SPECIAL ADDRESS.

His habits of daily life were as unpretentious as those of Socrates when he argued at the academy.

I have endeavored to present to you my impressions of this man. In other histories single characters as great as his stand out like solitary peaks that dominate the horizon, but Marshall was rather like one mountain elevated higher than others but buttressed and supported by them all. The great group that stood by him were only less imposing and massive than himself, and if his work shall stand through all the ages it is not alone because of its justness, but also because of its wisdom and adaptability to the men and the times with whom and in which he was an actor.

The western front of the Capitol faces toward the city of Washington. It overlooks a broad valley to where, in the far distance and beyond the rolling Potomac, stretches the Virginian hills. In mid-distance rises the single shaft, without an ornament, majestic, commanding, representative, which commemorates the affection of his countrymen for Washington. In the near foreground and at the feet of the slope down which pour the marble stairs, is seated in comparative obscurity, the statue of Marshall. The thoughtful eyes look out and upon the busy street, through the prepared forest and to the pleasing gardens beyond, where the wealth and taste of the nation have grouped the floral productions of the earth. Simple, strong, majestic, modest, it is a type of the character of the man to whom it was erected by the nation. His statue looks forward to the greater monument of his more illustrious friend and chief. His hand holds the Constitution of his country. His back is to the Capitol, where his decisions were rendered.

The magnificent halls and galleries contain no nobler figure, no firmer character, no grander personality, than that which in enduring bronze sits silent through the eternal years while by him rolls the great tide of representatives of the people, gathered from far California and Oregon, from

JOHN C. BLACK.

Texas and Florida and Maine, from New York and Illinois, each coming to urge the acceptance of his peculiar plan and the consideration of the particular wants of his people; and yet all subordinating and blending those plans in pursuance of the laws announced by those silent lips and principles evolved by that great brain. While the Republic shall endure, that figure will sit at the base of the mount whereon the

laws of this country are declared, their greatest interpreter, their wisest formulator, their serenest guardian.