Allow me to thank you for the pleasure I have received from the perusal of your oration, for I must suppose that I am indebted to yourself for this mark of polite attention, and to express my particular acknowledgments for the flattering notice you have taken of the _Life of George Washington_. That work was hurried into the world with too much precipitation, but I have lately given it a careful examination and correction. Should another edition appear it will be less fatiguing and more worthy of the character which the biographer of Washington ought to sustain. With very great respect and esteem, I am, sir, Your obedient servant, J. MARSHALL. The Hon. ARCHIBALD D. MURPHY, Haw River, North Carolina. [Illustration: WILLIAM GASTON.] WILLIAM GASTON. BY WM. H. BATTLE. William Gaston, late one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, was born in the town of New Bern on the 19th day of September, A. D. 1778. His paternal ancestors were distinguished French Huguenots, who were driven from their country by the revocation of the famous edict of Nantes, and retired to Ballymore, in Ireland, where they settled, and where Alexander Gaston, the father of the Judge, was born. Alexander, having chosen the profession of medicine and obtained his diploma at the medical college of Edinburgh, entered the British navy as a surgeon. After remaining a few years in this service, he resigned his commission and came to New Bern in this State, where he settled and commenced the regular practice of his profession. In the year 1775 he married Margaret Sharpe, an English lady of the Roman Catholic faith, by whom he had two sons and a daughter, of whom the Judge was the second son. The elder brother died young; and before the subject of this sketch was three years of age he lost his father in a manner deeply tragical. He was shot by a band of Tories, who, in the year 1781, surprised the town of New Bern, and singled out the doctor, who was an ardent and active Whig, as an especial object of their vengeance. It is said that the fatal instrument of death was fired over the head of the agonized wife, while she was imploring, as only a woman can implore, the life of her husband. The Judge was then doubtless too young to appreciate all the horrors of the scene, but that it made a deep impression upon him in subsequent life we are well assured. Many years afterwards, while he was a member of Congress, upon being charged, in an exciting party debate, with a want of proper American feeling, he indignantly repelled the imputation by the eloquent exclamation, "I was baptized an American in the blood of a murdered father."That same incident was alluded to with thrilling effect in the convention called to amend the Constitution in 1835 by the distinguished and venerable president of that body. The death of his father threw upon his mother the entire care and responsibility of rearing and educating her infant children.