s lands, and, I
believe, wished to be thought wealthy. It is my opinion that he was
better pleased to be flattered as to his wealth than as to his great
talents. This I have accounted for by recollecting that he had long
been under narrow and difficult circumstances as to property, from
which he was at length happily relieved; whereas there never was a
time when his talents had not always been conspicuous, though he
always seemed unconscious of them."[445]

It should not be supposed that, in his final withdrawal from public
and professional labors, he surrendered himself to the enjoyment of
domestic happiness, without any positive occupation of the mind. From
one of his grandsons, who was much with him in those days, the
tradition is derived that, besides "setting a good example of honesty,
benevolence, hospitality, and every social virtue," he assisted "in
the education of his younger children," and especially devoted much
time "to earnest efforts to establish true Christianity in our
country."[446] He gave himself more than ever to the study of the
Bible, as well as of two or three of the great English divines,
particularly Tillotson, Butler, and Sherlock. The sermons of the
latter, he declared, had removed "all his doubts of the truth of
Christianity;" and from a volume which contained them, and which was
full of his pencilled notes, he was accustomed to read "every Sunday
evening to his family; after which they all joined in sacred music,
while he accompanied them on the violin."[447]

There seems to have been no time in his life, after his arrival at
manhood, when Patrick Henry was not regarded by his private
acquaintances as a positively religious person. Moreover, while he was
most tolerant of all forms of religion, and was on peculiarly friendly
terms with their ministers, to whose preaching he often listened, it
is inaccurate to say, as Wirt has done, that, though he was a
Christian, he was so "after a form of his own;" that "he was never
attached to any particular religious society, and never ... communed
with any church."[448] On the contrary, from a grandson who spent
many years in his household comes the tradition that "his parents were
members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, of which his uncle,
Patrick Henry, was a minister;" that "he was baptized and made a
member of it in early life;" and that "he lived and died an exemplary
member of it."[449] Furthermore, in 1830, the Rev. Charles Dresser,
recto