Eloquence and Humour of Patrick Henry.—WIRT.

He

Hook was a Scotchman, a man of wealth, and suspected of being unfriendly to the American cause. During the distresses of the American army, consequent on the joint invasion of Cornwallis and Phillips in 1781, a Mr. Venable, an army commissary, had taken two of Hook's steers for the use of the troops. The act had not been strictly legal; and, on the establishment of peace, Hook, on the advice of Mr. Cowan, a gentleman of some distinction in the law, thought proper to bring an action of trespass against Mr. Venable, in the district court of New London. Mr. Henry appeared for the defendant, and is said to have disported himself in this cause to the infinite enjoyment of his hearers, the unfortunate Hook always excepted. After Mr. Henry became animated in the cause, says a correspondent, he appeared to have complete control over the passions of his audience: at one time he excited their indignation against Hook: vengeance was visible in every countenance again, when he chose to relax, and ridicule him, the whole audience was in a roar of laughter. painted the distresses of the American army, exposed, almost naked, to the rigours of a winter's sky, and marking the frozen ground over which they trod with the blood of their unshod feet. Where was the man, he said, who had an American heart in his bosom, who would not have thrown open his fields, his barns, his cellars, the doors of his house, the portals of his breast, to have received with open arms the meanest soldier in that little band of famished patriots ? Where is the man? There he stands-but whether the heart of an American beats in his bosom, you, gentlemen, are to judge. He then carried the jury by the powers of his imagination to the plains around York, the surrender of which had followed shortly after the act complained of: he depicted the surrender in the most glowing and noble colours of his eloquence-the audience saw before their eyes the humiliation and dejection of the British as they marched out of their trenches-they saw the triumph which lighted up every patriot face, and heard the shouts of victory, and the cry of Washington and liberty,' as it

rung and echoed through the American ranks, and was reverberated from the hills and shores of the neighbouring river" but, hark! what notes of discord are these, which disturb the general joy, and silence the acclamation of victory-they are the notes of John Hook, hoarsely bawling through the American camp, Beef! beef! beef!"

The whole audience were convulsed: a particular incident will give a better idea of the effect than any general description. The clerk of the court, unable to command himself, and unwilling to commit any breach of decorum in his place, rushed out of the court-house, and threw himself on the grass, in the most violent paroxysm of laughter, where he was rolling, when Hook, with very different feelings, came out for relief into the yard also. 'Jemmy Steptoe," said he to the clerk, "what the devil ails ye, mon ?" Mr. Steptoe was only able to say that he could not help it. "Never mind ye," said Hook; "wait till Billy Cowan gets up; he'll show him the la'!”

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Mr. Cowan, however, was so completely overwhelmed by the torrent which bore upon his client, that, when he rose to reply to Mr. Henry, he was scarcely able to make an intelligible or audible remark. The cause was decided almost by acclamation. The jury retired for form's sake, and instantly returned with a verdict for the defendant. Nor did the effect of Mr. Henry's speech stop here. The people were so highly excited by the tory audacity of such a suit, that Hook began to hear around him a cry more terrible than that of beef; it was the cry of tar and feathers; from the application of which it is said, that nothing saved him but a precipitate flight and the speed of his horse.

Valley of the Commanches.-FRANCIS BERRIAN

I AROSE early in the morning to make the circuit of this lovely vale. At the extremity of the village, the torrent, whose sources were in the mountains, poured down, from a prodigious elevation, a white and perpendicular cascade, which seemed a sheet suspended in the air. It falls into

a circular basin, paved with blue limestone, of some rods circuit. The dash near at hand has a startling effect upon the ear. But at a little distance, it is just the murmur to inspire repose, and it spreads a delicious coolness all around the place. From the basin the stream seems to partake of the repose of the valley; for it broadens into a transparent and quiet water, whose banks are fringed with pawpaws, persimon, laurel, and catalpa shrubs and trees, interlaced with vines, under which the green carpet is rendered gay with flowers of every scent and hue. The soil is black, tender, and exuberantly fertile. The coolness of the vale and the shade, together with the irrigation of the stream, cover the whole valley with a vivid verdure. The beautiful red-bird, with its crimson-tufted crest, and the nightingale sparrow, pouring from a body scarcely larger than an acorn a continued stream of sound, a prolonged, plaintive and sweetly-modulated harmony, that might be heard at the distance of half a mile, had commenced their morning voluntary. The mocking bird, the buffoon of songsters, was parodying the songs of all the rest. Its short and jerking notes at times imitated bursts of laughter. Sometimes, laying aside its habitual levity, it shows that it knows the notes of seriousness, and trills a sweetly-melancholy strain. Above the summits of these frowning mountains, that mortal foot had never yet trodden, soared the mountain eagle, drinking the sunbeam in the pride of his native independence. Other birds of prey, apparently poised on their wings, swam slowly round in easy curves, and seemed to look with delight upon the green spot embosomed in the mountains. They sallied back and forwards, as though they could not tire of the view. The sun, which had burnished all the tops of the mountains with gold, and here and there glistened on banks of snow, would not shine into the valley, until he had almost gained his meridian height. The natives, fleet as the deer when on expeditions abroad, and at home lazy and yawning, were just issuing from their cabins, and stretching their limbs supinely in the cool of the morning. The smoke of their cabin fires had begun to undulate and whiten in horizontal pillars athwart the valley It was a charming assemblage of strong contrasts, rocky and inaccessible mountains, the deep and incessant roar of the

stream, a valley that seemed to sleep between these impregnable ramparts of nature, a little region of landscape surrounded by black and ragged cliffs, on every side dotted thick with brilliant and beautiful vegetation, and fragrant with hundreds of acacias, and catalpas in full flower, a spot sequestered like a lonely isle in the midst of the ocean; in the midst of it a simple, busy, and undescribed people, whose forefathers had been born and had died here for uncounted generations; a people who could record wars, loves, and all the changes of fortune, if they had had their historian. Such was the valley of the Commanches.

There are places where I am at once at home with Nature, and where she seems to take me to her bosom with all the fondness of a mother. I forget at once that I am a stranger in a strange land; and this was one of those places. I cannot describe the soothing sensations I felt. I listened to the mingled sounds of a hundred birds, the barking of the dogs on the acclivities of the hills, the cheerful sounds of the domestic animals, and the busy hum of the savages. The morning was fresh and balmy. The sublime nature above me, and the quiet and happy animated nature on my own level, seemed to be occupied in morning orisons to the Creator. I, too, felt the glad thrill of devotion come over my mind. "These are thy works, Parent of good." Here, thought I, in this delightful vale, with a few friends, is the place where one would choose to dream away his short day and night, forgetting and forgotten.

"Here would I live, unnoticed and unknown,

Here, unlamented, would I die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lie."

Pleasures of the Man of a refined Imagination.— IDLE MAN.

WHEN such a one turns away from men, and is left alone in silent communion with nature and his own thoughts, and there are no bounds to the movements of the feelings, and nothing on which he would shut his eyes, but God's

own hand has made all before him as it is, he feels his spirit opening upon a new existence-becoming as broad as the sun and the air-as various as the earth over which it spreads itself, and touched with that love which God has imaged in all he has formed. His senses take a quicker life, his whole frame becomes one refined and exquisite emotion, and the etherealized body is made, as it were, a spirit in bliss. His soul grows stronger and more active within him as he sees life intense and working throughout nature; and that which passes away links itself with the eternal, when he finds new life beginning even with decay, and hastening to put forth in some other form of beauty, and become a sharer in some new delight. His spirit

is ever awake with happy sensations, and cheerful, and innocent, and easy thoughts. Soul and body are blending into one-the senses and thoughts mix in one delight-he sees a universe of order, and beauty, and joy, and life, of which he becomes a part, and he finds himself carried along in the eternal going on of nature. Sudden and shortlived passions of men take no hold upon him, for he has sat in holy thought by the roar and hurry of the stream, which has rushed on from the beginning of things; and he is quiet in the tumult of the multitude, for he has watched the tracery of leaves playing over the foam.

The innocent face of nature gives him an open and fair mind. Pain and death seem passing away, for all about him is cheerful and in its spring. His virtues are not taught him as lessons, but are shed upon him, and enter into him, like the light and warmth of the sun. Amidst all the variety of earth, he sees a fitness which frees him from the formalities of rule, and lets him abroad to find a pleasure in all things, and order becomes a simple feeling of the soul.

Religion to such a one has thoughts, and visions, and sensations, tinged as it were with a holier and brighter light than falls on other men. The love and reverence of the Creator make their abode in his imagination, and he gathers about them the earth, and air, and ideal worlds. His heart is made glad with the perfectness in the works of God, when he considers that even of the multitude of things that are growing up and decaying, and of those