"It was at the very close of the year 1821, that I went to Washington, to pass some months there. The commissioners to distribute the money due to American citizens under the then recent treaty with Spain, began their sessions that winter. Mr. Webster was employed by most of the large claimants in New England, and I went with him to assist him generally, and also charged by some of those claimants with the especial care of their interests. In New-York I became acquainted with Mr. Wheaton; and he was with us during a part of the journey to Washington. As fellow-travellers, we became intimate, and during the whole of my stay in Washington,--nearly three months,--this intimacy was kept up. From many parts of the country, eminent lawyers were at Washington, in attendance upon the Supreme Court, or charged with the care of cases before the commissioners under the Spanish treaty, and I was meeting them continually in society; and I had the good fortune also to, become acquainted with many of the most distinguished members of government and of Congress, and visited freely in the whole range--then less broad than now--of society in Washington. "Wherever I went I met Mr. Wheaton. Every where he was upon the footing, not of a received, but of a welcomed guest; and he seemed to be most intimate in the best houses. It was easy to see the cause of this. His important position as Reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States--which office he had then held for six years--brought him into immediate contact not only with the judges of the court, but with all who practised in it; and it might be supposed that with them he would be on terms of intimacy and friendship. But there was something in the character of that friendship, that no mere position explained; and he inspired an equally warm regard in many who never met him in his official duties. Among all his friends, if I were to name any persons, I think it would be Mr. Webster himself, who treated him as he might a brother; Sir Stratford Canning, Minister from England, and M. de Neuville, the French Minister, who appeared to give tone and character to Washington society so far as any persons can influence elements so diversified and refractory, and in whose houses he stood on the footing of a confidential friend; Mr Lowndes of South Carolina, a most wise and excellent man; and lastly and most of all, Chief Justice Marshall. Let me pause a moment to say one word of this great and good man, to whose greatness and whose goodness, equally, this country is, and while its prosperity endures, will be indebted; for his greatness rested upon his goodness as its foundation. Even his wide and accurate learning, his clear and close reasoning, his profound insight into the true merits and exact character and bearing of every question, and the unerring sagacity which enabled him to see the future in the present; all these together,