It was in the
same spirit, when, visited by the greatest living statesman of New
England, that sterling patriot, and that peerless orator of his whole
country, Edward Everett, who, seeing the faculties of Mr. Tazewell still
vigorous in his 85th year, expressed to him his regret that he had
retired from public life so early, he replied: "_I'm only sorry that I
ever entered it at all_;" when all who knew Mr. Tazewell intimately can
avouch that, even at that moment of his 85th year, if the State of
Virginia had called upon him to defend her right or honor in any
transaction which may have occurred from the settlement of Jamestown to
the late Ohio boundary discussion, he would have had every mouldering
record from the office of the General Court, and every book bearing upon
the subject, clustering in heaps around him in less than sixty hours
after he had undertaken his task.
It was in 1802 that Mr. Tazewell, who had qualified as an attorney in
the Hustings Court of the Borough on the 26th day of June of the
previous year, took up his abode in Norfolk. Whoever would form an
opinion of the Norfolk of 1802 from the Norfolk of 1860, would be apt to
fall into many and capital mistakes.
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