isted on by Wirt and others, or to the
sterility of the soil, or to both, or to neither, after an experiment of
two years he failed in this enterprise, as utterly as in the former. It
was a period of unexampled scarcity and distress in Virginia; and young
Henry was suffering a reverse of fortune which befell many others at the
same time; and it would be, perhaps, unjust to attribute his failure
exclusively or even mainly to his neglect or incompetency. However that
may be, selling his scanty property at a sacrifice for cash, for lack of
more profitable occupation he returned to merchandise. Still displaying
indifference to the business of his store, he resumed his violin, his
flute, his books, and his curious inspection of human nature; and
occasionally shut up his store to indulge his favorite sports. He
studied geography, and became a proficient in it; he examined the
charters and perused the history of the colony, and pored over the
translated annals of Greece and Rome. Livy became his favorite, and in
his early life he read it at least once in every year. Such a taste
would hardly have developed itself in one who had wasted his schoolboy
days in the torpor of indolence. It is true that Mr. Jefferson said of
him in after years, "He was the hardest man to get to read a book that
he ever knew." Henry himself perhaps somewhat affected a distaste for
book-learning, in compliance with the vulgar prejudice; but he probably
read much more than he got credit for. He did not, indeed, read a large
number of books, as very few in Virginia did then; but he appears to
have read solid books, and to have read them thoroughly. He was fond of
British history. Having himself a native touch of Cervantic humor, he
was not unacquainted with the inimitable romance of Don Quixote. But he
did not read books to talk about them. Soame Jenyns was a favorite. He
often read Puffendorf, and Butler's Analogy was his standard volume
through life.

His second mercantile experiment turned out more unfortunate than the
first, and left him again stranded on the shoals of bankruptcy. It was
probably an adventure which no attention or energy could have made
successful under the circumstances. These disappointments, made the more
trying by an early marriage, did not visibly depress his spirit: his
mind rose superior to the vicissitudes of fortune. The golden ore was
passing through the alembic of adversity. He lived now for some years
with his father-in-l