere sympathy, and by his tones alone
it seemed to me that he could make you cry or laugh at
pleasure. Yet his gesture came powerfully in aid, and, if
necessary, would approach almost to the ridiculous.... I
will try to give some account of his tragic and comic effect
in two instances that came before me. About the year 1792,
one Holland killed a young man in Botetourt.... Holland had
gone up from Louisa as a schoolmaster, but had turned out
badly, and was very unpopular. The killing was in the night,
and was generally believed to be murder