Toward the close of his life, he was elected by the Legislature of the State to the Bench of the Superior Court, then the highest judicial tribunal of the State.  This was the last public station he filled.  Here he sustained his high character as a lawyer and honest man; carrying to the tomb the same characteristics of simplicity and sincerity, of affability and social familiarity, which had ever distinguished him in every position, public or private.  He assumed none of that mock dignity or ascetic reserve in his intercourse with the Bar and the people, so characteristic of little minds in elevated positions:  conscious of rectitude in all things, he never feared this familiarity would give cause for the charge of improper bias in his decisions from the bench or his influence with the jury.

Mr. Cobb died at the age of fifty, in the prime of his manhood and usefulness.  In person, he was a model for a sculptor—­six feet in height, straight, and admirably proportioned.  His head and face were Grecian; his forehead ample; his nose beautifully chiselled; gray eyes, with sparkling, playful expression, round, and very beautiful; his head round, large, and admirably set on; the expression of his features, variant as April weather, but always intellectual, they invited approach, and the fascination of his conversation chained to his presence all who approached him.  In fine, he was a type in manner and character of the people among whom he was born and reared; and I scarcely know if this is the greater compliment to him or them.

With few exceptions, this peculiar population of Middle Georgia has furnished all of her distinguished sons, and to the traits which make them remarkable is she to-day mainly indebted for her exalted prominence among her sister States of the South.  The peculiar training of her sons, the practical education and social equality which pervades, and ever has, her society, acquaints every one with the wants of every other; at the same time it affords the facility for union in any public enterprise which promises the public good.  All alike are infused with the same State pride, and the equality of fortunes prevents the obtrusion of arrogant wealth, demanding control, from purely selfish motives, in any public measure.

This community of interests superinduces unity of feeling, and unity of action; and the same homogeneous education secures a healthy public opinion, which, at last, is the great controlling law of human action.  Thus the soil is one, the cultivation is one, the growth is one, and the fruit is the same.  Nowhere in the South have these been so prominent as in Middle Georgia, and no other portion of the South is so distinguished for progress, talent, and high moral cultivation.  There is, perhaps, wanting that polish of manners, that ease and grace of movement, and that quiet delicacy of suppressed emotion, so peculiar to her citizens of the seaboard, which the world calls refinement;