Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell | Page 7

courts of Richmond in which Wythe presided as sole chancellor, and
Pendleton as the president of the Court of Appeals. The bar of the
metropolis, which consisted mainly of men who had served during the
Revolution, and subsequently, in camp and in council, was large in
numbers and abounding in talents. Alexander Campbell, whose voice,
says Wirt, "had all the softness and melody of the harp; whose mind
was at once an orchard and a flower garden, loaded with the best fruits,
and smiling in the many-colored bloom of spring; whose delivery,
action, style, and manner, were perfectly Ciceronian," and who, I am
grieved to say, was shortly to fall by his own hand; Munford, known to
the profession by his Reports, and to scholars for the skill and elegance
with which he has invested Homer in an English dress; Warden, the
theme of many a joke, a sturdy lawyer of the old school, his name
perpetually occurring in the early Reports; Call, whose aged form
might occasionally be seen in Richmond in my early days, and familiar
by his Reports; Hay, afterwards a judge of the federal district court,
which he held in this city thirty-five or forty years ago, but better
known as the prosecuting attorney in the trial of Burr; and besides and
above these were Edmund Randolph, who, having filled the most
prominent posts in our own and in the federal government, and with
whom it is believed Mr. Tazewell studied for a short time in
Philadelphia, was to return to the bar, where he had the largest practice,
according to Wirt, of any lawyer of his time; Wickham, then holding at
or near his meridian as he did at his setting, the front rank; and John
Marshall, a name that spoke for itself then, speaks for itself now, and
will speak forever. These and such men composed the Richmond bar of
that day.
An able bar is the best school of law. If the leaders be strong, they will
be apt to have worthy successors; for of all lessons for a student, the
contests of able men with each other in the practical game of life are
the best. In such a school Tazewell applied himself closely; and in truth

he had rare advantages. In a physical view he is said by one who knew
him at this period of his life, to have been the most elegant and brilliant
young man of his age. His tall stature, which reached six feet, his light
and graceful figure, his blue, wide, intellectual eye, his features noble
and prominent, though not yet developed to the sterner mould of latter
years, those auburn ringlets, which curled about his head in childhood,
which he shook at midnoon in the stress of some high argument, and
which, turned to a silver hue, flowed down his marble neck in his
shroud,--and a winning address, which, though slightly and insensibly
tinged with hauteur on a first acquaintance, grew urgent and cordial,
fascinated every beholder; while his intellectual faculties, which even
thus early his habitual study of the severer sciences had sharpened, and
which impelled him to venture fearlessly even with experts on vexed
questions in law and morals, and his truly generous nature, made him
the delight of the social circle, and endeared him to all. Then, as at a
later day, he was not averse from manly sports, was fond of the gun,
and was a fearless horseman. One of his youthful feats was to ride his
horse to the second story of the Raleigh Tavern; and when his income
from the Norfolk bar reached thousands, and his dicta were deemed the
infallible utterances of Themis, he has been known in a country frolic
to leap from a horse's back into a carriage in full motion; and at a later
day, when the country sprang to arms to avenge the insult upon the
Chesapeake, and he might have taken what civil or military post he
pleased, he chose the command of a troop of cavalry. He understood at
this early day, however, the art of sacrificing pleasure at the shrine of
duty; and he preserved his youth pure from those flattering vices which
please for the present, but which bring disgrace, disease, and death in
their train.
His position gave him decided advantages of observation and
improvement. His father, who was a prominent politician, and long a
judge of the General Court, was now a judge of the Court of Appeals,
and was soon elected to the Senate of the United States. In his society
he saw Pendleton, Carrington, Roane, Fleming, and Lyons, who
composed the Court of Appeals at that day, and all of whom I heard
him recall in living colors a few months before his death. It was the