DEATH OF WILLIAM B. GILES, OF VIRGINIA.
He also died under the presidency of General Jackson. He was one of the eminent public men coming upon the stage of action with the establishment of the new constitution—with the change from a League to a Union; from the confederation to the unity of the States—and was one of the most conspicuous in the early annals of our Congress. He had that kind of speaking talent which is most effective in legislative bodies, and which is so different from set-speaking. He was a debater; and was considered by Mr. Randolph to be, in our House of Representatives, what Charles Fox was admitted to be in the British House of Commons: the most accomplished debater which his country had ever seen. But their acquired advantages were very different, and their schools of practice very opposite. Mr. Fox perfected himself in the House, speaking on every subject; Mr. Giles out of the House, talking to every body. Mr. Fox, a ripe scholar, addicted to literature, and imbued with all the learning of all the classics in all time; Mr. Giles neither read nor studied, but talked incessantly with able men, rather debating with them all the while: and drew from this source of information, and from the ready powers of his mind, the ample means of speaking on every subject with the fulness which the occasion required, the quickness which confounds an adversary, and the effect which a lick in time always produces. He had the kind of talent which was necessary to complete the circle of all sorts of ability which sustained the administration of Mr. Jefferson. Macon was wise, Randolph brilliant, Gallatin and Madison able in argument; but Giles was the ready champion, always ripe for the combat—always furnished with the ready change to meet every bill. He was long a member of the House; then senator, and governor; and died at an advanced age, like Patrick Henry, without doing justice to his genius in the transmission of his labors to posterity; because, like Henry, he had been deficient in education and in reading. He was the intimate friend of all the eminent men of his day, which sufficiently bespeaks him a gentleman of manners and heart, as well as a statesman of head and tongue.