se that he derived the most characteristic traits not only of
his genius, but of his disposition. The Winstons of Virginia were of
Welsh stock; a family marked by vivacity of spirit, conversational
talent, a lyric and dramatic turn, a gift for music and for eloquent
speech, at the same time by a fondness for country life, for
inartificial pleasures, for fishing and hunting, for the solitude and
the unkempt charms of nature. It was said, too, of the Winstons that
their talents were in excess of their ambition or of their energy, and
were not brought into use except in a fitful way, and under the
stimulus of some outward and passing occasion. They seem to have
belonged to that very considerable class of persons in this world of
whom more might have been made. Especially much talk used to be heard,
among old men in Virginia, of Patrick Henry's uncle, his mother's own
brother, William Winston, as having a gift of eloquence dazzling and
wondrous like Patrick's, nay, as himself unsurpassed in oratory among
all the great speakers of Virginia except by Patrick himself.[3]

The system of education prevailing in Virginia during Patrick Henry's
early years was extremely simple. It consisted of an almost entire
lack of public schools, mitigated by the sporadic and irregular
exercise of domestic tuition. Those who could afford to import
instruction into their homes got it, if they desired; those who could
not, generally went without. As to the youthful Patrick, he and
education never took kindly to each other. From nearly all quarters
the testimony is to this effect,--that he was an indolent, dreamy,
frolicsome creature, with a mortal enmity to books, supplemented by a
passionate regard for fishing-rods and shot-guns; disorderly in dress,
slouching, vagrant, unambitious; a roamer in woods, a loiterer on
river-banks; having more tastes and aspirations in common with
trappers and frontiersmen than with the toilers of civilized life;
giving no hint nor token, by word or act, of the possession of any
intellectual gift that could raise him above mediocrity, or even up to
it.

During the first ten years of his life, he seems to have made, at a
small school in the neighborhood, some small and reluctant progress
into the mysteries of reading, writing, and arithmetic; whereupon his
father took personal charge of the matter, and conducted his further
education at home, along with that of other children, being aided in
the task by the very c