he certainly borrowed a trait from Homer, and nodded occasionally; and when a tedious speaker began his harangue, having already taken a full view of the law and facts of the case, he usually fell asleep, waking up as the counsel finished his harangue, much refreshed at least, if not instructed by it, and proceeded to give judgment in the case. He was noted for his tenderness to the poor, and it is said that he had on their account almost as much business after he withdrew from the bar as before. He died in 1820, at the age of sixty, and was buried in St. Paul's, within a few feet of his compatriot Mathews. When Col. Nivison, in December, 1776, was returning to his lodgings after organizing the Phi Beta Kappa Society, he might have seen a pretty infant of two years in the nurse's arms, or toddling in the shade of Waller's grove; but he could not have foreseen that the same little fellow would in the course of time worry him with all the art of the special pleader, and finally receive from him the hand of his eldest daughter; and that when he should withdraw from the bar, he was to leave all his business in the hands of that child. But there was a young man, a member of the bar in 1802, whose elegant person, whose winning address, whose uncommon abilities, which were associated with industry and perseverance quite as uncommon, and whose glowing patriotism, would have made an impression in any country and in any age, and gained distinction in any sphere. Under such a portrait the name of one man only can be written--that of ROBERT BARRAUD TAYLOR. Young Taylor was eleven months older than Tazewell, was born in Smithfield, attended in Norfolk the school of that elegant scholar, the late Dr. Alexander Whitehead, became a student of William and Mary College, where he remained till his duel with John Randolph, in which he received a ball that he carried to his grave; studied law with Judge Marshall, and in 1796, at the age of twenty-two, engaged in the practice of the law in this city. His fine talents attracted universal attention, and business crowded upon him. His voice, action, eloquence, were all in fine harmony. As the district court system was then in operation, he had an opportunity of witnessing the displays of the leading counsel of the state in the neighboring town of Suffolk; and it was the dictate alike of interest and ambition to prepare himself for the conflict with his ablest contemporaries. Politics were the order of the day; and they soon engaged the attention of young Taylor. I heard many years ago, that when he came to the bar, and some time afterwards, he sided with his college mates Tazewell, Randolph, Cabell, Thompson, and James Barbour, and hailed with rapture the progress of the French revolution; but, shocked by the barbarities which disgraced the later stages of that moral and political maelstrom, and indignant at the unprecedented conduct of the diplomatic agents of France in our own country, he determined to