This singular being was twenty-six years of age before any one suspected, least of all himself, that he possessed any of the talents which command the attention of men.  His life had been desultory and purposeless.  He had studied law a little, attended a course or two of medical lectures, travelled somewhat, dipped into hundreds of books, read a few with passionate admiration, had lived much with the ablest men of that day,—­a familiar guest at Jefferson’s fireside, and no stranger at President Washington’s stately table.  Father, mother, and both brothers were dead.  He was lonely, sad, and heavily burdened with property, with debt, and the care of many dependants.  His appearance was even more singular than his situation.  At twenty-three he had still the aspect of a boy.  He actually grew half a head after he was twenty-three years of age.

“A tall, gawky-looking, flaxen-haired stripling, apparently of the age of sixteen or eighteen, with complexion of a good parchment color, beardless chin, and as much assumed self-consequence as any two-footed animal I ever saw.”

So he was described by a Charleston bookseller, who saw him in his store in 1796, carelessly turning over books.  “At length,” continues this narrator,

“he hit upon something that struck his fancy; and never did I witness so sudden, so perfect a change of the human countenance.  That which was before dull and heavy in a moment became animated, and flashed with the brightest beams of intellect.  He stepped up to the old gray-headed gentleman (his companion), and giving him a thundering slap on the shoulder, said, ‘Jack, look at this!’”

Thus was he described at twenty-three.  At twenty-six he was half a head taller, and quite as slender as before.  His light hair was then combed back into an elegant queue.  His eye of hazel was bright and restless.  His chin was still beardless.  He wore a frock-coat of light blue cloth, yellow breeches, silk stockings, and top-boots.  Great was the love he bore his horses, which were numerous, and as good as Virginia could boast.  It is amusing to notice that the horse upon which this pattern aristocrat used to scamper across the country, in French-Revolution times, was named Jacobin!

It was in March, 1799, the year before the final victory of the Republicans over the Federal party, that the neighbors of John Randolph and John Randolph himself discovered, to their great astonishment, that he was an orator.  He had been nominated for Representative in Congress.  Patrick Henry, aged and infirm, had been so adroitly manipulated by the Federalists, that he had at length agreed to speak to the people in support of the hateful administration of John Adams.  John Randolph, who had never in his life addressed an audience, nor, as he afterwards declared, had ever imagined that he could do so, suddenly determined, the very evening before the day named for the meeting,