Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/64

senses were disordered. When he went to attend the committee of privileges and elections, the matter was still worse. "The proud airs of aristocracy." says judge Tyler, detailing this incident of Mr. Henry's life, "added to the dignified forms of that truly august body, were enough to have deterred any man possessing less firmness and independence of spirit than Mr. Henry. He was ushered with great state and ceremony into the room of the committee, whose chairman was col. Bland.^[1] Mr. Henry was dressed in very coarse apparel; no one knew any thing of him,^[2] and scarcely was he treated with decent respect by any one except the chairman, who could not do so much violence to his feelings and principles, as to depart on any occasion, from the delicacy of the gentleman. But the general contempt was soon changed into as general admiration; for Mr. Henry distinguished himself by a copious and brilliant display on the great subject of the rights of suffrage, superior to any thing that had been heard before within those walls. Such a burst of eloquence, from a man so very plain and ordinary in his appearance, struck the committee with amazement; so that a deep and

1. Mr. Tyler says, "that enlightened and amiable man, John Blair;" but in this he is collected by the journal, which shows that Mr. Bland was the should have thought, from the general accuracy of Mr. Tyler's statement, that Mr. Blair might have been officiating as chairman pro tempore, in the absence of col. Bland; but that Mr. Blair does not appear, by the journal, to have belonged to the committee, or even to have been a member of the house in 1764. His name does not appear till 1766.   Mr. Tyler, reciting Mr. Henry's own narrative, after a lapse of several years, might very easily have confounded two names as similar as those of Bland and Blair.
2. That is, I presume, of his person; for after the very splendid exhibition which he made in the parsons' cause, his name could not have been wholly unknown: the text, however, gives the words of my correspondent faithfully.