There, too, were the portraits of Col. Nivison and his
wife, the parents of Mrs. Tazewell; of Mr. Tazewell himself by Thompson,
the most intellectual and lifelike of all his portraits, taken at the
age of forty-two; of his wife's two sisters, who were the beauties and
the belles of forty-five years ago, and who have long passed away, and
of their brother, the amiable and beloved William Nivison, whose early
death was long deplored by our people. The general library of Mr.
Tazewell was kept in a separate building, and consisted of his numerous
law books, of the British statutes at large in many thick quartos, and
most of the writers of Queen Anne's time and of the Georges, many in the
original quarto, and few or none later than the beginning of the
century. Some of the books had a history of their own. There was a copy
of the Lectures on History, which Dr. Priestley had presented to Judge
Tazewell, the father of our subject, in memory of the kindness of the
judge to the author when he was flying from the flames of Birmingham.
The beautiful copy of Wilson's Ornithology with Bonaparte's
continuation, which at the date of its publication was one of the most
elegant issues of the American press, had a singular value in the eyes
of Mr.
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