could confer upon him, seemed to be within his reach. How he fulfilled
the expectations of his party, will presently appear.

When asked in his latter years by a friend who knew his aversion to the
ordinary routine of legislative life, and his devotion to the business
of his clients, what induced him to enter the House of Delegates so
young, and continue in it so long, he said: "_My father made me_:" a
saying characteristic of Mr. Tazewell, who never put any value upon his
own services, and must be taken with many grains of allowance; for,
although it could not be otherwise than grateful to the feelings of a
father who was a senator of the United States, and in many ways
agreeable at that perilous epoch to have such a representative in the
Assembly, yet we must count much on that love of distinction which glows
so warmly in the finest minds, and which Tazewell certainly felt at
times, and continued to feel as long as he lived; and his father knew,
from his own experience and success at the bar, that a year or two in
the popular branch of the Assembly is no mean preparation for active
business, and especially for the pursuits of the forum. It was in the
same spirit, when, visited by the greatest living statesman of New
England, that sterling patriot, and that peerless orator of his whole
country, Edward Everett, who, seeing the faculties of Mr. Tazewell still
vigorous in his 85th year, expressed to him his regret that he had
retired from public life so early, he replied: "_I'm only sorry that I
ever entered it at all_;" when all who knew Mr. Tazewell intimately can
avouch that, even at that moment of his 85th year, if the State of
Virginia had called upon him to defend her right or honor in any
transaction which may have occurred from the settlement of Jamestown to
the late Ohio boundary discussion, he would have had every mouldering
record from the office of the General Court, and every book bearing upon
the subject, clustering in heaps around him in less than sixty hours