Not only these, but all historical works of value which the English, French, and German languages can furnish, with an immense amount of other intellectual pabulum, were eagerly gathered, consumed with voracious appetite, and thoroughly digested. Supplied at last with the required means, he braced himself for a systematic curriculum of law, and pursued it with marked constancy and success. While at the university he also took up the German and French languages and mastered them, and he perfected his scholarship in Latin and Greek. Until his death he read all these languages with great facility and accuracy, and he always kept his Greek Testament lying on his table for easy reference.
After a thorough course at the university, Mr. Davis entered upon the practice of the law in Alexandria, Virginia. He began his profession without much to cheer him; but he was not the man to abandon a pursuit for lack of courage. His ability and industry attracted attention, and before long he had acquired a respectable practice, which thenceforth protected him from all annoyances of a pecuniary nature. He toiled with unwearied assiduity, never appearing in the trial of a cause without the most elaborate and exhaustive preparation, and soon became known to his professional brethren as a valuable ally and a formidable foe. His natural aptitude for public affairs made itself manifest in due time, and some articles which he prepared on municipal and State politics gave him great reputation. He also published a series of newspaper essays, wherein he dared to question the divinity of slavery; and these, though at the time thought to be not beyond the limits of free discussion, were cited against him long after as evidence that he was a heretic in pro-slavery Virginia and Maryland.
On the 30th of October, 1845, he married Miss Constance T. Gardiner, daughter of William C. Gardiner, Esq., a most accomplished and charming young lady, as beautiful and as fragile as a flower. She lived to gladden his heart for but a few years, and then,
"Like a lily drooping,
She bowed her head and died."
In 1850 he came to Baltimore, and immediately a high position, professional, social, and political, was awarded him. His forensic efforts at once commanded attention and enforced respect. The young men of most ability and promise gathered about him, and made him the centre of their chosen circle. He became a prominent member of the whig party, and was everywhere known as the brilliant orator and successful controvertist of the Scott campaign of 1852. The whig party, worn out by its many gallant but unsuccessful battles, was ultimately gathered to its fathers, and Mr. Davis led off in the American movement. He was elected successively to the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, and thirty-sixth Congresses by the American party from the fourth district of Maryland. He supported with great ability and zeal Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency in 1856, and in 1860 accepted John Bell as the candidate of his party, though he clearly divined and plainly announced that the great battle was really between Abraham Lincoln, as the representative of the national sentiment on the one hand, and secession and disunion, in all their shades and phases, on the other. To his seat in the thirty-eighth Congress he was elected by the Unconditional Union party.
Since the adjournment of the thirty-eighth Congress he has been profoundly concerned in the momentous public questions now pressing for adjustment, and he did not fail on several fitting occasions to give his views at length to the public. Nevertheless, he frequently alluded to his earnest desire to retreat for awhile from the perplexing annoyances of public life. He had determined upon a long visit to Europe in the coming spring, and had almost concluded the purchase of a delightful country-seat, where he hoped to recruit his weary brain for years to come from the exhaustless riches of nature. When the thirty-ninth Congress met, and he read of his old companions in the work of legislation again gathering in their halls and committee-rooms, I think, for at least a day or two, he felt a longing to be among them. During the second week of the session he again entered this hall, but only as a spectator. The greeting he received—so general, spontaneous, and cordial—from gentlemen on both sides of the House, touched his heart most sensibly. The crowd that gathered about him was go great that the party was obliged to retire to one of the larger ante-rooms for fear of interrupting the public business. A delightful interview among old friends was the reward. He was charmed with his reception, and mentioned it to me with intense satisfaction. Little did you, gentlemen, then think that between you and a beloved friend the curtain that shrouds eternity was so soon to be interposed. His sickness was of about a week's duration. Until the morning of the day preceding his death, his friends never doubted his recovery. Later in the day very unfavorable symptoms appeared, and all then realized his danger. In the evening his wife spoke to him of a visit, for one day, which he had projected, to his old friend, Mrs. S. F. Du Pont, when he replied, in the last words he ever uttered, "It shows the folly of making plans even for a day." He continued to fail rapidly in strength until two o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, the 30th of December, when Henry Winter Davis, in the forty-ninth year of his age, appeared before his God. His death confirmed the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, who declared, "Marshaling all the horrors of death, and contemplating the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian." He passed away so quietly that no one knew the moment of his departure. His was—
"A death, life sleep;
A gentle wafting to immortal life."
Mr. Davis left a widow, Mrs. Nancy Davis, a daughter of John B. Morris, Esq., of Baltimore, and two little girls, who were the idols of his heart. He was married a second time on the 26th of January, 1857. His nearest surviving collateral relation is the Hon. David Davis, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who is his only cousin-german. To all these afflicted hearts may God be most gracious.
Thus has the country lost one of the most able, eloquent, and fearless of its defenders. Called from this life at an age when most men are just beginning to command the respect and confidence of their fellows, he has left, nevertheless, a fame as wide as our vast country. He died nineteen years younger than Washington and eight years younger than Lincoln. At forty-eight years of age Washington had not seen the glories of Yorktown even in a vision, nor had Lincoln dreamed of the presidential chair; and if they had died at that age they would have been comparatively unknown in history. Doubtless God would have raised up other leaders, if they had been wanting, to conduct the great American column, which He has chosen to be the bodyguard of human rights and hopes, onward among the nations and the centuries; but in that event the 12th and 22d days of February would not be, as they now are, held sacred in our calendar.
Mr. Davis had gathered into his house the literary treasures of four languages, and had reveled in spirit with the wise men of the ages. He had conned his books as jealously as a miner peering for gold, and had not left a panful of earth unwashed. He had collected the purest ore of truth and the richest gems of thought, until he was able to crown himself with knowledge. Blessed with a felicitous power of analysis and a prodigious memory, he ransacked history, ancient and modern, sacred and profane; science, pure, empirical, and metaphysical; the arts, mechanical and liberal; the professions, law, divinity, and medicine; poetry and the miscellanies of literature; and in all these great departments of human lore he moved as easily as most men do in their particular province. His habit was not only to read but to reread the best of his books frequently, and he was continually supplying himself with better editions of his favorites. In current, playful conversation with friends he quoted right and left, in brief and at length, from the classics, ancient and modern, and from the drama, tragic and comic. In his speeches, on the contrary, he quoted but little, and only when he seemed to run upon a thought already expressed by some one else with singular force and appositeness. He was the best scholar I ever met for his years and active life, and was surpassed by very few, excepting mere book-worms. He has for many years been engaged in collecting extracts from newspapers, containing the leading facts and public documents of the day; but he never commonplaced from books. His thesaurus was his head.