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 John Marshall.

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at the siege of Calais, where he was desper sports of the field. At that period of his ately wounded, and claimed descent from life he was thoughtful and quiet in manner, the father of William Marshall, Earl of Pem rather sedate for a lad of his age, but full of a broke, the first of the barons to sign Magna dreamy and poetic enthusiasm. It is said also that he enjoyed the solitude of the for Charta. The. mother of John Marshall was Mary est, and "was a dreamer of dreams.'' As Isham Keith; and it is said that her lineage we glance at his characteristics in later life, reaches back to the remotest period of we are hardly disposed to class him, even Anglo-Saxon history, and to Egbert, the i in boyhood, as a mere dreamer of dreams. first king of the One is more inclined, I think, Saxon Heptarchy. She was to view the the daughter of dreams of his Rev. Jas. Keith, youth as those an Episcopal longings natural minister. to a vigorous Now, in conse and ambitious quence of the spirit looking removal of Mar out into the shall's father, future and shortly after the building castles birth of his old of achievement est son, John, and success. the boyhood Nevertheless, it home of the sub is doubtless true ject of this ad that Marshall's dress was situa character, at that ted about thirty early period, was miles west of imbued with his birthplace in more or less the mountainous poetic fervor. region east of It would be the Blue Ridge, strange, in MARY ISHAM MARSHALL (from an old painting). at a place deed, had it Mother of Chief-Justice Marshall. been otherwise, called the "Hol reared in the low," well calcu lated, so far as nature and surroundings can, love of the English classics and with so to develop the purer and nobler qualities much in nature around him to charm of a boy. The neighborhood was destitute the eye and incite the imagination. We of schools, but during the period preceding know, in fact, that in his maturer years, and his fourteenth year Marshall received from even late in life, he was occasionally given his father a not inconsiderable training in to express some deep emotion of the soul literature, and thus he early acquired an in metrical composition.1 intense love of that branch of learning. As Marshall had literary leanings in his earlier a boy he was peculiarly attracted by the years, not in the direction of the law. He beauty of the scenery in the vicinity of his cultivated the Muse of Poetry, with at least home, and we are informed that he dwelt 1 Honorable Charles N. Potter, Chief Justice of the Su with nature and delighted in the youthful preme Court of Wyoming.