solitary meditations amidst the wildest scenery of nature; he delighted to brush away the earliest dews of the morning.'" To these early habits in a mountain region he owed a vigorous constitution. The simple manner of living among the people of those regions of that early day, doubtless contributed its share. He ever recurred with fondness to that primitive mode of life, when he partook with a keen relish balm tea and mush; and when the females used thorns for pins.

In the summer of 1775 he was appointed Lieut. in the "Minute Battalion," and had an honorable share in the battle of Great Bridge. In July, 1776, he was appointed 1st Lieut. in the 11th Virginia regiment, on the continental establishment, which marched to the north in the ensuing winter; and in May, 1777, he was promoted to a captaincy. He was in the skirmish at Iron Hill, and at the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth. He was one of that body of men, never surpassed in the history of the world, who, unpaid, unclothed, unfed, tracked the snows of Valley Forge with the blood of their footsteps in the rigorous winter of 1778, and yet turned not their faces from their country in resentment, or from their enemies in fear.

That part of the Virginia line which was not ordered to Charleston, (S. C.,) being in effect dissolved by the expiration of the term of enlistment of the soldiers, the officers (among whom was Captain Marshall) were, in the winter of 1779-80, directed to return home, in order to take charge of such men as the state legislature should raise for them. It was during this season of inaction that he availed himself of the opportunity of attending a course of law lectures given by Mr. Wythe, afterwards chancellor of the state; and a course of lectures on natural philosophy, given by Mr. Madison, president of William and Mary College in Virginia. He left this college in the summer vacation of 1780, and obtained a license to practise law. In October he returned to the army, and continued in service until the termination of Arnold's invasion. After this period, and before the invasion of Phillips, in February, 1781, there being a redundancy of officers in the Virginia line, he resigned his commission.

During the invasion of Virginia, the courts of law were not reopened until after the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis. Immediately after that event, Mr. Marshall commenced the practice of law, and soon rose into distinction at the bar.

In the spring of 1782, he was elected a member of the state legislature, and in the autumn of the same year, a member of the executive council. In January, 1783, he married Miss Ambler, the daughter of a gentleman who was then treasurer of the state, and to whom he had become attached before he left the army. This lady lived for nearly fifty years after her marriage, to partake and enjoy the distinguished honors of her husband. In 1784, he resigned his seat at the council-board in order to return to the bar; and he was immediately afterwards again elected a member of the legislature for the county of Fauquier, of which he was then only nominally an inhabitant, his actual residence being at Richmond. In 1787 he was elected a member from the county of Henrico; and though at that time earnestly engaged in the duties of his profession, he embarked largely in the political questions which then agitated the state, and indeed the whole confederacy.

Every person at all read in our domestic history must recollect the dangers and difficulties of those days. The termination of the revolutionary war left the country impoverished and exhausted by its expenditures, and the national finances at a low state of depression. The powers of Congress under the confederation, which even during the war were often prostrated by the neglect of a single state to enforce them, became in the ensuing peace utterly relaxed and inefficient.

Credit, private as well as public, was destroyed. Agriculture and commerce were crippled. The delicate relation of debtor and creditor became daily more and more embarrassed and embarrassing; and, as is usual upon such occasions, every sort of expedient was resorted to by popular leaders, as well as by men of desperate fortunes, to inflame the public mind, and to bring into odium those who labored to preserve the public faith, and to establish a more energetic government. The whole country was soon divided into two great parties, the one of which endeavored to put an end to the public evils by the establishment of a government over the Union, which should be adequate to all its exigencies, and act directly on the people; the other was devoted to state authority, jealous of all federal influence, and determined at every hazard to resist its increase.

It is almost unnecessary to say, that Mr. Marshall could not remain an idle or indifferent spectator to such scenes. As little doubt could there be of the part he would take in such a contest. He was at once arrayed on the side of Washington and Madison. In Virginia, as everywhere else, the principal topics of the day were paper money, the

collection of taxes, the preservation of public faith, and the administration of civil jus. tice. The parties were nearly equally divided upon all these topics; and the contest concerning them was continually renewed. In such a state of things, every victory was but a temporary and questionable triumph, and every defeat still left enough of hope to excite to new and strenuous exertions. The affairs, too, of the confederacy were then at a crisis. The question of the continuance of the Union, or a separation of the states, was freely discussed; and, what is almost startling now to repeat, either side of it was maintained without reproach. Mr. Madison was at this time, and had been for two or three years, a member of the House of Delegates, and was, in fact, the author of the resolution for the general convention at Philadelphia to revise the confederation. He was at all times the enlightened advocate of union, and of an efficient federal government, and he received on all occasions the steady support of Mr. Marshall. Many have witnessed with no ordinary emotions, the pleasure with which both of these gentlemen looked back upon their co-operation at that period, and the sentiments of profound respect with which they habitually regarded each other.

Both of them were members of the convention subsequently called in Virginia for the ratification of the federal constitution. This instrument having come forth under the auspices of General Washington and other distinguished patriots of the revolution, was at first favorably received in Virginia, but it soon encountered decided hostility. Its defence was uniformly and most powerfully maintained there by Mr. Marshall. He was then not thirty years old. It was in these debates that Mr. Marshall's mind acquired the skill in political discussion which afterwards distinguished him, and which would of itself have made him conspicuous as a parliamentarian, had not that talent been overshadowed by his renown in a more soberly illustrious though less dazzling career. Here, too, it was that he conceived that deep dread of disunion, and that profound conviction of the necessity for closer bonds between the states, which gave the coloring to the whole texture of his opinions upon federal politics in after-life.

The constitution being adopted, Mr. Marshall was prevailed upon to serve in the legislature until 1792. From that time until 1795, he devoted himself exclusively to his profession. In 1795, when Jay's Treaty was "the absorbing theme of bitter controversy," he was elected to the House of Delegates, and his speech in its defence, says Judge Story," has always been represented as one of the noblest efforts of his genius. His vast powers of reasoning were displayed with the most gratifying success.. The fame of this admirable argument spread through the Union. Even with his political enemies it enhanced the estimate of his character; and it brought him at once to the notice of some of the most eminent statesmen who then graced the councils of the nation."

Soon after he, with Messrs. Pinkney and Gerry, were sent by President Adams as envoys extraordinary to France. The Directory refused to negotiate, and though the direct object of the embassy failed, much was effected by the official papers the envoys addressed to Talleyrand, her minister of foreign relations, in showing France to be in the wrong. These papers-models of skilful reasoning, clear illustration, accurate detail, and urbane and dignified moderation-have always been attributed to Marshall, and bear internal marks of it. Such was the impression made by the dispatches, that on the arrival of Mr. Marshall in New York, in June, 1798, his entry had the éclat of a triumph. A public dinner was given to him by both houses of congress, "as an evidence of affection for his person, and of their grateful approbation of the patriotic firmness with which he sustained the dignity of his country during his important mission;" and the country at large responded with one voice to the sentiment pronounced at this celebration: "Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute."

Mr. Marshall was elected to Congress in 1799. He had been there not three weeks, when it became his lot to announce the death of Washington. Never could such an event have been told in language more impressive or more appropriate. "MR. SPEAKER, -The melancholy event, which was yesterday announced with doubt, has been rendered too certain. Our Washington is no more! The hero, the patriot, and the sage of America; the man on whom in times of danger every eye was turned, and all hopes were placed, lives now only in his own great actions, and in the hearts of an affectionate and afflicted people," &c., &c.

That House of Representatives abounded in talent of the first order for debate; and none were more conspicuous than John Marshall. Indeed, when the law or constitution were to be discussed, he was, confessedly, the first man in the house. When he discussed them, he exhausted them; nothing more remained to be said; and the impres sion of his argument effaced that of every one else.

In 1800 he was appointed secretary of state, an office which he held but a few months. He was appointed chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, January 31, 1801; "not only without his own solicitation, (for he had in fact recommended another to the office,) but by the prompt and spontaneous choice of President Adams, upon his own unassisted judgment. The nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. How well he filled that office is known to his countrymen. We shall not attempt to protract our account of the last thirty-five years of Judge Marshall's life. It was spent in the diligent and upright, as well as able discharge of his official duties; sometimes presiding in the Supreme Court at Washington, sometimes assisting to hold the circuit federal courts in Virginia and North Carolina. His residence was in Richmond, whence it was his frequent custom to walk out, a distance of three or four miles, to his farm. He had also a farm in his native county, Fauquier, which he annually visited, and where he always enjoyed a delightful intercourse with numerous relations and friends. Twice in these thirty-five years, he may be said to have mingled in political life; but not in party politics. In 1828 he was a member of a convention, held in Charlottesville, to devise a system of internal improvement for the state, to be commended to the legislature. In 1829 he was a member of the convention to revise and amend the state constitution, where he delivered a speech regarded as an unrivalled specimen of lucid and conclusive reasoning.

"No man more highly relished social, and even convivial enjoyments. He was a member of a club which for forty-eight summers has met once a fortnight near Richmond, to pitch quoits and mingle in relaxing conversation; and there was not one more delightedly punctual in his attendance at these meetings, or who contributed more to their pleasantness; scarcely one who excelled him in the manly game, from which the Quoit Club' drew its designation. He would hurl his iron ring of two pounds weight, with rarely erring aim, fifty-five or sixty feet; and at some chef-d'œuvre of skill in himself or his partner, would spring up and clap his hands with all the light-hearted enthusiasm of boyhood. Such is the old age which follows a temperate, an innocent, and a useful life." "The

Chief Justice Marshall died at Philadelphia, July 6th, 1835, in his 80th year. love of simplicity and dislike of ostentation, which had marked his life, displayed itself also in his last days. Apprehensive that his remains might be encumbered with the vain pomp of a costly monument, and a laudatory epitaph, he, only two days before his death, directed the common grave of himself and his consort, to be indicated by a plain stone, with this simple and modest inscription:"

JOHN MARSHALL, son of THOMAS and MARY MARSHALL, was born on the 24th of September, 1755; intermarried with MARY WILLIS AMBLER the 3d of January, 1783; departed this life the 18-.

-day of This unostentatious inscription, with the blanks only filled, is carved on the plain white marble monument erected over his remains, in the grave-yard at Shoccoe Hill, Richmond.

The late Francis W. Gilmer, a young man of the finest promise, of whom it is said, "had he not prematurely been cut off by the hand of death, would have ranked with the foremost men of his age and country," thus described the intellectual character of Judge Marshall :

entire.

His mind is not very richly stored with knowledge; but it is so creative, so well organized by nature, or disciplined by early education, and constant habits of systematic thinking, that he embraces every subject with the clearness and facility of one prepared by previous study to comprehend and explain it. So perfect is his analysis, that he extracts the whole matter, the kernel of inquiry, unbroken, clean, and In this process, such are the instinctive neatness and precision of his mind, that no superfluous thought, or even word, ever presents itself, and still he says every thing that seems appropriate to the subject. This perfect exemption from needless incumbrance of matter or ornament, is in some degree the effect of an aversion to the labor of thinking. So great a mind, perhaps, like large bodies in the physical world, is with difficulty set in motion. That this is the case with Mr. Marshall's, is manifest from his mode of entering on an argument, both in conversation and in public debate. It is difficult to rouse his faculties; he begins with reluctance, hesitation, and vacancy of eye; presently, his articulation becomes less broken, his eye more fixed, until, finally, his voice is full, clear, and rapid; his manner bold, and his whole face lighted up, with the mingled fires of genius and passion; and he pours forth the unbroken stream of eloquence, in a current deep, majestic, smooth, and strong. He reminds one of some great bird, which flounders and flounces on the earth for a while, before it acquires impetus to sustain its soaring flight.

The foregoing memoir of Marshall is abridged from an exceedingly interesting one in the Southern Literary Messenger for February, 1836, which is partly original and partly compiled from the eulogies on his life and character, by Horace Binney, Judge Story, and Edgar Snowden. We have, in addition, collected a few reminiscences and anecdotes from different gentlemen, of high respectability, which we presume to be authentic: Marshall was noted for extreme plainness of person and address, and a child-like sim

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plicity of character. His carelessness of his personal attire, in early life particularly, is well known, and on one occasion, (as stated in the Literary Messenger,) while travelling, occasioned his being refused admittance into a public house. On the occasion which we are now to relate, it caused him the loss of a generous fee. Marshall, when just rising on the professional ladder, was one morning strolling through the streets of Richmond, attired in a plain linen roundabout and shorts, with his hat under his arm, from which he was eating cherries, when he stopped in the porch of the Eagle hotel, indulged in some little pleasantry with the landlord, and then passed on. Mr. P., an elderly gen tleman from the country, then present, who had a case coming on before the court of appeals, was referred by the landlord to Marshall, as the best advocate for him to employ; but the careless, languid air of the young lawyer, had so prejudiced Mr. P. that he refused to engage him. On entering court, Mr. P. was a second time referred by the clerk of the court, and a second time he declined. At this moment entered Mr. V., a venerable-looking legal gentlemen, in a powdered wig and black coat, whose dignified appearance produced such an impression on Mr. P. that he at once engaged him. In the first case which came on, Marshall and Mr. V. each addressed the court. The vast inferiority of his advocate was so apparent, that at the close of the case, Mr. P. introduced himself to young Marshall, frankly stated the prejudice which had caused him, in opposition to advice, to employ Mr. V.; that he extremely regretted his error, but knew not how to remedy it. He had come into the city with one hundred dollars, as his lawyer's fee, which he had paid, and had but five left, which, if Marshall chose, he would cheerfully give him, for assisting in the case. Marshall, pleased with the incident, accepted the offer, not, however, without passing a sly joke at the omnipotence of a pow dered wig and black coat.

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Marshall was accustomed to go to market, and frequently unattended. Nothing was more usual than to see him returning at sunrise, with poultry in one hand and vegetables in the other." On one of these occasions, a would-be fashionable young man from the North, who had recently removed to Richmond, was swearing violently because he could hire no one to take home his turkey. Marshall stepped up, and ascertaining of him where he lived, replied, "That is my way, and I will take it for you." When ar rived at his dwelling, the young man inquired, "What shall I pay you?" "Oh, nothing," was the rejoinder, you are welcome; it was on my way, and no trouble." "Who is that polite old gentleman who brought home my turkey for me?" inquired the other of a by-stander, as Marshall stepped away. "That," replied he, "is John Mar. shall, Chief-Justice of the United States." The young man, astounded, exclaimed, "Why did he bring home my turkey?" "To give you a severe reprimand, and learn you to attend to your own business," was the answer.

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The venerable Capt. Philip Slaughter, now (May, 1844) living in Culpeper, was a messmate of Marshall's in the revolution. He says Marshall was the best tempered man he ever knew. During their sufferings at Valley Forge, nothing discouraged, nothing disturbed him; if he had only bread to eat it was just as well; if only meat it made no difference. If any of the officers murmured at their deprivations, he would shame them by good-natured raillery, or encourage them by his own exuberance of spirits. He was an excellent companion, and idolized by the soldiers and his brother officers, whose gloomy hours were enlivened by his inexhaustible fund of anecdote.

For sterling honesty no man ever exceeded Marshall. He never would, knowingly, argue in defence of injustice, or take a legal advantage at the expense of moral honesty. A case of the latter is in point. He became an endorser on a bond amounting to several thousand dollars. The drawer failed, and Marshall paid it, although he knew it could be avoided, inasmuch as the holder had advanced the amount at more than legal interest.

He possessed a noble generosity. In passing through Culpeper, on his way to Fauquier, he fell in company with Mr. S., an old fellow-officer in the army of the revolution. In the course of conversation, Marshall learned that there was a lien upon the estate of his friend to the amount of $3000, about due, and he was greatly distressed at the prospect of impending ruin. On bidding farewell, Marshall privately left a check for the amount, which being presented to Mr. S. after his departure, he, impelled by a chival rous independence, mounted, and spurred on his horse until he overtook his friend. He thanked him for his generosity, but refused to accept it. Marshall strenuously persisted in its acceptance, and the other as strongly persisted in not accepting. Finally it resulted in a compromise, by which Marshall took security on the lien, but never called for pay.

GEN. SIMON KENTON was born in this county, May 15th, 1755. His parentage was humble, and his education was entirely neglected. At the early age of 16, he became entangled in the snares of a young coquette, and soon had a severe battle with a rival by the name of Leitchman. Supposing he had killed him, he fled to Kentucky, and became one of the boldest pioneers of that then wilderness country, and one of the bravest that ever encountered the wiles of the Indians. His life was one of eventful incident. On being taken prisoner by them, on one occasion, he was eight times exposed to the gauntlet-three times tied to the stake to be burnt, and often thought himself on the eve of a terrible death. But Providence at last interposed in his favor, and he escaped. He was a spy in Dunmore's war. He acted in the same capacity under the gallant Col. George Rogers Clarke, in the revolution. He shared in Wayne's victory, and distinguished himself through the whole of the Indian wars of that day. He died in Ohio, in 1837, aged 82. His once gigantic form was broken by age; and his last days, it is said, were spent in poverty and neglect.

FAYETTE.

FAYETTE was formed in 1831, from Logan, Greenbrier, Nicholas, and Kanawha. Its greatest length is 47 miles; greatest width 30. New River, a main branch of the Great Kanawha, runs through the county its whole length. Much of the surface of the county is mountainous. The principal mountains are the Gauley, (a continuation of Cumberland mountain,) Big and Little Sewel. The great turnpike through the Kanawha valley passes over some of the most lofty of these mountains. "There are extensive bodies of good arable land, in some places partaking of the character of what along the Alleghany mountains is denominated glades, and in the west, prairies. The average price of unimproved, or wild lands of good quality, is one dollar per acre. We are satisfied that these lands, in point of natural fertility, and adaptation to the culture of grain, grasses, fruits, &c., is superior to the best counties east of the Blue Ridge." Pop., whites 3,773, slaves 133, free colored 18; total 3,924.

Fayetteville, the county-seat, is 289 miles westerly from Richmond, and contains a few dwellings. The turnpike leading from Charleston, on the south side of the Kanawha River, passes through the place, and terminates at the Red Sulphur Springs in Monroe county. Gauley Bridge is situated at the falls of the Great Kanawha, just below the junction of the Gauley and New Rivers, 36 miles above Charleston. There are here a store or two and several mills. The Kanawha at this spot is 500 yards wide, and has a fall of 22 feet over a ledge of rocks extending entirely across the stream. This is one of the wildest and most picturesque regions of the state. It is the last navigable point on the Kanawha, and presents one of the best sites for machinery in Virginia. A traveller who visited these falls, thus describes his impressions:

We reached the hotel at which we were to pause, about midnight. It is near to the Kanawha Falls; and from the beauty of the neighborhood has many visitors. I took a hasty cup of coffee, and weary as I was, went with another gentleman to see the Falls We could hear them in the distance; but we had to go round in order to reach them. The chief of our way was over shattered rock, offering a good access by day, but re