na Charta of our representative government and national glory.

He continued the practice of the law until the year 1794, when he made a final adieu to his profession, and retired to the bosom of his family. He retired loaded with honours, public and professional; and carried with him the admiration, the gratitude, the confidence, and the love of his country.

No man had ever passed through so long a life of public service, with a reputation more perfectly unspotted.

In 1796, he was again called to the gubernatorial chair; but this office he almost immediately resigned.

In the year 1797, his health began to decline, and continued to sink gradually, to the moment of his death.

In 1799 he was appointed by president Adams envoy to France. This honour he declined, on account of his advanced age and increasing debility. He lived but a short time after this testimony of the respect in which his talents and patriotism were held, for he died at Red-hill, Charlotte county, June 6, 1799.

Thus lived and thus died, the celebrated

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Patrick Henry of Virginia; a man who justly deserves to be ranked among the highest ornaments and noblest benefactors of his country. Had his lot been cast in the republics of Greece or Rome, his name would have been enrolled by some immortal pen among the expellers of tyrants and the champions of liberty: the proudest monument of national gratitude would have risen to his honour, and handed down his memory to future generations.

MADEMOISELLE MARS,

THE most eminent of the French actresses, was born in 1778, and is the daughter of Monvel, an actor of great celebrity. In giving her instructions, her father had the judgment and good taste not to make her a mere creature of art; on the contrary, he taught her that much ought to be left to the inspiration of natural feelings, and that art ought only to second, and not supercede, nature. She first came out in 1791, on the Montansier theatre, and at length was received at the Theatre Francois. Her original cast of parts consisted of those which the French denominate ingenues; parts in which youthful innocence and simplicity are represented. These she performed for many years with extraordinary applause. At length she resolved to shine in a diametrically opposite kind of acting; that of the higher class of coquettes. In accomplishing this, she had to encounter a violent opposition from Mademoiselle Leverd, who was already in possession of the department; for, in France, each actor

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has an exclusive right to a certain species of character. Mademoiselle Mars, however, succeeded in breaking through this rule, and, in the coquette, she charmed fully as much as she had before done in the child of nature. This is a sufficient proof of the versatility of her talents. Of Napoleon, she was always a warm admirer, and this has induced some of the Bourbonists to attack her with petty cavils, and malignant sarcasms; but even envy and hatred themselves have not ventured to deny her preeminence of theatrical genius. In comedy, she is what Mademoiselle George is in tragedy. She charms foreigners no less than she does her own countrymen. Mr Alison, the son of the author of the Essay on Taste, speaks of her as being 'probably as perfect an actress in comedy as ever appeared on any stage. She has (he says) united every advantage of countenance, and voice, and figure, which it is possible to conceive; and no one can ever have witnessed her incomparable acting, without feeling that the imagination can suggest nothing more completely lovely, more graceful, more natural and touching, than her representation of character.' Mademoiselle Mars has been most ex

quisitely beautiful; and though the period is past when that beauty had all the brilliancy and freshness of youth, time appears hardly to have dared to lay his chilly hand on her lovely countenance; and she still acts characters which require all the naivete, and gaity, and tenderness, of youthful feeling, with every ap pearance of the spring of human life.