Lamar, and his brother Mirabeau B. Lamar, Eugenius Nesbit, Walter T. Colquitt, and Eli S. Shorter?  How varied in temperament, in character, in talent; and yet how like in the great leading features of the soul!  Love for their country, love for their kind, love for the good was common to them all; unselfish beyond what was necessary to the wants of their families, generous in the outpourings of the soul, philanthropic, and full of charity.  They hoarded no wealth, nor sought it as a means of power or promotion.  Intent upon the general good, and content with an approving conscience and the general approbation, their lives were correct, and their services useful; and they live in the memory of a grateful people as public benefactors.

There are others who rise to memory, who were at school with these, who were men with these, but they shall be nameless, who struggled, and successfully, to fill their coffers to repletion, and for nothing else; who have been courted by the mercenary, and flattered by the fawning sycophant; who, with their hoardings, have passed away, and no grateful memory remains of their lives; their hoards are dissipated, and they are only remembered to be despised.  And yet others, who swam in the creek and sported on the play-ground with all of these, whose vicious propensities were apparent then—­whose after lives were as their boyhood promised, a curse to society in evil deeds and evil example—­have gone, too, unwept, unhonored, and luckily unhung.

Mirabeau B. Lamar was the son of John Lamar, of Putnam County, Georgia, and received his education principally at Milledgeville and at Putnam.  From his earliest boyhood, he was remarkable for his genius and great moral purity.  His ardent, poetical temperament was accompanied with exquisite modesty, and a gentle playfulness of disposition; with an open, unaffected kindness of heart, which as a boy rendered him popular with his fellows at school, and beloved by his teachers.  There was in him a natural chivalry of character, which characterized him above all of his early compeers, and made him a model in conduct.  Truthful and manly, retiring and diffident, until occasion called out the latent spirit of his nature; then the true greatness of his soul would burst forth in an impetuous eloquence, startlingly fierce and overwhelming.  Nor was this excitement always wasted in words—­not a few, when yet a boy, have regretted the awakening of his wrath.  It was upon occasions like this, that his eye assumed an expression which I have never seen in the eye of any other human being.  His eyes were beautifully blue, large, and round, and were always changing and varying in their expression, as the mind would suggest thought after thought; and so remarkable were these variations, that, watching him in repose, one who knew him well could almost read the ideas gathering and passing through his mind.  There was a pleasant vein of satire in his nature, sometimes expressed, but always in words and in a manner which plucked away its sting: