r a student,
the contests of able men with each other in the practical game of life
are the best. In such a school Tazewell applied himself closely; and in
truth he had rare advantages. In a physical view he is said by one who
knew him at this period of his life, to have been the most elegant and
brilliant young man of his age. His tall stature, which reached six
feet, his light and graceful figure, his blue, wide, intellectual eye,
his features noble and prominent, though not yet developed to the
sterner mould of latter years, those auburn ringlets, which curled about
his head in childhood, which he shook at midnoon in the stress of some
high argument, and which, turned to a silver hue, flowed down his marble
neck in his shroud,--and a winning address, which, though slightly and
insensibly tinged with hauteur on a first acquaintance, grew urgent and
cordial, fascinated every beholder; while his intellectual faculties,
which even thus early his habitual study of the severer sciences had
sharpened, and which impelled him to venture fearlessly even with
experts on vexed questions in law and morals, and his truly generous
nature, made him the delight of the social circle, and endeared him to
all. Then, as at a later day, he was not averse from manly sports, was
fond of the gun, and was a fearless horseman. One of his youthful feats
was to ride his horse to the second story of the Raleigh Tavern; and
when his income from the Norfolk bar reached thousands, and his dicta
were deemed the infallible utterances of Themis, he has been known in a
country frolic to leap from a horse's back into a carriage in full
motion; and at a later day, when the country sprang to arms to avenge
the insult upon the Chesapeake, and he might have taken what civil or
military post he pleased, he chose the command of a troop of cavalry. He
understood at this early day, however, the art of sacrificing pleasure
at the shrine of duty; and he preserved his youth pure from those
flattering vices which please for the present, but which bring disgrace,
disease, and death in their train.

His position gave him decided advantages of observation and improvement.
His father, who was a prominent politician, and long a judge of the
General Court, was now a judge of the Court of Appeals, and was soon
elected to the Senate of the United States. In his society he saw
Pendleton, Carrington, Roane, Fleming, and Lyons, who composed the Court
of Appeals at that day, an