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or opossum, but which presently appeared
to be a panther. His gray coat, extended
claws, fiery eyes, and a cry which he at
that moment uttered, and which, by its
resemblance to the human voice, is pe-
culiarly terrific, denoted him to be the
most ferocious and untamable of that de-
tested race. The industry of our hunters
had nearly banished animals of prey from
these precincts. The fastnesses of Nor- 10
walk, however, could not but afford refuge
to some of them. Of late I had met them
so rarely that my fears were seldom alive,
and I trod without caution the ruggedest
and most solitary haunts. Still, however,
I had seldom been unfurnished in my
rambles with the means of defence.

usual arms.

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The unfrequency with which I had lately encountered this foe, and the encumbrance of provision, made me neglect, 20 on this occasion, to bring with me my The beast that was now before me, when stimulated by hunger, was accustomed to assail whatever could provide him with a banquet of blood. He 25 would set upon the man and the deer with equal and irresistible ferocity. His sagacity was equal to his strength, and he seemed able to discover when his antagonist was armed and prepared for de- 30 fence.

My past experience enabled me to estimate the full extent of my danger. He sat on the brow of the steep, eyeing the bridge, and apparently deliberating 35 whether he should cross it. It was probable that he had scented my footsteps thus far, and, should he pass over, his vigilance could scarcely fail of detecting my asylum.

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Should he retain his present station, my danger was scarcely lessened. To pass over in the face of a famished tiger was only to rush upon my fate. The falling of the trunk, which had lately been so anx-45 iously deprecated, was now with no less solicitude desired. Every new gust, I hoped, would tear asunder its remaining bands, and, by cutting off all communication between the opposite steeps, place me 50 in security. My hopes, however, were destined to be frustrated. The fibres of the prostrate tree were obstinately tenacious of their hold, and presently the animal scrambled down the rock and pro- 5 ceeded to cross it.

Of all kinds of death, that which now in menaced me was the most abhorred. To

die by disease or by the hand of a fellowcreature was propitious and lenient in comparison with being rent to pieces by the fangs of this savage. To perish in 5 this obscure retreat by means so impervious to the anxious curiosity of my friends, to lose my portion of existence by so untoward and ignoble a destiny, was insupportable. I bitterly deplored my rashness in coming hither unprovided for an encounter like this.

The evil of my present circumstances consisted chiefly in suspense. My death was unavoidable, but my imagination had leisure to torment itself by anticipations. One foot of the savage was slowly and cautiously moved after the other. He struck his claws so deeply into the bark that they were with difficulty withdrawn. At length he leaped upon the ground. We were now separated by an interval of scarcely eight feet. To leave the spot where I crouched was impossible. Behind and beside me the cliff rose perpendicularly, and before me was this grim and terrible visage. I shrunk still closer to the ground, and closed my eyes.

From this pause of horror I was aroused by the noise occasioned by a second spring of the animal. He leaped into the pit in which I had so deeply regretted that I had not taken refuge, and disappeared. My rescue was so sudden, and so much beyond my belief or my hope, that I doubted for a moment whether my senses did not deceive me. This opportunity of escape was not to be neglected. I left my place and scrambled over the trunk with a precipitation which had like to have proved fatal. The tree groaned and shook under me, the wind blew with unexampled violence, and I had scarcely. reached the opposite steep when the roots were severed from the rock, and the whole fell thundering to the bottom of the chasm.

My trepidations were not speedily quieted. I looked back with wonder on my hairbreadth escape, and on that singular concurrence of events which had placed me in so short a period in absolute security. Had the trunk fallen a moment earlier, I should have been imprisoned on the hill or thrown headlong. Had its fall been delayed another moment, I should have been pursued; for the beast now issued from his den, and testified his surprise and disappointment by tokens the

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sight of which made my blood run cold.

Still there was hope that he would relinquish this design as desperate. This hope was quickly at an end. He sprung, and his fore-legs touched the verge of the rock on which I stood. In spite of vehement exertions, however, the surface was too smooth and too hard to allow him to make good his hold. He fell, and a piercing cry uttered below, showed that noth

He saw me, and hastened to the verge of the chasm. He squatted on his hind legs, and assumed the attitude of one preparing to leap. My consternation was 5 excited afresh by these appearances. It seemed at first as if the rift was too wide for any power of muscles to carry him in safety over; but I knew the unparalleled agility of this animal, and that his experi- 10 ing had obstructed his descent to the

ence had made him a better judge of the practicability of this exploit than I was.

bottom.

From Edgar Huntly, 18c1.

WILLIAM WIRT (1772-1834)

American literature before Irving was sporadic. There was no literary center and no centralizing force. Freneau was a New Yorker, Tyler a Bostonian, Brown a Philadelphian, Dwight a New Englander not connected with Boston, William Wirt was a southerner, a native to Maryland and long a resident in Virginia, of which state he rose to be chancellor in 1801. After his prosecution of Aaron Burr in 1807 he became a national figure and during the last years of his life was rated among the foremost orators of America. In 1826 he delivered before Congress his famous eulogy on Adams and Jefferson.

His first literary production, Letters of the British Spy, ten papers originally contributed in 1803 to the Argus newspaper of Richmond, Virginia, as documents purporting to have been left accidentally in a Virginia inn by a traveling member of the British Parliament, passed through many editions and became perhaps the most popular book of the period before Irving. Wirt followed it in 1810 with the Old Bachelor, a periodical of the Spectator type, and in 1817 with the Life of Patrick Henry, a famous book in its day. In it appears for the first time what purports to be Henry's oration before the Virginia Assembly - Give me liberty or give me death,'- a masterpiece that was almost entirely the invention of Wirt.

THE BLIND PREACHER

RICHMOND, Oct. 10. I have been, my dear S, on an excursion through the countries which lie along the eastern side of the Blue Ridge. A general description of that country and its inhabitants may form the subject of a future letter. For the present, I must entertain you with an account of a most to singular and interesting adventure, which I met with, in the course of the tour.

It was one Sunday, as I travelled through the county of Orange, that my eye was caught by a cluster of horses tied 15 near a ruinous, old, wooden house, in the forest, not far from the road side. Having frequently seen such objects before, in travelling through these states, I had no difficulty in understanding that this was a 20 place of religious worship.

Devotion alone should have stopped me, to join in the duties of the congregation; but I must confess, that curiosity, to hear the preacher of such a wilderness, was 25 not the least of my motives. On entering, I was struck with his preternatural appearance: he was a tall and very spare old man; his head, which was covered with a white linen cap, his shrivelled hands, and 30 his voice, were all shaking under the influence of a palsy; and a few moments ascertained to me that he was perfectly blind.

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The first emotions which touched my breast, were those of mingled pity and veneration. But ah! sacred God! how soon were all my feelings changed! The lips of Plato were never more worthy of a prognostic swarm of bees, than were the lips of this holy man! It was a day of the administration of the sacrament; and his subject, of course, was the passion of our Saviour. I had heard the subject handled a thousand times: I had thought it exhausted long ago. Little did I suppose, that in the wild woods of America, I was to meet with a man whose eloquence would give to this topic a new and more sublime pathos, than I had ever before witnessed.

As he descended from the pulpit, to distribute the mystic symbols, there was a peculiar, a more than human solemnity in his air and manner which made my blood run cold, and my whole frame shiver.

He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour; his trial before Pilate: his ascent up Calvary; his crucifixion, and his death. I knew the whole history; but never, until then, had I heard the circumstances so selected, so arranged, so coloured! It was all new: and I seemed to have heard it for the first time in my life. His enunciation was so deliberate, that his voice trembled on every syllable: and every heart in the assembly trembled in unison. His peculiar phrases had that

voice of affecting, trembling melody; you are to remember the pitch of passion and enthusiasm to which the congregation were raised; and then, the few moments

force of description that the original scene appeared to be, at that moment, acting before our eyes. We saw the very faces of the Jews: the staring, frightful distortions of malice and rage. We saw 5 of portentous, death-like silence which the buffet; my soul kindled with a flame of indignation; and my hands were involuntarily and convulsively clinched.

15

But when he came to touch on the patience, the forgiving meekness of our to Saviour; when he drew, to the life, his blessed eyes streaming in tears to heaven; his voice breathing to God, a soft and gentle prayer of pardon on his enemies, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do '— the voice of the preacher, which had all along faltered, grew fainter and fainter, until his utterance being entirely obstructed by the force of his feelings, he raised his handkerchief to his 20 eyes, and burst into a loud and irrepressible flood of grief. The effect is inconceivable. The whole house resounded with the mingled groans, and sobs, and shrieks of the congregation.

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It was some time before the tumult had subsided, so far as to permit him to proceed. Indeed, judging by the usual, but fallacious standard of my own weakness, I began to be very uneasy for the situa- 30 tion of the preacher. For I could not conceive, how he would be able to let his audience down from the height to which he had wound them without impairing the solemnity and dignity of his subject, or 35 perhaps shocking them by the abruptness of the fall. But -10; the descent was as beautiful and sublime, as the elevation had been rapid and enthusiastic.

The first sentence, with which he broke 40 the awful silence, was a quotation from Rousseau, Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ, like a God!'

I despair of giving you any idea of the effect produced by this short sentence, 45 unless you could perfectly conceive the whole manner of the man, as well as the peculiar crisis in the discourse. Never before did I completely understand what Demosthenes meant by laying such stress 50 on delivery. You are to bring before you the venerable figure of the preacher; his blindness, constantly recalling to your recollection old Homer, Ossian and Milton, and associating with his performance, 55 the melancholy grandeur of their geniuses; you are to imagine that you hear his slow, solemn, well-accented enunciation, and his

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reigned throughout the house; the preacher removing his white handkerchief from his aged face (even yet wet from the recent torrent of his tears), and slowly stretching forth the palsied hand which holds it, begins the sentence, Socrates died like a philosopher - then pausing, raising his other hand, pressing them both clasped together, with warmth and energy to his breast, lifting his sightless balls' to heaven, and pouring his whole soul into his tremulous voice but Jesus Christ — like a God!' If he had been indeed and in truth an angel of light, the effect could scarcely have been more divine.

Whatever I had been able to conceive of the sublimity of Massillon, or the force of Bourdaloue, had fallen far short of the power which I felt from the delivery of this simple sentence. The blood, which just before had rushed in a hurricane upon my brain, and, in the violence and agony of my feelings, had held my whole system in suspense, now ran back into my heart, with a sensation which I cannot describe

a kind of shuddering delicious horror! The paroxysm of blended pity and indignation, to which I had been transported, subsided into the deepest self-abasement, humility and adoration. I had just been lacerated and dissolved by sympathy, for our Saviour as a fellow creature; but now, with fear and trembling, I adored him as -'a God!'

If this description give you the impression, that this incomparable minister had anything of shallow, theatrical trick in his manner, it does him great injustice. I have never seen, in any other orator, such a union of simplicity and majesty. He has not a gesture, an attitude or an accent, to which he does not seem forced, by the sentiment which he is expressing. His mind is too serious, too earnest, too solicitous, and, at the same time, too dignified, to stoop to artifice. Although as far removed from ostentation as a man can be, yet it is clear from the train, the style and substance of his thoughts, that he is not only a very polite scholar, but a man of extensive and profound erudition. I was forcibly struck with a short yet beautiful character which he drew of

our learned and amiable countryman, Sir Robert Boyle: he spoke of him, as if his noble mind had, even before death, divested herself of all influence from his frail tabernacle of flesh;' and called him, 5 in his peculiarly emphatic and impressive manner, a pure intelligence: the link between men and angels.'

This man has been before my imagination almost ever since. A thousand times, to as I rode along, I dropped the reins of my bridle, stretched forth my hand, and tried to imitate his quotation from Rousseau: a thousand times I abandoned the attempt in despair, and felt persuaded 15 that his peculiar manner and power arose from an energy of soul, which nature could give, but which no human being could justly copy. In short, he seems to be altogether a being of a former age, or 20 a totally different nature from the rest of men. As I recall, at this moment, several of his awfully striking attitudes, the chilling tide, with which my blood begins to pour along my arteries, reminds me of 25 the emotions produced by the first sight of Gray's introductory picture of his bard:

On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the poet stood; (Loose his beard and hoary hair

Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air :)

And with a poet's hand and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.

Guess my surprise, when, on my arrival at Richmond, and mentioning the name of this man, I found not one person who had ever before heard of James Waddell!! Is it not strange, that such a genius as this, so accomplished a scholar, so divine an orator, should be permitted to languish and die in obscurity, within eighty miles of the metropolis of Virginia? To me it is a conclusive argument, either that the Virginians have no taste for the highest strains of the most sublime oratory, or that they are destitute of a much more important quality, the love of genuine and exalted religion.

(1803)

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