illustrated with a skill in
mathematics, with a beauty of argumentation, and with a minuteness of
historical research wholly unexpected, and altogether admirable; and so
with some other topics. But he acted well in not undertaking the history
of Virginia. To write that history worthily would require a residence of
some years abroad. Of the materials necessary for such a work not a
twentieth part exists in Virginia, or in the United States. Such a work,
and Mr. Tazewell well knew its scope, could not be performed by him in
that retirement to enjoy which he had relinquished wealth and fame.
There is another view of a more personal kind. Whether history is of
higher dignity than speech, whether a Thucydides or a Demosthenes be the
greater intellect, the critics may decide; but one thing is certain,
that the faculties and accomplishments required for writing history and
for oral disputations are not only not the same, but have rarely been
united in a supreme degree in any human being, and certainly not in the
literature of the Anglo-Saxon race. To pass over other languages and
nations, let us look at our own. One of the greatest minds of this age,
and, so far as logical capacity is concerned, perhaps of any age, was
that of Chief Justice Marshall; and yet, from the date of the
publication of his Life of Washington, which is a history of the
colonies and of the United States, until it was rewritten and revised by
him late in life, it hung like a millstone from his neck; and it has
required all his subsequent legal fame, his exalted patriotism, and his
domestic purity, to keep him above water in this country. As for
England, the work sunk instantly and irrecoverably.

The writing of history, difficult at all times, is more difficult now.
Recent history trenches alike upon the epic and the dramatic, and the
narrator must be half a poet and half a player. It is, therefore, a
subject of gratulation that Mr. Tazewell did not undertake a work which,
if done at home, would have been badly done, and which, if done at all,
must have called into exercise a peculiar class of talents which neither
the bar nor the senate tends to develop, but which in their highest
efforts alone can ensure success. I rejoice that the fame of Tazewell is
free from such questionable topics. There he stands, great as a citizen
of a free commonwealth, great at the bar, great in the senate, and
great in his rich, various, and overflowing talk.

Tazewell spen