The colony of Virginia was the place, and the the year 1736 the time, of birth to Patrick Henry. His parents were in easy circumstances, but burthened with a numerous family; they resided at a country scat to which the ambitious name of Mount Brilliant had been given. In childhood Patrick Henry gave little promise of distinction. His person is represented as having been coarse, his manners extremely awkward, his dress slovenly, and his aversion to study invincible. No persuasion could bring him either to read or to work. At sixteen his father gave him means to open a small shop, which failed, however, in less than one year. Then he tried a small farm, and married; then again he entered upon the life of a tradesman, but in a few years more was a bankrupt. It was at this period that he became acquainted with Mr. Jefferson, afterwards President of the United States. "Mr. Henry," says Jefferson, "had a little before broken up his store (shop), or rather it had broken him up, but his misfortunes were not to be traced either in his countenance or conduct. His manners had something of coarseness in them; his passion was music, dancing, and pleasantry. He excelled in the last, and it attached every one to him." As a last resource, Patrick Henry now determined to make a trial of the law. It cannot be said that his preparatory studies were unduly arduous, since, as his biographer informs us, they were all comprised in the period of six weeks. Under such unpromising circumstances, and in the year 1763, he obtained a brief in the long-contested cause then raging in Virginia between the clergy on the one side, and the legislature on the other, as regarding the stipends which the former claimed. On this occasion Henry, to the astonishment of all who knew him, poured forth a strain of such impassioned eloquence as not only carried the cause, contrary to all previous expectation, but placed him ever afterwards at the head of his profession in the colony. To this very day, says Mr. Wirt, writing in 1818, the impression remains, and the old people of that district think that no higher compliment can be paid to any public speaker than to say of him in their homely phrase, "He is almost equal to Patrick when he plead (pleaded) against the parsons!"