the student would have lectures, let him read Blackstone; and he ever maintained the opinion that the popularity of those charming commentaries had tended to depreciate the standard of legal intellect since their appearance--an opinion which he shared with Mr. Jefferson. That he had read them attentively and admired their beauty, though much in the spirit in which he would admire a poem or a play, I know from this fact, that once, when he was in a playful mood, he said he believed he could repeat the heads of all the chapters of the four volumes which he straightway did. He occasionally read novels, but was quite indifferent whether he began with the second or the first volume; and I heard him commend highly the preface of the late novel attributed to Sir Walter Scott, called Moredun, as a fine piece of special pleading, declaring that its author would make a good special pleader. I have spoken already of the hearty praise which he bestowed upon Mr. Adams' report on weights and measures. In respect both of argumentation and style it has often occurred to me that Mr. Tazewell occupied an intermediate position between Judge Marshall and Mr. Wickham. He has the strength of Marshall with something more of refinement in style and imagery, and more vivacity in the play of his reasoning; while he has a stricter line of demonstration than Wickham without his very decided elegance. In some physical as well as intellectual aspects he resembled Chief Justice Parsons of Massachusetts. Not, indeed, in dress; for Parsons was a sloven, and Tazewell was neat in his dress, which was in winter, during the last twenty years, a full suit of black cloth, and in summer he was usually attired in white drilling with a light linen coat and fancy vest. He always wore a white cravat, and his linen was spotless. But both Parsons and Tazewell were men of large stature, at least to the eye, in a sitting posture; both delighted to drink at the deep fountains of the law, and were skilled in the lore of their profession in which they held an easy supremacy; both liked novels as a relief from grave cares, and were indifferent as to the volume of the novel that first came to hand; both were so strongly enamored of the exact sciences that it is probable they would have cultivated them with extraordinary success. But Tazewell, though a fair scholar in the old way, never attained to that excellence in classical literature which made the name of Parsons an authority for a disputed reading in the colleges of Germany. I have always regretted that Tazewell did not bring his mind to bear upon the science of language, and especially of comparative philology. Had he been able to read Bonn, or had mastered the New Cratylus or the Varronianus of Donaldson, his versatile and sharp intellect might have sent forth a work of "winged words" of equal interest and infinitely more profound than the Diversions of Purley.