In such stories as these, one is reminded, as he is often reminded, of a resemblance between Marshall and Lincoln. Very different men they were, but both thorough Americans, with unborrowed character and manners, and a lifelong flavor derived from no other soil. At the height of Marshall’s reputation, in 1797, a French writer, who had visited Richmond lately, in speaking of Edmund Randolph, says, “He has a great practice, and stands, in that respect, nearly on a par with Mr. J. Marshall, the most esteemed and celebrated counselor of this town.” He mentions Marshall’s annual income as being four or five thousand dollars. “Even by his friends,” it is added, “he is taxed with some little propensity to indolence, but he nevertheless displays great superiority when he applies his mind to business.” Another contemporary, who praises his force and eloquence in speaking, yet says: “It is difficult to rouse his faculties. He begins with reluctance, hesitation, and vacancy of eye.... He reminds one of some great bird, which flounders on the earth for a while before it acquires impetus to sustain its soaring flight.” And finally, William Wirt, who was seventeen years Marshall’s junior, and came to the bar in 1792, when Marshall was nearly at the head of it, writing anonymously in 1804, describes him as one, “who, without the advantage of person, voice, attitude, gesture, or any of the ornaments of an orator, deserves to be considered as one of the most eloquent men in the world.” He attributes to him “one original and almost supernatural faculty, ... of developing a subject by a single glance of his mind.... His eyes do not fly over a landscape and take in its various objects with more promptitude and facility than his mind embraces and analyzes the most complex subject.... All his eloquence consists in the apparently deep self-conviction and the emphatic earnestness and energy of his style, the close and logical connection of his thoughts, and the easy gradations by which he opens his lights on the attentive minds of his hearers.”