William Marshal

“ Thus the theory that animals recapitulate in their own development the ancestry of the race will never be forgotten by those who heard it compressed into the pregnant phrase, ‘They climb up their genealogical tree.’
Perhaps Marshall's greatest distinction was his capacity for organisation. As secretary, and subsequently as chairman, of the board of studies, Marshall rendered most valuable services in the founding and administration of the Victoria University. The correlation of the different sciences in the Faculty of Science is largely due to his labours. ”

“ Returning to England in 1779 with a pension, he wrote his History of Sumatra, published in 1783. Marsden was appointed in 1795 second secretary and afterwards first secretary to the admiralty. In 1807 he retired and published in 1812 his Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language, and in 1818 his translation of the Travels of Marco Polo. He was a member of many learned societies, and treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society. ”

“ The elder Marshall died in the year 1219, and was succeeded by his eldest son, also called William, who then became possessed of one of the most extensive heritages in England, for the English and Welsh lands of the Clares, Earls of Pembroke, and in addition their great Irish inheritance in Leinster, had come into the possession of the Marshall family.
What we know of the son shows him to have been a man of much the same type as his father—probably not so rugged, but with the same steadfast ideals of loyal conduct. ”

“ He was also secretary of the extension movement initiated by the university, and gained for it the success which invariably attended any organising work that he undertook.
Marshall was a man of great and tireless energy, and his attractive personality rendered him very popular with his friends, colleagues, and students. He was an excellent gymnast, and kept himself in training by constant practice. His chief recreation was mountain climbing. ”

“ William Marsden received a classical education in schools at Dublin, and was preparing to enter Trinity College there, with a view to the church, when, at the suggestion of his eldest brother, John Marsden, a writer in the East India Company's service at Fort Marlborough (Bencoolen) in Sumatra, he obtained an appointment from the company. He left Gravesend on 27 Dec. 1770, and reached Bencoolen on 30 May 1771. During an eight years' residence in Sumatra, Marsden did good official service as sub-secretary, and afterwards as principal secretary, to the government. ”

“ Miss Herschel said; "we are over-full as it is. The days lost in the removal threw us back, but," she said, drawing a book with a marble-paper cover from her capacious pocket, "I will run my eye over the lists, and try to arrange it, William."
But Mr. Herschel had left the room; he returned in a few minutes to say:
"Lina, the men will be here as soon as it is light to-morrow about the furnace; and, Lina, I shall be glad to have the micrometer lamp and the fire in my room."
"Yes, William;" and the question of singing-lessons for Griselda Mainwaring, or anyone else, was for the time forgotten. ”

“ And she made for departure, but Marsworth got to the door first, and put his back against it.
'Find me the Turner, Cicely.'
'A man who asks for a thing on false pretences shouldn't have it.'
A silence. Then a meek voice said—
'Captain Marsworth, my brother, Sir William Farrell, will be requiring my services at tea!'
Marsworth moved aside and she forward. But as she neared him, he caught her passionately in his arms and kissed her. She released herself, crimson. ”

“ Twenty-four years afterwards William Wirt, then at the summit of his brilliant career, advising Francis Gilmer upon the art of oratory, recalled Marshall's argument in the British Debts case as an example for Gilmer to follow. Wirt thus contrasts Marshall's method with that of Campbell on the same occasion:—
"Campbell played off all his Apollonian airs; but they were lost. Marshall spoke, as he always does, to the judgment merely and for the simple purpose of convincing. Marshall was justly pronounced one of the greatest men of the country ”

“ I fought him three times as we were crossing. I licked each time. He must be younger."
"And the young gentleman whose name you don't happen to remember?"
"He's older. He bangs me easy. Just picks me up and knocks me down. I reckon John G. William will find him pretty tough."
While Mr. Harland had been talking to John P. Arthur he had been paying no attention to his letters. When he turned to them he found that among them there were two which threw some light upon the proceedings of the missing Masters Bindon. Here is the first:
"The Barracks, Liverpool. ”

“ This historic institution of learning turned out some of the ablest and best-educated men of the whole country. Wythe, Bland, Peyton and Edmund Randolph, Taylor of Caroline, Nicholas, Pendleton, Madison, and Jefferson are a few of the William and Mary's remarkable products. Every one of the most distinguished families of Virginia is found among her alumni. (See Catalogue of Alumni, History of William and Mary College, 73-147. An error in this list puts John Marshall in the class of 1775 instead of that of 1780; also, he did not graduate.) ”

“ And notable men were there for him to observe; vast forces moving for him to study. Thomas Jefferson had again become a member of the House after his vindication from threatened impeachment. Patrick Henry was a member, too, and William Cabell, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, and other men whose names have become historic. During Marshall's later years in the Legislature, James Madison, George Mason, William Grayson, Edmund Randolph, George Nicholas, and others of like stature became Marshall's colleagues. ”

“ Marshall's thoughts; little connection between Mr. Randolph's. Each has his separate excellence, but either is far from being a finished orator." [507]
Another invaluable first-hand analysis of Marshall's style and manner of argument is that of William Wirt, himself, in the vivacious descriptions of "The British Spy":—
"He possesses one original, and, almost supernatural faculty, the faculty of developing a subject by a single glance of his mind, and detecting at once, the very point on which every controversy depends. No matter what the question ”

“ See infra, chap. II. When Leeds Parish was organized, we find Thomas Marshall its leading vestryman. He was always a stanch churchman.
[64] Jones, 35; Burnaby,58. But see Maxwell in William and Mary College Quarterly, xix, 73-103; and see Bruce: Econ., i, 425, 427, 585, 587.
[65] "Though tobacco exhausts the land to a prodigious degree, the proprietors take no pains to restore its vigor; they take what the soil will give and abandon it when it gives no longer. They like better to clear new lands than to regenerate the old." (De Warville, 439; and see Fithian, 140.) ”

“ Mr. Herschel, after taking slight refreshment, went to his new observatory at the top of the house, and began to arrange all his instruments and draw a plan for the furnace, which he intended to make in the workshop below, where the tube for the great reflector was to be cast.
A stand, too, for the large instrument would have to be carefully constructed, and William Herschel was in the midst of his calculations for this, and preparation of a plan to give the workmen early on the ensuing week, when a tap at the door announced Caroline. ”

“ Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. ”

“ It is time to be old,
To take in sail. (Emerson.)
The last years of Marshall's life were clouded with sadness, almost despair. His health failed; his wife died; the Supreme Court was successfully defied; his greatest opinion was repudiated and denounced by a strong and popular President; his associates on the Bench were departing from some of his most cherished views; and the trend of public events convinced him that his labor to construct an enduring nation, to create institutions of orderly freedom, to introduce stability and system into democracy, had been in vain. ”

“ With this experience of what war meant, John Marshall could have returned to the safety of Oak Hill and have spent, at that pleasant fireside, the red years that were to follow, as indeed so many in the colonies who then and after merely prated of liberty, actually did. But it was not in the Marshall nature to support a cause with lip service only. Father and son chose the sterner part; and John Marshall was now about to be schooled for four years by grim instructors in the knowledge that strong and orderly government is necessary to effective liberty. ”

“ At last Marshall had grave intimations that his life could not be prolonged. Quite suddenly his health declined, although his mind was as strong and clear as ever. "Chief Justice Marshall still possesses his intellectual powers in very high vigor," writes Story during the last session of the Supreme Court over which his friend and leader presided. "But his physical strength is manifestly on the decline; and it is now obvious, that after a year or two, he will resign, from the pressing infirmities of age.... What a gloom will spread over the nation when he is gone! ”

“ So, with the letter of the factor, on which he could draw supplies at the southern posts, Jean Marcel shook the hands of his friends and, sliding his canoe into the ebb tide, started south as the dying sun gilded the flat bay to the west. He waved his hand in farewell to the group of company men on the shore. He saw above them the figures of Julie Breton and the priest. As Julie held aloft something white, she and her brother were joined by a man. It was Inspector Wallace. ”

“ White's pleasure at Marsham's approval is unmistakable. 'O that I had known you forty years ago!' is one of White's exclamations to Marsham, the significance of which may be seen when read in connection with that passage in his earliest letter to Pennant (10 Aug. 1767) , wherein he wrote: 'It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge.'
During White's last years there his sister-in-law, widow of his brother John, continued to keep house for him at Selborne. ”

“ When Washington was preparing the final stroke, darkness fell. The exhausted Americans, their clothing drenched with sweat, slept on their arms upon the field of battle, their General-in-Chief himself lying on the ground among the living, the wounded, and the dead. Somewhere on that hard-fought ground, Captain-Lieutenant John Marshall stretched himself by his comrades. Washington was determined to press the attack at break of day. But at midnight the British stole away so silently that the Americans did not hear a sound from their retreat. ”

“ This is not to be wondered at, for, writing twenty years afterward, when Marshall as Chief Justice was at the height of his career, his sister-in-law testifies that his "total negligence of person ... often produced a blush on her [Marshall's wife's] cheek." [530] But he finally secured lodgings, was inoculated, and, made secure from the attacks of the dreaded scourge, back he fared to Virginia and Mary Ambler.
And Marshall made love as he made war, with all his might. A very hurricane of a lover he must have been ”

“ Not more was John Marshall the chief of the accomplished and able men who sat with him on the Supreme Bench at Washington than, even in his advancing years, he was the leader of the convivial spirits who gathered to pitch quoits, drink julep and punch, tell stories, sing songs, make speeches, and play pranks under the trees of Richmond. ”

“ For the one and only time in his career on the Supreme Bench, Marshall had pronounced a "popular" opinion. The press acclaimed him as the deliverer of the Nation from thralldom to monopoly. His opinion, records the New York Evening Post, delivered amidst "the most unbroken silence" of a "courtroom ... crowded with people," was a wonderful exhibition of intellect—"one of the most powerful efforts of the human mind that has ever been displayed from the bench of any court. ”

“ He appears to us as a gigantic figure looming, indistinctly, out of the mists of the past, impressive yet lacking vitality, and seemingly without any of those qualities that make historic personages intelligible to a living world of living men. Yet no man in our history was more intensely human than John Marshall and few had careers so full of movement and color. ”

“ There were external difficulties in dealing with such a subject apart from those inherent in a great biography, and Marshall’s volumes proved to be a general disappointment. Still hard pressed for funds wherewith to meet his Fairfax investment, he undertook this work shortly after he became Chief Justice, at the urgent solicitation of Judge Bushrod Washington, the literary executor of his famous uncle. Marshall had hoped to make this incursion into the field of letters a very remunerative one, for he and Washington had counted on some thirty thousand subscribers for the work. ”

“ By this, Marsham had collected his forces, and as he turned to the lamplight, Sir James saw a countenance that reassured him.
"I have no hope of persuading her. It will have to be faced."
"No, I fear there is no hope. She sees all such things in a false light. Forgive me--we must both speak plainly. She will shudder at the bare idea of Juliet Sparling's daughter as your wife; she will think it means a serious injury to your career--in reality it does nothing of the sort--and she will regard it as her duty to assert herself."
"You and Ferrier must do all you can for me," said Marsham, slowly. ”