With profound veneration and grief we record the decease of the last of the Founders of this Institution-one intimately associated in this great work with men illustrious for wisdom, patriotism and philanthropy-Judge WASHINGTON, (its first President,) with MERCER, HARPER, KEY, CALDWELL, MARSHALL, and RANDOLPH, WEBSTER and CLAY. These great men saw the comprehensive benevolence of the scheme they proposed, and that it operated for good in all directions, and without assignable limit. They sought to plant on sure foundations, in a remote and barbarous quarter of the earth, a free and Christian State, destined to increase in numbers, knowledge, wealth, and power, while the world shall stand.

Favored beyond most of his eminent friends, co-operating with him in this enterprise, General JONES was permitted to see before his departure the fruit of the seed they planted, and hear announced the rise and independence of a Christian Republic on the Coast of Africa, acknowledged and respected by many nations. Thus early were his anticipations realized, and while in old age, his eye still undimmed and his natural force unabated, he rejoiced to hail that "Orient Star," which he long before predicted, revealing to a race "scattered and peeled, meted out and trodden down," the highest hopes and destinies of man.

The closing hours of General JONES were marked by profound humility and submission to the Divine will, and an earnest hope that through Grace his sufferings would contribute to an entire regenera

tion of his nature and his participation in the Eternal Life and immortal inheritance of "the Just made perfect."

At a meeting of the Bar and officers of the Courts of the District of Columbia, on the 16th of last month, RICHARD S. CoXE, Esq., was called to the chair, and in a very pertinent and eloquent address expressed his estimation of the deceased, his friendship and admiration, which gathered strength during an intimacy of almost forty years. Said Mr. Coxe:

"At the period of my first acquaintance with our lamented friend, he was in the full meridian of his professional glory. For years at the bar of the Supreme Court he maintained a high position among the eminent lawyers of the day. He had been the associate of Dexter and Rawle, of Tilghman, Dallas, and Duponceau, of Pinkney and Stockton, and others equally distinguished. Marshall, Washington, and their associates, presided on the bench. Before that august tribunal causes of the deepest importance, involving principles in every department of the law, were discussed by those giants of the day, and the foundations of constitutional, commercial, and public law, as adapted to our institutions, were then firmly established, and the noble structure of American jurisprudence under which we still live was erected. Subsequently Mr. Jones had as his competitors in this glorious field, a Webster and a Wirt, a Binney and an Emmet, and an Ogden, with others whose names are familiar to all professional ears. In these scenes, and with such rivals, it would have been a sufficient honor to have even couched a lance, and not inglorious to have sustained a defeat. General Jones, however, contended against such adversaries on a footing of equality. He was par inter pares.

Think you, my younger brethren, that such eminence was attained only by means of a high order of intellect and lofty genius? However gifted in these respects he was acknowledged to be, he had been a persevering and laborious student. His professional acquirements were various, accurate, and profound. He was equally familiar with the venerable common law, with equity jurisprudence, with the civil code, and international law. In brief, he was a deeply read, accomplished lawyer.

In combination with studies of a strictly professional character, General Jones was a ripe and good scholar. In his splendid efforts at the bar, his logical and learned arguments were illustrated and embellished by the most felicitous allusions to the most illustrious authors of ancient or modern times, to the writings of the poets and the philosophers, to historians and men of science. The beauties with which he thus adorned his arguments never obscured or enfeebled the power of his logic.

A Virginian by birth, educated in his native State, living at a period when our national institutions were in a state of formation or progress in development and consolidation, familiar from his youth with many of the eminent statesmen of that eventful period, his matured judgment and ripened experience made him a sound constitutional lawyer. On terms of personal intimacy in early life with Madison, equally so in after years with Clay, accustomed to the exposi tions of Marshall and his coadjutors, General Jones was an unswerving patriot, devoted to the Federal Union and the Constitution, on which that Union could in his judgment alone permanently rest. His language in the last conversation

I had the pleasure of holding with him has made an indelible impression on my memory. It occurred within the last few months. Aware of his Virginia predilections, and knowing that he had numerous friends and connexions who had taken sides with the South in the calamitous strife which now convulses the nation, I was solicitous to learn from his own lips his sentiments in regard to the momentous topics of the day. In answer to my inquiries he responded with all his usual energy and decision. Mr. Coxe, he said, I am a true Virginian. I was born in Virginia, grew up in Virginia, was educated in Virginia, nearly all my associates, friends, and interests, have been in Virginia; but, sir, I hold the present movements in that State, the efforts made to overthrow the Government and Constitution of the Union, as a double treason-a treason to the United States and to the Commonwealth of Virginia. He then expressed in the strongest language his devotion to the Union, the Constitution, and the Laws. This is nearly the identical language in which this venerable man addressed me. These to me his last words confirmed me in my long-established faith that Walter Jones was a true patriot.

I cannot close this brief and imperfect sketch without a distinct reference to another feature in the character of our lamented friend. Gifted as he was by his Creator with an intellect the superior of which it has never been my fortune to encounter, all who knew him well will admit that he had a heart as large as was his mind. We all have witnessed the exhibition of this amiable characteristic of our friend. His intercourse with his brethren of the bar, not less with the youngest than the eldest, was uniformly marked by courtesy and kindness. The small altercations which will occasionally occur in our professional intercourse, never left a permanent feeling of unkindness. His numerous relatives and friends-the poor, the oppressed, and the destitute-ever experienced the same, I may call it, tenderness of manner. After a long and active life, in constant intercourse with men of all shades and varieties of character, he has, it is believed, not left behind him one who entertains towards him a hostile or even unfriendly feeling. From the bottom of my heart, then, I can truly say of General Walter Jones-for myself personally, and I trust for many who hear me I revered him as a lawyer, I admired him as a scholar, I confided in him as a patriot, I loved him as a man.”

Messrs. Fendall, Marbury, Carlisle, Davidge and Redin, were appointed a committee to report a suitable expression of the views of the meeting. Subsequently Mr. Fendall presented for consideration the following report:

"In assembling together at this moment of deep emotion, we feel that any endeavor to give fit utterance to our thonghts must be vain. The glory hath departed from' us. It has pleased the Great Ruler of the Universe to terminate the life on earth of him whom for more than half a century successive professional generations of the Washington bar have themselves regarded, and have held up to their countrymen, as the model of a great lawyer, an orator in the highest class of forensic eloquence, an accomplished scholar, a true patriot, a good citizen, and a kind friend. We have ourselves witnessed, our fathers have described to us, and we have delighted to describe to our children, exhibitions of his mental power, which we feel a just pride in believing are not excelled in the annals of any forum, local or national, American or foreign.

Though his life had been prolonged far beyond the ordinary limit, and though physical infirmities had for many years withdrawn him from the active duties of the profession; yet so fresh, so vivid is the image of the past, so thick is the throng of rushing recollections, that we feel as if he were snatched from us in the midst of some glorious exertion of his genius, in the full blaze of his fame, like the sun in his noonday splendor suddenly eclipsed. From the sense of darkness and loneliness which creeps over us, we seek to escape by recalling some of the traits which we have seen, or which tradition has preserved, of the mighty intellect whose magic spell death only could break. In fond imagination we see our departed friend before us, enforcing some principle of constitutional law of deep import to his country, and bringing to the "height of his great argument,'

"all the reasoning powers divine

To penetrate, resolve, combine;

And feelings keen and fancy's glow ;"

a logic severe and subtile; the most captivating elocution, though little aided by gesture; rich, but never redundant illustrations, drawn from extensive and various reading, hived in a memory singularly retentive, and always applied with accurate judgment and in pure taste. We see him discussing a perplexed case, driven from one point to another, and at length, after an exhausting contest of many days, seeking refuge and finding victory in some new position. We see him engaged in some subordinate topic of civil rights of no intrinsic importance, but clothed with dignity by the same earnest exertion of his high endowments. We call to mind the time when there were giants in the landthe days of Wirt, Pinkney, Webster, Tazewell, Dexter, Emmet, and other bright names-and we see our departed friend and associate their admitted peer, and the chosen champion against one or more of them in many a well-fought field, descending from the wars of the Titans to this forum, here to do battle, with all his strength, for some humble citizen in some humble cause; and often too with no other reward than the consciousness of doing good and the gratitude of his client. His heart ever warmed to resist injustice; his spirit ever kindled against the arrogance of power; his ear was never deaf to the cry of the oppressed. We see him again, thrown suddenly into a cause with imperfeet, perhaps not any, knowledge of the facts, and by the exercise of the faculty of abstraction, which he possessed in so wonderful a degree, study and master the whole case while in the act of speaking. We feel that achievements so hazardous could be possible to a mind only of extraordinary native energy, and of which the faculties had been brought, by habits of constant discipline, into absolute subjection to the will of its possessor. It was this faculty of calling into instant action all the resources of an intellect so vigorous, so acute, so comprehensive, so fertile, so abundant in the learning of his profession, so familiar with general science and literature, which led one of his most illustrious competitors to remark that if an emergency could be supposed in which an important cause had been ruled for immediate trial, and the client was driven to confide it to some advocate who had never before heard of it, his choice ought to be WALTER JONES.

"The moral were aptly combined with the intellectual elements in the character of the deceased, which constitute it a professional model. Though a close, and sometimes subtile, he was always a fair, reasoner. Magnanimous in his pre-eminence, he was placable, when the momentary irritations incident to

forensic discussion had subsided; candid in construing the motives and conduct of others; a courteous, and, to the younger members especially of the bar, a liberal adversary.

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"The Reports of the Supreme Court are the chief of the several imperfect records of his fame. In them may be seen distinct, however faint, traces of a master mind. But it was in the social circle, as in the case of Dr. Johnson, that its characteristics were most conspicuous. The careless but inimitable' beauties of his conversation gave delight to every listener. A stenographer might have reported it with the strictest fidelity, and yet nothing would have been found to deserve correction. His most casual remark was in a vein of originality, and couched in terms terse, succinct, sententious, and of the purest English. He always used the very word which was most appropriate to the thought; and, as has been said of another, every word seemed to be in its proper place, and yet to have fallen there by chance. An habitual student of the philosophy of language in general, and of the English language in particular, he was impatient of the pedantries and affectations which he saw defiling his mother tongue. No writer nor speaker had a keener sense of the force of the English idiom: nor Swift, nor Chatham, nor Junius, knew better that words are things.

"His local situation alone prevented opportunities for his engagement, had he desired it, in the public councils. The only public employment of a permanent character which he ever accepted, was that of Attorney of the United States for the District of Potomac in 1802, and for the District of Columbia in 1804, under appointments from President Jefferson, and which he resigned in 1821. To the honor and true interests of his country he clung with a devotion begin. ning in boyhood and continuing fervid to his dying hour. Born early enough to have known personally the Father of his Country, he reverenced the name of Washington, and was among the foremost and most earnest in the pious enterprise of erecting a national monument to his memory. In early youth the deceased was in habits of association with the great chiefs of the Revolutionary era, and of that immediately following it. He was the political disciple of Madison, and the cherished friend of that virtuous statesman, as he was also of Marshall and of Clay. His knowledge of the history of his country, derived from personal intercourse and observation as well as from reading, was ample and accurate. Public spirited, he was prompt, even in his busiest years, to co-operate in enterprises and establishments, civil and military, having for their object the public good. As one of the founders and leading spirits of the American Colonization Society, his name will ever be revered by all to whom patriotism and philanthropy are dear.

"We could linger long to contemplate the image of our illustrious friend in the walks of private life; to dwell on his many virtues; on his sincerity, his manliness, his benevolence; on the affectionate kinsman, the faithful friend, the warm heart, and the open hand. But time warns that we must hasten to our mournful office of consigning a great and good man to that tomb from which we humbly trust he is to rise to a blessed eternity.

"Resolved, That, in testimony of our respect for the memory of the deceased, this meeting will in a body proceed from the court-room to attend his funeral, at one o'clock this afternoon, and will wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days.