With these sentiments, Sir, which I am persuaded are the sentiments of all our members, I have felt it to be a duty which I owe not only to the memory of the deceased, but to the honor of our Society, to offer the resolution which the announcement suggests. In doing so, however, I shall not deem it either necessary or proper to detain you with many words, when I feel, most unaffectedly, that any which I could use would be entirely inadequate, and almost injurious, to the fame of such a man. I will not, therefore, Sir, enlarge upon the particulars of his life, which are already familiar to you. I will not tell you of the brilliancy of his first entrance upon the stage of action, when the voice of our Commonwealth, rising in arms to defend her constitutional rights against the tyranny of Britain, called him from his native forest, and from the studies in which he had just engaged, to join her army hurrying to the rescue of my own native town from the grasp of her insolent invader: nor of his following campaigns under Washington himself, and his gallant bearing on the memorable plains of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth: nor of his subsequent stand at the bar of this city, (then, as it is now, one of the most distinguished in the country,) where he was _primus inter pares_, the first amongst his fellows--the brightest star in the constellation which shed its radiance over our state: nor of his appearances in the House of Delegates, and in the Convention for the ratification of the constitution: nor of his conduct at the court of revolutionary France, where (with his worthy associates) he baffled all the arts and stratagems of the wily Proteus of Politics himself, and maintained the honor of his country to the admiration of all her citizens: nor of his reappearance in this place: nor of his translation to the floor of the House of Representatives, where he stood, spoke, and conquered: nor of his short but substantial service as Secretary of State: nor, above all, of his crowning elevation to that chair of judicial supremacy for which he seemed to have been made; and where he sat for so many years, like incarnate Justice--not blind, indeed, like that fabled divinity, but seeing all things with that quick, clear, and penetrating eye, which pierced at once through all the intricacies and involutions of law and fact, to discover the latent truth, or detect the lurking fallacy, as by the glance of intuition. No wonder, Sir, that with such admirable faculties, combined with such perfect pureness of purpose, such entire singleness and simplicity of heart, he shed a lustre around that seat which it never had before, and which I greatly fear it will never have again. No wonder, Sir, that he appeared to the eyes of many in all parts of our land, and even of some who could not exactly agree with him in all his views of our federal compact, as the very Atlas