from 1806TO 1851 119

described him, also, as one "than whom no man
was ever fonder of society, especially good com-
pany, or more discriminating in his selections."²⁹
And William Wirt, who in addition to his high
intellectual powers, and legal attainments, and in
spite of them, was gifted with a rare power of
living joyously, and rejoiced in a fellow at it,
wrote in a letter of June 24, 1828:3⁰

The judges are, some of them, fine fellows. The Chief Justice
of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, (Buchanan) has his
room ³¹ separated from ours only by a narrow passage, and he
comes in frequently to join us. He is as honest and noble
spirited a fellow as ever lived—full of fine feeling, manly, frank
and brave—and loves a laugh as much as you do. You would
put him into convulsions if you were here.

Indeed, Judge Buchanan seems to have passed
beyond some ordinary human limitations and to
have become a hero to his valet, for there is an
old story that when he was on a mission to Eng-
land, in 1837, with George Peabody and General
Thomas Emory of Queen Anne's County, to nego-
tiate a sale of state bonds, he so impressed a valet
provided for him that the man had the judge
announced at a reception as "The Lord Chief
Justice of Maryland", to the judge's embarrass-
ment. In the bitterness of the litigation between
the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Company and
the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, in 1831
and 1832, for the use of a strip of land along the
Potomac River,⁸² counsel for the railroad voiced
among themselves a protest that their client had

29. Mason, Life of McMahon, 112.

30. Kennedy, II, 250.

31. In the City Hotel at Annapolis.

32. 4 Gill & Johnson, 1.