the two
or three last years of his practice at the bar.

The mortal career of our celebrated townsman, LITTLETON WALLER TAZEWELL,
closed on Sunday morning, at 11 o'clock. He was emphatically one of the
great men of his age, and a just memorial of his life will, no doubt, be
specially prepared in due season. Meantime, we will note, that he was
born in the city of Williamsburg, where his father, Judge Tazewell, of
the Court of Appeals, subsequently resided, on the 17th of December,
1774. After finishing his education at William and Mary College, he
commenced his study of the law, partly under the care of his
grandfather, Mr. Waller, and the late Mr. Wickham, of Richmond. He was
distinguished at once at the bar as scientifically acquainted with his
profession, the principles of which he drew, not from the labor-saving
indexes of the present day, but from the pure and almost sacred writings
of Coke and Mansfield. Such wells of truth were not sounded except by
great intellectual efforts, and it is chiefly owing to the necessity
which then existed of making such efforts, that we boast of the great
lawyers of past times.

In a short time after his appearance in the courts he was elected to the
Legislature, and was one of its members in the great session of '98,
when the resolutions prepared by Mr. Madison were introduced. The next
year he represented the Williamsburg District in Congress, being
successor to Judge Marshall in that body, and was present during the
stormy period of Mr. Jefferson's election to the Presidency over Burr.
Few statesmen have more truly appreciated the grandeur of Mr.
Jefferson's teachings than did the subject of this notice.

He declined a reelection to Congress, and came to Norfolk in 1802, then
a place of extensive foreign commerce, and soon entered upon a large and
important practice. During the same year he married a daughter of the
late Col. Nivison, and from that time to the present continued to reside
among us. With the exception of the interrupting years of the war of
1813-14, and of a short period, during which he represented this city in
the Legislature on a special occasion, he practised his profession with
the honor and success that were to have been expected from one who was,
while yet a young man, pronounced by Judge Marshall and Judge Roane to
be unsurpassed, if equalled, by any competitor of his day. It was indeed
hard to speak in measured terms of a lawyer who, though a resident o