persisted in for so many years, became fixed; and, as nature requires
regular periods of rest rather than any special time for taking it, he
suffered no material inconvenience in that respect. But his main source
of exemption from sickness was his temperance in eating. I had an
opportunity of seeing him daily at every meal for many weeks, and he ate
more sparingly than any one of those who sate at the table with him. He
generally took a glass of toddy or a glass of wine at dinner; and the
only form in which he used tobacco was in chewing. If he ever went into
excess in any thing it was in the use of tobacco; but he never appeared
to me to err above ordinary chewers even in that way, though I have
heard one of his clerks say that he could always tell the dignity of a
case by the size of the chew which Tazewell put into his mouth when he
took it up for the first time. His usual remedy for indisposition was
strict abstinence from food, which he could endure as heroically as a
Brahmin, or a disciple of Mahomet.

Many to whom the name of Mr. Tazewell is dear would be inclined to know
his opinion respecting the religion of Christ. Far be it from me to
intimate in the remotest degree that the testimony of any man, however
distinguished, can add the weight of a single feather to the abounding
evidences of the Christian faith, or grave it a line deeper on the heart
of a true believer; but it may close the lips of the ribald, it may
repress the vanity of her who, forgetting what Christianity has done for
woman, aims her feeble shafts against its humblest professor, to know
that such a man as Tazewell, whose whole life was spent in the science
of proofs and probabilities, must henceforth be ranked with Milton and
Newton--the prince of song and the prince of philosophy, and with our
own Pendleton and Wythe--those serene and undying lights of the
law--among the stedfast believers in the truth of the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments.[11]

It has been said that Tazewell had no ambition. In one sense he was the
most ambitious man of our times; but his ambition was out of the
ordinary range. To retain a seat in a deliberative assembly, and endure
the routine of daily sessions for months at a time; to take upon himself
a regular foreign mission, or even to accept the presidency itself,
would, I firmly believe, have been most grating to his feelings. Of all
but the last we may speak with certainty. But if some difficult
propositi