For several years past, Judge Marshall had suffered under a most excruciating malady. A surgical operation by Dr. Physick of Philadelphia, at length procured him relief; but a hurt received in travelling, last spring, seems to have caused a return of the former complaint, with circumstances of aggravated pain and danger. Having revisited Philadelphia, in the hope of again finding a cure, his disease there overpowered him; and he died, on the 6th of July, 1835, in the 80th year of his age, surrounded by three of his children. His eldest son, Thomas, journeying to attend his death bed, had been killed by the fall of a chimney in Baltimore, but eight days before.
The love of simplicity and the dislike of ostentation, which had marked Chief Justice Marshall's life, displayed itself also in his last days. Apprehensive that his remains might be encumbered with the vain pomp of a costly monument and a laudatory epitaph, he, only two days before his death, directed the common grave of himself and his consort, to be indicated by a plain stone, with this simple and modest inscription:
"John Marshall, son of Thomas and Mary Marshall, was born on the 24th of September, 1755, intermarried with Mary Willis Ambler the 3d of January, 1783, departed this life the —— day of —— 18—."
All the just renown with which his great name might have been emblazoned, simplified into the three circumstances, of birth, marriage, and death, which would equally suit the grave-stone of the humblest villager!
We cannot better conclude this article than by copying two delineations of its subject, sketched by hands which, years before him, were mouldering in the grave: sketched, it seems to us, with so much elegance and truth, that any extended account of Judge Marshall could hardly be deemed complete without them. The first was drawn thirty years ago: the other, less than twenty.
"The ..... ....... of the United States," says Mr. Wirt, in The British Spy, "is, in his person, tall, meager, emaciated: his muscles relaxed, and his joints so loosely connected, as not only to disqualify him, apparently, for any vigorous exertion of body, but to destroy every thing like harmony in his air and movements. Indeed, in his whole appearance, and demeanor; dress, attitudes, gesture; sitting, standing, or walking; he is as far removed from the idolized graces of Lord Chesterfield, as any other gentleman on earth. His head and face are small in proportion to his height: his complexion swarthy; the muscles of his face, being relaxed, make him appear to be fifty years of age, nor can he be much younger: his countenance has a faithful expression of great good humor and hilarity; while his black eyes—that unerring index—possess an irradiating spirit, which proclaims the imperial powers of the mind that sits enthroned within.
"This extraordinary man, without the aid of fancy, without the advantages of person, voice, attitude, gesture, or any of the ornaments of an orator, deserves to be considered as one of the most eloquent men in the world; if eloquence may be said to consist in the power of seizing the attention with irresistible force, and never permitting it to elude the grasp, until the hearer has received the conviction which the speaker intends.
"His voice is dry and hard; his attitude, in his most effective orations, was often extremely awkward; while all his gesture proceeded from his right arm, and consisted merely in a perpendicular swing of it, from about the elevation of his head, to the bar, behind which he was accustomed to stand.
"As to fancy, if she hold a seat in his mind at all, his gigantic genius tramples with disdain, on all her flower-decked plats and blooming parterres. How then, you will ask, how is it possible, that such a man can hold the attention of an audience enchained, through a speech of even ordinary length? I will tell you.
"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: though ten times more knotty than 'the gnarled oak,' the lightning of heaven is not more rapid or more resistless, than his astonishing penetration. Nor does the exercise of it seem to cost him an effort. On the contrary, it is as easy as vision. I am persuaded, that his eyes do not fly over a landscape and take in its various objects with more promptitude and facility, than his mind embraces and analyzes the most complex subject.