very large, weighing between two and three hundred, and was nearly six
feet in height. He said he had no idea of his bulk until, passing a
negro woman in the street with a basket on her head who took a side
glance at him, he heard her unconsciously exclaim: "Good gracious, what
a big white man!" He was born in 1760, in Brunswick as Brunswick then
was, was educated at William and Mary, while Wythe was professor of law,
having as his college associates John Marshall, Spencer Roane, the
amiable and patriotic Samuel Hardy, who was destined to fall too soon,
and at whose grave Virginia sat in mourning, Archibald Stuart, Bushrod
Washington, William Short, our Minister to Spain, _et alii haud
impares_: was one of the founders of the Phi Beta Kappa Society--an
institution which will make his name immortal--and began the practice of
the law in his native county. After the peace of 1783, he took up his
abode in Portsmouth, where he reached the head of the bar; and in the
great hegira from that town on the adoption of the federal 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