He was a man of large and progressive ideas, ready to accept any and all improvements, if persuaded that the remedies proposed were, indeed improvements, but while always ready to correct abuses, he was far from believing that all change meant reform--was too sagacious and far seeing, too much alive to the public interests, to encourage rash and ill advised men or measures, was wise and firm enough to oppose all fanatics and _doctrinaires_, in their excesses. In fact he stood in the way of these men and opposed their measures, as tending to the subversion of existing laws and the Constitution, and the introduction of anarchy and confusion. As a Public Prosecutor, it was both his duty and ambition to see the laws faithfully executed, and an example made of evil doers. In a word, he was a man who sought to do his duty, not to gain the applause of men, but to meet the approval of his God. At all times, and on all occasions, he was zealous for the common weal; and such was his goodness and magnanimity, that he desired to conceal, rather than display his deeds, and derive fame from them. If his course was beneficial to mankind--advanced the interest and prosperity of society and his country--he was content. For himself, he asked nothing, and always derived happiness from the preferment of others. Public honors were often bestowed upon others, which were looked upon as his due. So far from regretting it, or envying those who got them, he enjoyed seeing competent men promoted and when incompetent men were advanced, he would say, "let us make the most of them," so far was he from and above the littleness of vanity and jealousy. In a word he belonged to the class which "finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." Of ambition for noisy honors, newspaper notoriety, or office, he had none. If ambition he had, it was gratified by the general recognition of the purity of his motives, the inflexibility of his personal integrity, by the evidences he constantly received that his labors to alleviate human suffering and to cure social disorders, were understood and appreciated. If he had ambition, it was to do good to his forlorn fellow creatures, to excel in his profession, and this latter he did so eminently that the great lawyers in every part of the State consulted him on many if not all important cases and abstruse points, and for years no law was passed, nor any important change made in existing laws, by the Legislature of Virginia, without members of the body, especially of the judiciary committee, asking his opinion and advice. That he had true ambition, loved honorable fame, we doubt not, and thus this exalted passion was, as we opine, the source of those noble actions and life-long labors, which caused him to be so much honored while living, and to be so venerated now that he is dead. And it is the duty of posterity to bestow on him that praise, after his death, which he declined while living.