those who were most intimate with him, as all who met him were, after an hour’s acquaintance.  His public life was as his private, open and sincere; he never had a sinister motive, and this relieved him from duplicity of conduct.  His talents were of a high order:  in debate, he was argumentative and explicit; never pretending to any of the arts of the orator; but logically pursued his subject to a conclusion; never verbose, but always perspicuous.  As a lawyer, he was well read; and the analytical character of his mind appeared to have been formed upon the model of Judge Blackstone.  Before the juries of the country he was all-powerful.  These, in the main, were composed of men of very limited information—­and especially of legal lore.  But they were generally men of strong practical sense, with an honest purpose of doing justice between man and man.  Cobb with these was always sincere; never attempting a deception, never seeking to sway their judgments and secure a verdict by appealing to their passions or their prejudices, or by deceiving them as to what the law was.  Toward a witness or a party of whose honesty he entertained doubts, he was sarcastically severe; nor was he choice in the use of terms.  As a statesman, he was wise and able—­and in politics, as in everything else, honest and patriotic.  In early life he was sent to the House of Representatives, in the Congress of the United States, and soon distinguished himself as a devoted Republican in politics, and a warm supporter of the Administration of Mr. Monroe.  Here he was reunited socially with Mr. Crawford and family, and so close was this intimacy that he was on all political measures supposed to speak the sentiments of Mr. Crawford.  Associated with Forsyth, Tatnal, Gilmer, and Cuthbert, all men of superior abilities, all belonging to the same political party, and all warm supporters, of Mr. Crawford, he led this galaxy of talent—­a constellation in the political firmament unsurpassed by the representation of any other State.  Nor must I forget, in this connection, Joel Crawford and William Terrell, men of sterling worth and a high order of talent.  Mr. Cobb was a man of active business habits, and was very independent in his circumstances:  methodical and correct, he never left for to-morrow the work of to-day.

He was transferred from the House to the Senate, and left it with a reputation for integrity and talent—­the one as brilliant as the other unstained—­which falls to the lot of few who are so long in public life as he was.  Unlike most politicians whose career has been through exciting political struggles, the blight of slander was never breathed upon his name, and it descended to his children, as he received it from his ancestry, without spot or blemish.