Randolph was classically educated.  He had enjoyed every advantage of cultivation.  Socially, he had never mingled with any but refined society.  The franchise of suffrage in Virginia was confined to the freeholders, thus obviating in the public man the necessity of mingling with, and courting the good opinion of the multitude.  The system, too, of electioneering was to address from the hustings the voters, to declare publicly the opinions of candidates, and the policy they proposed supporting.  The vote was given viva voce.  All concurred to make representative and constituent frank and honest.  While this system existed, Virginia ruled the nation.  These means secured the services of the first intellects, and the first characters of her people.  The system was a training for debate and public display.  Eloquence became the first requisite to the candidate, and was the most powerful means of influence and efficiency in the representative.  Randolph had been thus trained; he had listened to, and been instructed by the eloquence of Patrick Henry, in his early youth, and in later life had met him as a competitor on the hustings.  He had grown up by the side of Edmonds, Peyton Randolph, George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson.  In his very youth he had excited the wonder and admiration of these great minds.  He was sent into the Congress of the United States almost before he was qualified by age to take his seat; and at once took position by the side of such men as William B. Giles, William H. Crawford, James A. Byard, and Littleton W. Tazwell.  His style of speaking was peculiar; his wit was bitter and biting; his sarcasm more pungent and withering than had ever been heard on the floor of Congress; his figure was outre; his voice, fine as the treble of a violin; his face, wan, wrinkled, and without beard; his limbs, long and unsightly, especially his arms and fingers; the skin seemed to grow to the attenuated bone; and the large, ill-formed joints were extremely ugly.  But those fingers, and especially the right fore-finger, gave point and vim to his wit and invective.

In his manner he was at times deliberate, and apparently very considerate, and again he was rapid and vehement.  When he would demolish an adversary, he would commence slowly, as if to collect all his powers, preparatory to one great onset.  He would turn and talk, as it were, to all about him, and seemingly incongruously.  It was as if he was slinging and whirling his chain-shot about his head, and circling it more and more rapidly, to collect all his strength for the fatal blow.  All knew it would fall, but none knew where, until he had collected his utmost strength, and then, with the electrical flash of his eye, he would mark the victim, and the thundering crash of his vengeance, in words of vehemence, charged with the most caustic satire, would fall upon, and crush the devoted head of his scarce suspecting foe.  I remember, upon one occasion, pending the debate upon the Missouri