complete soldiers of our citizen corps.  Leaning to the federal side in politics, he, like the gallant Taylor, knew no party when the sword was to be drawn.  At the early age of twenty-five he was made Colonel of the Ninth Regiment, was in active service during the Douglas war, as the affair that grew out of the affair with the Chesapeake was called, and, during the late war with Great Britain, commanded in the field the Second and Ninth Regiments, establishing an exactness of discipline and an esprit du corps which was a favorite topic of remark in the army.  He was the soul of honor.  His name was an authority, his word was a witness, wherever the one was known or the other uttered; and there were those who predicted for him, whether he should engage in the field or at the bar, a brilliant fame.  Between him and Tazewell, who were nearly of the same age, the most affectionate friendship existed—­a friendship which, founded on mutual esteem, and cemented by mutual kindness, has descended already to the third generation.  In 1823, at the age of forty-seven, this excellent man passed away.  I only knew him in his latter years and in my boyish days.  I see him as, when our waters were filled with hostile fleets, he marched at the head of his regiment, on a horse richly caparisoned, shining with silver and steel.  I see him as he walked along the street, a tall slim man, quick in his movements, and inspiring, by his air and gait and benignant eye, respect and even affection.  He was early bald on the upper part of his head; but, by way of atonement, wore to the last, sometime after it was dropped by others, a long queue, that attracted the passing glance of the boys.  He was, I think, except Seth Foster and Moses Myers, the last of the queues.  He came of an old Anglo-Saxon stock.  His name for centuries in Scotland and in England had been borne by archbishops and illustrious laymen; and in our own times, in the earlier part of this century, it was the synonym of British philanthropy.  But neither early nor late, in the Old World or in the New, was it ever borne by a nobler or a purer man—­a man over whose grave more gentle and more precious memories should hover—­than WILLIAM SHARP.

When, in 1802, Tazewell appeared at the Norfolk bar, party politics were in a state of active fermentation.  The passions of men became involved in the contests of the day to an extent which has not been reached since, and entered into the private relations of life.  Men of business who had important cases for trial, and who were, for the most part, attached to the federal party, called in the aid of the federal members of the bar; but it was soon seen that the young republican lawyer, who had voted for the resolutions of ’98-’99, and for the report of ’99-1800, and who had helped by his vote in the House of Representatives to elect Mr. Jefferson president, had introduced a new practice into the courts, and began to win verdicts in the greatest cases from all his federal opponents.