his ancestral land.  But he regarded the law of admiralty with peculiar and almost hereditary affection.  It suited the caste of his intellect.  No ordinary horizon bounded its sphere.  It overlooked the limits of any single realm, however proud that realm might seem.  It was the queen of the sea, whose influence, cast far and wide over the raging billows, breathed peace and safety to the humblest sailor who trod a deck, and upheld with all the strength of civilized man the flag of the feeblest power.  Amid the changing revolutions of the human will, amid the fall of empires and the ruin of dynasties, it alone was immutable.  It was the tie of nations, which bound men in one universal brotherhood, and gathered peoples about a common altar.  No private rule, no immemorial custom, no formal statute, controlled its operations; but right reason in all its supremacy enacted its provisions, and justice, with an even hand, in every dominion and on every sea under heaven, was its pure and equal administrator.  Tazewell was fond of repeating that eloquent and exact definition of the general law, which Lord Mansfield, plucking it from the fragments of Cicero’s work on the Republic, has made the household thought of our common nature:  Non erit alia lex Romae, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac, sed et apud omnes gentes et omnia tempora, una eademque lex obtinebit.[14] Such a science suited the complexion of Tazewell’s genius; and in his practice he had framed a large and liberal system of his own.  The task would have been a work of love, and would have required little more than the embodiment of his thoughts on paper.  But the engagements and associations of Southern life are hostile to authorship, and the fortunate time glided by forever.

A hundred years hence, when Norfolk may or may not have become the commercial seat of a vast Southern empire; when the face of external nature in this low region, unmarked by mountain ranges, will be wholly changed in all but in the course of our great river and of our two glorious seas; and when the rising genius of Virginia, turning from the sages and statesmen of Greece and Rome, from Socrates and Demosthenes, and from Cato and Cincinnatus, shall seek to know the details of the lives of the greater men who have adorned our own annals; it may be pleasing to know the spot in which Tazewell spent his latter years, and the manner of his private life.  Simplicity marked his dress, his dwelling and its furniture, and all his accompaniments.  His house and grounds were such as appeared, if you looked into the assessors’ books, of considerable value; but if you looked at the objects themselves, they were such as any respectable citizen might possess without the reputation of great wealth.  The lot, bounded on the east by Granby street, included several acres in the heart of the city; and the house, which, though capacious, had no idle room, was a plain structure of wood built originally by a private citizen of moderate means as