the terrible winter at Valley Forge, and another has declared that "the officers of the Virginia line appeared to idolize him." His conduct attracted the attention of Washington, who conceived a warm friendship for him, and Marshall, on his part, returned the friendship of his chief with a feeling almost of worship. Washington frequently appointed him deputy judge advocate during the winter.
At the close of 1779 he went to Virginia to take command of a new corps which the Legislature was about to raise. The project remaining under discussion for some months, he passed the time in attendance upon a course of lectures on law, delivered by George Wythe, and a course of lectures on natural philosophy, delivered by the Rev. Dr. Madison, afterward Bishop of Virginia, at William and Mary College, in Williamsburg. The next summer he received his license to practice law. Meanwhile, the project for raising troops had taken the shape of a definite failure, and he now set out to rejoin the army. Too poor to pay his passage to the North, he walked the entire distance from Williamsburg, Virginia, to Philadelphia, upon reaching which city he was so travel-worn and shabby in appearance, that the landlord of the hotel at which he wished to stop refused him admittance. He joined the army in due time, and remained with it until the spring of 1781, when he resigned his commission, a few months before the close of the war.
With the return of peace the courts were again thrown open, and Marshall began that brilliant legal career which has made him one of the most famous men in our history. His success was marked from the first, as his professional talents were such as to make themselves felt anywhere, and his personal popularity aided him greatly in overcoming the difficulties which lie in the path of a young aspirant to legal honors. In 1782, the people of Fauquier elected him to the House of Delegates in the General Assembly of the Commonwealth, and in the fall of that year he was appointed one of the Council of State. In January, 1783, he was married to Miss Mary Willis Ambler, with whom he lived in the most