In speaking of Marshall’s personal qualities and ways, I must quote from those exquisite passages in Judge Story’s address, delivered in the fall of 1835, to the Suffolk bar, in which his own true affection found expression: “Upon a first introduction he would be thought to be cold and reserved; but he was neither the one nor the other. It was simply a habit of easy taciturnity, watching, as it were, his own turn to follow the line of conversation, and not to presume to lead it.... Meet him in a stage-coach as a stranger, and travel with him a whole day, and you would only be struck with his readiness to administer to the accommodation of others, and his anxiety to appropriate least to himself. Be with him the unknown guest at an inn, and he seemed adjusted to the very scene; partaking of the warm welcome of its comforts, whenever found; and if not found, resigning himself without complaint to its meanest arrangements.... He had great simplicity of character, manners, dress, and deportment, and yet with a natural dignity that suppressed impertinence and silenced rudeness. His simplicity ... had an exquisite naïveté, which charmed every one, and gave a sweetness to his familiar conversation approaching to fascination. The first impression of a stranger, upon his introduction to him, was generally that of disappointment. It seemed hardly credible that such simplicity should be the accompaniment of such acknowledged greatness. The consciousness of power was not there; the air of office was not there; there was no play of the lights or shades of rank, no study of effect in tone or bearing.”
Add to this what Judge Story said from the bench, in receiving the resolutions of the Bar of the Supreme Court after Marshall’s death: “But, above all, he was the ornament of human nature itself, in the beautiful illustrations which his life constantly presented, of its most attractive graces, and its most elevated attributes.”[49]
Of Marshall’s appearance on the bench we have a picture in one of Story’s letters from Washington, while he was at the bar. He is writing in 1808, the year after the Burr trial. “Marshall,” he says, “is of a tall, slender figure, not graceful or imposing, but erect and steady. His hair is black, his eyes small and twinkling, his forehead rather low, but his features are in general harmonious. His manners are plain, yet dignified; and an unaffected modesty diffuses itself through all his actions. His dress is very simple, yet neat; his language chaste, but hardly elegant; it does not flow rapidly, but it seldom wants precision. In conversation he is quite familiar, but is occasionally embarrassed by a hesitancy and drawling.... I love his laugh,--it is too hearty for an intriguer,--and his good temper and unwearied patience are equally agreeable on the bench and in the study.”