Benton, in reference to the part borne by Mr. King in opposition to the dictation of party in those days of peril to his country, "should remember this patriotic conduct of Mr. King, and record it for the beautiful and instructive lesson which it teaches."1 His second term was marked by his advocacy of the prohibition of slavery in the admission of the territory of Missouri, as he had more than thirty years before introduced the resolution of 1785, in the old Congress, prohibiting slavery in the territory northwest of the Ohio. In 1825, on the termination of his senatorial career, at the age of seventy, he was induced by President John Quincy Adams to accept the mission to England. His health, however, now broken, was still further impaired by the voyage, and after a few months' residence in London, where he was well received by the British cabinet, he was compelled to ask liberty to return. He came back to his seat at Jamaica, where, finding his health becoming feebler, he removed for care and assistance to the city of New York, where he died, on the 29th April, 1827. Besides the public offices we have enumerated, Mr. King was voted for as a candidate for the post of Governor of the State of New York, in 1816, of Vice President of the United States in 1808, and of President in 1816. "Ah, sir!" said John Randolph, in 1823, after enjoying the hospi 'Benton's Thirty Years' View of the American Government, I. 57 talities of his friend at his home at Jamaica, on occasion of the great meeting of the North and South, to witness the race between Eclipse and Henry on the Long Island course-"ah, sir! only for that unfortunate vote on the Mis souri question, he would be our man for the Presidency. He is, sir, a genu ine English English gentleman of the old school; just the man for these degene rate times."1 Mr. Benton, whom we have already cited, in his "Thirty Years' View," de votes a pleasing chapter of his genial work to the retirement of Mr. King from the Senate, in which he brings before us the mind and habit of the man. "Like Mr. Macon, and John Taylor, of Carolina," he says, "Mr. King had his individuality of character, manners, and dress, but of different type; they, of plain, country gentlemen; and he, a high model of courtly refinement. He always appeared in the Senate in full dress; short small clothes, silk stockings, and shoes, and was habitally ob servant of all the courtesies of life. His colleague in the Senate, during the chief time that I saw him there, was Mr. Van Buren: and it was singular to see a great State represented in the Senate at the same time by the chiefs of opposite political parties; Mr. Van Buren was much the younger, and it was delightful to behold the deferential regard which he paid to his elder colleague, always returned with marked kindness and respect." 'Garland's Life of Randolph, II. 192. JOHN MARSHALL. THE life of Marshall presents a pic- | a man of vigorous sense and cultivated ture of thought and action; of quiet mind. The reading of a country gen domestic virtue, and of public honor; tleman, at that time and place, judged of the arts of war, and of peace; of by the standard of our own day, would the two great eras of America, the probably not be considered very extenRevolution and the Constitution; upon sive or profound. We have enlarged which the mind may long feed with and refined these matters till the liteprofit and pleasure. We shall find rature of the last century, the books of him in many relations to the State and our forefathers, are thrown quite into the public, but always the same sim- the shade. It may be questioned, how ple, truthful man. ever, whether we have gained much in The family of Marshall occupied but the education of youth by heaping a a humble position among the large score of sciences and languages upon landowners of Virginia; nor were they the infant mind; substituting German among the earliest settlers of the coun- speculation and a Germanized style for try. His grandfather, a native of the simpler forms of the old reading, Wales, came to Westmoreland County, which could be readily understood and about 1730, and married there Eliza- safely imitated. We are ourselves beth Markham, a native of England. old-fashioned enough to prefer seeing His eldest son, Thomas, inherited the Oliver Goldsmith in a boy's hand to Westmoreland farm, of no great value; Thomas Carlyle, and even much beand on coming of age removed west-rated Alexander Pope to Alfred Tenward, to Fauquier County. There, nyson; and this without any disparagemarried to Mary Keith, a relative of ment of these contemporary worthies. the wide-spread family of the Ran- We have been led to this remark by dolphs, he established himself on a small finding the first book of the great farm at Germantown. At this place judicial mind of Marshall to be Pope's John Marshall was born, September "Essay on Man," which, with some of 24, 1755. He was the eldest of fifteen his "Moral Essays," the boy, at the children, all of whom, we are told, age of twelve, transcribed under his possessed remarkable intellectual abi- father's direction. It became the seed lity. They doubtless owed much of it of no unimportant poetical cultivation, to the superior character of the father, for Marshall, it appears, little as his public labors would seem to bear wit- sent to Westmoreland, to the care and ness of the fact, was something of a instruction of a clergyman named votary of the Muses. Such vigorous Campbell, when he became a fellow forest growths, indeed, huge evergreens pupil with James Monroe, the future Preof a hardy clime, display no gay blossoms sident. On his return home, he found, on their branches, nor sport with the according to a custom not unusual in flowers at their feet; but, deep down that period among intelligent settlers, in the soil, there will be found some his father entertaining a newly arrived permanent spring of Helicon to water parish clergyman in his home. This their roots. The late Judge Story, who was fonder of verse than Marshall, in an article written on the Chief Justice while he was yet alive, speaks with affection of the poetical pursuits of his great exemplar. "The love of poetry," he says, "thus awakened in the boy's warm and vigorous mind, never ceased to exert a commanding influence over it. He became enamored of the classical writers of the old school, and was instructed by their solid sense, and their beautiful imagery. In the enthusiasm of youth, he often indulged himself in poetical compositions; and freely gave up those hours of leisure to those delicious dreamings of the muse, which (say what we may) constitute some of the purest sources of pleasure in the gay scenes of life, and some of the sweetest consolations in adversity and affliction, throughout every subsequent period of it." gentleman, named Thompson, became the youth's instructor. It will be remembered that James Madison derived similar advantages under like circumstances from the Rev. Mr. Martin. Indeed, the clergyman, in the colonial time, more than any other man, may be said to have educated the mind as well as looked after the morals of the country. In these two years of clerical instruction in Westmoreland and at home, Marshall acquired some slight knowledge of the Latin language. It was, however, sufficient to form a basis for his vigorous mind to work upon, and he did not, in after life, neglect the opportunity. The clarion call of Lexington now echoed even to the distant recesses of the Blue Ridge, seconded in the human breast by the voice of spring. The young Marshall went forth at the first summons to assemble the militia-men of We may attach some importance, the region. There was already some also, in Marshall's education, to the mountain scenery of his youth, his father having removed, in his boyhood, from Germantown to a still more westerly position at Oak Hill, on the declivity of the Blue Ridge. Schools, of course, there were none in such a situation. The youth, indoctrinated, as we have seen, in Pope and Dryden, was organization of the kind which his father had formerly commanded. The son, with the title of lieutenant, found himself at the head of the muster. He related to the rude frontier cultivators the story of Lexington, and taught them a few simple military movements. He then, we are told, joining familiarly with his companions, played that well |