ederal constitution
in 1788, he came over to Norfolk, where he had now long held the front
rank in his profession. He too had passed a noviciate in the Clerk's
office, had studied law under the guidance of Wythe, and had been very
successful. Like Nimmo, he was called the honest lawyer; and it was one
of the sly jests of our fathers that there should be two lawyers at the
same bar and in the same generation, whose claims to the title should be
generally conceded by the people. In 1802 he had reached his
forty-second year; and having acquired a competent fortune--for
moderation was the order of those times--he was soon to withdraw from
the bar, and to fill the chair of the Recorder. He is said to have been
very successful in making lawyers eloquent and entertaining while he was
on the bench. Whether he was fond of the classics, I cannot affirm; but
he certainly borrowed a trait from Homer, and nodded occasionally; and
when a tedious speaker began his harangue, having already taken a full
view of the law and facts of the case, he usually fell asleep, waking up
as the counsel finished his harangue, much refreshed at least, if not
instructed by it, and proceeded to give judgment in the case. He was
noted for his tenderness to the poor, and it is said that he had on
their account almost as much business after he withdrew from the bar as
before. He died in 1820, at the age of sixty, and was buried in St.
Paul's, within a few feet of his compatriot Mathews. When Col. Nivison,
in December, 1776, was returning to his lodgings after organizing the
Phi Beta Kappa Society, he might have seen a pretty infant of two years
in the nurse's arms, or toddling in the shade of Waller's grove; but he
could not have foreseen that the same little fellow would in the course
of time worry him with all the art of the special pleader, and finally
receive from him the hand of his eldest daughter; and that when he
should withdraw from the bar, he was to leave all his business in the
hands of that child.

But there was a young man, a member of the bar in 1802, whose elegant
person, whose winning address, whose uncommon abilities, which were
associated with industry and perseverance quite as uncommon, and whose
glowing patriotism, would have made an impression in any country and in
any age, and gained distinction in any sphere. Under such a portrait the
name of one man only can be written--that of ROBERT BARRAUD TAYLOR.
Young Taylor was eleven months