has been irrevocably lost. Barre's compilation was prepared while Marshall was living and it was probably submitted to his revision.

It is simple truth to say that Marshall's capacity-the intellectual characteristics in which he was unquestionably superior-were not generally appreciated by his contemporaries; nor, perhaps, can full justice ever be done him because of the loss of so much on which a fair judgment might be based. He was given credit by comparatively few for that in which he really excelled. He was more esteemed by a crowd of admirers as a brilliant declaimer, readily uttering sparkling sentences and pungent, caustic witticisms, than for the far rarer and higher mental qualities which he possessed.

He is remembered more particularly as an attractive orator; he is entitled to be held in higher estimate, not only as a writer of eloquent English, but as a reasoner always sound and cogent, and frequently irrefutable. When speaking he was sometimes induced, by the desire of applause or fervor of the moment, to appeal to passion or prejudice, and his keen humor too often degenerated into buffoonery. But in no instance can he be justly charged with these faults when he wrote; and, however inconsistent his political conduct may have seemed, his writings evince perfect consistency in his opinions, and profound conviction. The compositions on which he bestowed most care will impress every reader, I think, with a sense of his genuine, constant perception and broad comprehension of principles -of what Carlyle calls the "verities"-and of his philosophic grasp and treatment of the topics considered.

In his later years, when his judgment had become marred and his taste vitiated by intemperance, Marshall's style grew turgid and at times sank almost into bathos. In his prime, however, and even after the partial decay of his powers, he was, when aroused by some special occasion or incentive, nearly unrivaled either as a popular speaker or before more select assemblages.

His unusually wide range of reading, especially of English and ancient literature, and an extensive acquaintance with history-for his devotion to historical study was incessant-aided by a singularly retentive memory, furnished him with an inexhaustible fund of illustration, and he utilized it to the utmost. He had all the physical requisites of the orator; a handsome and expressive face; a tall, erect and extremely graceful figure; a striking and histrionic manner and gesture; and his elocutionary skill and resonant, melodious voice rendered his lofty and stirring declamation peculiarly effective.

Basil W. Duke

LIFE AND CHARACTER OF RICHARD H. MENEFEE

Extracts from an Address delivered before the Law Society of the Transylvania University, April 12, 1841.

GENTLEMEN OF THE LAW SOCIETY:-I am not here to recount in set phrase, and with that courtesy which the living always pay to the dead, the virtues, real or supposed, of one around whose fate, youth, and interesting private relations alone have cast a transient interest. I come not merely to acquit me of a duty to one whom I personally loved and admired, to weave a fading garland for his tomb, or scatter affection's incense over his ashes. Mine is a severer task, a more important duty. I stand here, gentlemen, as a member of a great commonwealth, amid the assembled thousands of her citizens, to mourn with them the blow, sudden and overwhelming, which has fallen upon the country. He about whose young brows there clustered most of honor-he, around whose name and character there gathered most of public hope—the flower of our Kentucky youth, "the rose and expectancy of the fair state," lies uprooted. He, who by the unaided strength of his own great mind, had spurned from his path each obstacle that impeded and rolled back the clouds which darkened his morning march-who in his fresh youth had reached an eminence of fame and of influence, which, to a soul less ardent, might have seemed the topmost pinnacle, but which to him, was only a momentary resting place, whence, with an undazzled eye and elastic limb, he was preparing to spring still upward and nearer to the sun of glory which glowed above him; while the admiring crowd below were watching, with intensest interest, each movement of his towering step, each wave of his eagle wing.

Why sudden drops his crest?

The shaft is sped, the arrow's in his breast.

Death canonizes a great name and the seal of the sepulchre excludes from its slumbering tenant the breath of envy. I might fling the reins of fancy and indulge in the utmost latitude of panegyric without offense; the praises of the dead threat not the living. But I am not here upon an ordinary oc

casion to pronounce a pompous eulogy in set terms of general praise. You have directed me to draw the life and character, to delineate the very form and figure of the mind of one, whose moral likenesses you wish to inscribe in enduring and faithful colors upon your archives, not only as a memorial of one loved and lost, but as an example and model for the study and imitation of yourselves and successors. It is not a sample of rhetoric but a perpetuation of his image that you seek, as the monument best suited to the subject, as a real and historic standard by which the youth of after times may measure and elevate the idea and the stature of excellence. And surely, if ever there were mirror in which young genius could glass and fashion itself; if ever there were mold in which the forming intellect could be cast in just and full proportions of graceful energy and perfect strength, he, of whom we are to speak this day was that mirror and that mold. Would that the artist were equal to his work, would that his mind were fully up to the dignity of his subject; then indeed would I gladly obey your high command, and give to posterity embodied in my land's language, the very form and lineament, the breathing attitude, the intrepid port, the beaming hope, the dauntless energy of a genius which poverty and disease could not impair and which death itself destroyed, rather than subdued. Ah! had he but lived! on that broad pedestal laid already, he would himself have raised a statue colossal and historic, an individual likeness, but a national monument, than which never did the Grecian chisel from out the sleeping marble awake a form of grander proportions or of more enduring beauty. He meditated such a work, and was fast gathering around him eternal materials. Type of his country, he sought to mingle himself with her existence and her fame, and to transmit his name to remote generations as an epitome of her early genius and her history, and as the most signal example of the power of her institutions, not only for the production, but for the most perfect development of the greatest talents and the most exalted virtue.

In the Fall of 1831 he was enabled to attend the law lectures, when he became a distinguished member of your society. In the Spring of 1832 he received the appointment of commonwealth's attorney, and in August before he had

attained his twenty-third year, he was married to the eldest daughter of the late Matthew Jouitt. It is not among the least interesting circumstances which concentrate in the union of these two orphans, that the dowerless daughter of Kentucky's most gifted artist should have found a tutor in her childhood every way adequate to form her taste and fashion her understanding, and that in the dawning graces of her first womanhood, reflecting back upon its source the light she had borrowed, should have drawn and fastened to her side as friend and protector through life, that same boy preceptor from whose precocious mind her own hand had drawn its nutriment and its strength. JOUITT AND MENEFEE! What an union of names, what a nucleus for the public hopes and sympathies to grow and cluster round, to cling and cleave to. And they are united in the person of a boy, a glorious, beauteous boy-upon whose young brow and every feature is stamped the seal of his inheritance. I have seen this scion of a double stock, through whose young veins is poured in blending currents the double tide of genius and of art. Bless thee, Jouitt Menefee, and may heaven which has imparted the broad brow of the statesman orator along with the painter's ambrosial head and glowing eye, may heaven shield and preserve thee, boy, from the misfortunes of thy house!

Regarding him, as I have already said, with the deepest interest, and under circumstances very favorable for observation, I describe him as he impressed himself upon me. The great characteristic of his mind was strength, his predominant faculty was reason, the aim of his eloquence was to convince. With an imagination rich, but severe and chaste, of an elocution clear, nervous and perfectly ready, he employed the one as the minister and the other as the vehicle of demonstration. He dealt not in gaudy ornament or florid exhibition; no gilded shower of metaphors drowned the sense of his discourse. He was capable of fervid invective, vehement declamation, and scathing sarcasm; but strength, strength was the pervading quality; and there was an argument even in his denunciation. "No giant form set forth his common hight"; no stentor voice proclaimed a bully in debate; yet did he possess the power of impression, deep, lasting impression, of interesting you in not only what he said, but in himself, of stamping

upon the memory his own image, in the most eminent degree, and in the most extraordinary manner, of any man of his age whom it has been my fortune to encounter. "Bonum virum facile crederes, magnum libenter."

Although removed the farthest possible from the affectation of mystery, or any asserted and offensive pretension to superiority over other men, and although his manner was exempt entirely from the charge of haughtiness, still, as he appeared at that time, he loved not familiarity and courted no intimacy. He was bland, courteous, and perfectly respectful in his intercourse; still, there was a distance and undefinable sort of reserve, unmixed with pride, but full of dignity, keeping frivolity aloof, and attracting at once your curiosity and your interest. Upon his forehead which was broad, and full and very commanding, were traced the indisputable lines of intellect and genius. His pale and delicate brow was stamped with the gravity and care of premature manhood. About his lip and mouth were the slight, but living and indelible traits of a resolved and ambitious spirit. The whole countenance was that of a man who had suffered and struggled, but who had conquered the past and was prepared to grapple fearlessly with the future. But the master expression, the natural language which breathed from his face, form, step, gesture, and even the almost feminine tone of his voice, which contrasted so strangely with the delicacy of the whole, was energy, unfainting, indomitable, though curbed and regulated energy; which could sustain him through all danger and under all fortune, and which would and must bear him on to the utmost mark at which his ambition might aim, and to which his talents were at all adequate. There was nothing restless or impatient about him. His was deliberate, concentrated, disciplined energy. He had that managed calmness of general manner, which so often betokens a fiery and excitable temperament, but under the most perfect control. Never man was more entirely master of himself than Mr. Menefee.

His conversation corresponded with and deepened the impression made by his public speeches, and a close examination of his whole appearance. He had all the quickness and penetration of a man of true genius, but without a spark of wildness or eccentricity. There was no dreamy idealism, no shad