DEATH OF CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL.
He died in the middle of the second term of General Jackson's
presidency, having been chief justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States full thirty-five years, presiding all the while (to
use the inimitable language of Mr. Randolph), "with native dignity
and unpretending grace." He was supremely fitted for high judicial
station:--a solid judgment, great reasoning powers, acute and
penetrating mind: with manners and habits to suit the purity and
the paucity of the ermine:--attentive, patient, laborious: grave on
the bench, social in the intercourse of life: simple in his tastes,
and inexorably just. Seen by a stranger come into a room, and he
would be taken for a modest country gentleman, without claims to
attention, and ready to take the lowest place in company, or at
table, and to act his part without trouble to any body. Spoken to,
and closely observed, he would be seen to be a gentleman of finished
breeding, of winning and prepossessing talk, and just as much mind
as the occasion required him to show. Coming to man's estate at the
beginning of the revolution he followed the current into which so
many young men, destined to become eminent, so ardently entered;
and served in the army, and with notice and observation, under the
eyes of Washington. Elected to Congress at an early age he served
in the House of Representatives in the time of the elder Mr. Adams,
and found in one of the prominent questions of the day a subject
entirely fitted to his acute and logical turn of mind--the case of
the famous Jonathan Robbins, claiming to be an American citizen,
reclaimed by the British government as a deserter, delivered up, and
hanged at the yard-arm of an English man-of-war. Party spirit took
up the case, and it was one to inflame that spirit. Mr. Marshall
spoke in defence of the administration, and made the master speech
of the day, when there were such master speakers in Congress as
Madison, Gallatin, William B. Giles, Edward Livingston, John
Randolph. It was a judicial subject, adapted to the legal mind of
Mr. Marshall, requiring a legal pleading: and well did he plead
it. Mr. Randolph has often been heard to say that it distanced
competition--leaving all associates and opponents far behind, and
carrying the case. Seldom has one speech brought so much fame,
and high appointment to any one man. When he had delivered it
his reputation was in the zenith: in less than nine brief months
thereafter he was Secretary at War, Secretary of State, Minister
to France, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States. Politically, he classed with the federal party, and was one
of those high-minded and patriotic men of that party, who, acting on
principle, commanded the respect of those even who deemed them wrong.