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
after he had undertaken his task.

It was in 1802 that Mr. Tazewell, who had qualified as an attorney in
the Hustings Court of the Borough on the 26th day of June of the
previous year, took up his abode in Norfolk. Whoever would form an
opinion of the Norfolk of 1802 from the Norfolk of 1860, would be apt to
fall into many and capital mistakes. As you entered the harbor of that
day, many sloops, schooners, brigs, barques, and ships obstructed your
way; and you would see the wharves and the warehouses, such as they
were, in full employment. A number of small houses, which were used as
retail shops, sailor-boarding establishments, and for other purposes,
lined Broadwater, which was then not much more than half as long as it
is now, and Little Water, nearly their western length. Market square,
the houses of which were almost wholly wood, and mean and contemptible
in appearance, was the home of the wholesale and more respectable retail
dealers in dry goods and hardware. The larger grocery dealers centred
near the then head of Broadwater. The population ranged between 6,500
and 7,500, and consisted of a large infusion of French from the West
India islands, Scotch and English in considerable proportions, Irish,
and New English. There were some Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese. Our
No