he reserved his strong points for the higher tribunal.

Those who heard even his latest speeches at the bar have almost all
passed away. It was thirty-four years ago that I heard him for the first
time in public. At a meeting of the citizens of Norfolk, held in the
Town Hall, to give expression to their feelings on the occasion of the
death of Jefferson, which occurred on the Fourth of July, 1826, he was
called to the chair, and, before taking it, addressed the large assembly
for twenty-five or thirty minutes, on the character of the great man
whose death they had met to commemorate. He was at that time a senator
of the United States, and in the height of his fame; and to hear him
speak was then a great novelty, which attracted hundreds to the hall.
Though then a youth of nineteen, I can recall his manner and the outline
of his speech. He seemed to speak as a man of fine personal appearance
accustomed to public speaking and of a good address, who was deeply
impressed by the solemnity of his theme, might be expected to speak. His
voice was a volume of sweet, full, natural sound, unmarked by any
artistic training or modulation, and such as would flow from a well-bred
man in animated recitation; and his gestures were those which rose
spontaneously and unconsciously with the thought, and were wholly
unstudied; thus presenting an obvious contrast to the manner and action
of his friend Randolph, whose every attitude, the slightest motion of
whose finger, the faintest intonation of whose voice, whose every smile
and frown, natural as they seemed, were the deliberate reflection of the
closet.

Three years later, in the Virginia Convention of 1829, I heard all that
he uttered in committee and in the body; and his manner was such as I
have just described it to be. Although he had full command of the whole
armory of parliamentary warfare, he had none of that violent
gesticulation or loud intonation which fashion or taste has lately
introduced among us, but which would not be tolerated a moment in the
British House of Commons. His first speech, which was in support of his
own resolution proposing a method of procedure in the discussion of the
Constitution, though fine and effective, was delivered under somewhat
unfavorable circumstances. He stood some distance from the Chair and on
a line with it, so that he was compelled to face the audience instead of
the Speaker, and to pitch his voice to a key that could be heard
throughout t