WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE.

BY A. OAKEY HALL.

The hurrying pedestrian in Wall-street, or in some of its bisecting avenues of commercial bustle, if he have time to glance over his shoulder, is sure to observe a freshly-painted piece of tin (its brief rhetoric revelling in the pride and pomp of gold leaf alphabetically shaped), denominated by lawyers "a shingle"—setting forth that some sanguine gentleman has then and there established himself as an Attorney and Counsellor at Law.

The sign is by the front door, shining with self-conceit at the passers by; and its owner is up some weary stairway, yawning over "twice told tales" of legal lore, copying precedents for the sake of practice, or keeping hope alive upon the back benches of the court-rooms in listening to the eloquence of his seniors while he is waiting for clients.

Heaven help many a young attorney in this "babel" of money-getting. The race should be prayed for in churches: and it should meet with a consideration as nearly divine as mortals can call up from crowded heart-chambers.

Well: the sign keeps nailed up: and by and by the sun blisters it, and dries out the pomp of the gilded letters, and perhaps the owner yawns over his one case, or sitting upon a front bench in the court-room while case number thirty is being heard, waits for case nine hundred and thirty, against which on the calendar that is reposing by the side of the complaisant clerk in the corner, his name is placed as counsel—shining there like a pebble on a wide and extended beach.

The Physiology of the Medical Student from facetious pens was reached to us over the Atlantic by friendly booksellers some years ago; and we should have had by this time "the Physiology of the young Attorney." He is a good subject for dissection; there's plenty of venous humor in his composition; and oh! a deal of nerve!

Talk of exploring expeditions to the Arctic regions as offering specimens of courage and prowess; or of scientific excursions into the wilds of Africa to the same purport! These instances are trivial compared to the courage and prowess yearly displayed by hundreds of attorneys who plunge into the ocean of litigation in order to swim towards the distant buoys which the sun of prosperity always cheers with enlivening beams.

Don't waste sympathy in this connection for the young Sawbones. His thirst for action can be slaked at pauper fountains. For him the emigrant's chamber, the cabin of the arriving ship, the dispensary, the asylums, the hospitals, and the poor-houses, are always open; and if his "soul be in arms," there are (Heaven knows) "frays" in this city numerous enough for any ambitious surgical eagerness.

But for the aspiring attorney where are the avenues open for gratuitous action? Do merchants nail up promissory notes upon awning posts for attorneys to seize and put in suit? What "old nobs" of Wall-street are willing to put themselves "in chancery" to oblige Hopper Tape, Esq., your humble attendant upon the Where are the courts possessing suits without counsel?

We may be told of unfortunate wretches who murder in drunken fits to whom counsel are assigned. But what are ten crusts of bread per annum among a thousand hungry dogs?

Thou must face the truth, young college boy, who now and then dost stroll into court-rooms, or who dost lounge away an hour in a friend's law office admiring his books and piles of papers—thinking the while of the time when thou wilt have graduated and obtained permission to hang up thy pomp-gilded "shingle:" thou must face the truth! The counsel who so attracts thy admiration, in thy court-room lounging, has fought weary years with myriad obstacles; there are the ashes of many nights and days of toil and struggle sprinkled upon his hair; he has fought his way (from where thou sittest a listener to where he stands a speaker), as if through an Indian gauntlet file. There were a hundred mouths waiting for the first crumbs which came to his impatient legal digestion; and a hundred envious heads and hearts to worry him if possible into a dyspepsia over those crumbs. He has began with an office in a fifth story, and climbed down towards the street. He commenced to hive his honey near the roof! While out of his office he climbed a professional ladder, the holding on to which tasked all his powers of physical, mental, and pecuniary endurance. Face the truth!

Reach me yonder diary and legal register. Two thousand practising lawyers in the city of New-York! Out of these one hundred are "notables;" fifty are "distinguished;" twenty-five are eminent.

A large body of them are "conveyancers" growing thin in person and thinner in mind over deeds and titles; a larger body "attorneys"—getters up and supervisors of suits—providers of ammunition for "distinguished counsel" to discharge with loud reports (the said counsel brilliant by the flash: the attorney obscured in the smoke); many, very many, chained to "larcenies" at the Sessions, "landlord dispossessions" at the Marine Court, suits on butcher's bills at Ward Courts, or "malicious prosecutions" in the Common Pleas.

Yet there are hundreds of coral reefs and pearls for persevering divers in this ocean of litigation. Three thousand pending cases every month are three thousand nutshells[pg 176] where the meat is often fresh and oily, even with the weary keeping on the calendar for months and years. There are some counsel who pocket fees and costs to the tune of twenty thousand a year. We know many a Quirk, Gammon and Snap, who realize an undoubted "ten thousand a year," with no Tittlebat Titmouse for a standing annoyance. And we can taper off on the finger many who do not realize five hundred a year, and work like negro slaves at that: they are continually rough hewing, but no divinity shapes their ends.

Five years of "starvation," and five more years of toil and trouble, constitute the depth of a lawyer's slough of despond in New-York; to say nothing of the giants' castles to storm upon the way, or the fights with the Apolyons of Envy. Obviously so!

A man now-a-days will let a young Sawbones advise ice for his child's croup, or even experiment with his own much-abused liver, when he would not intrust a young attorney with the suing a note where ten witnesses saw the note signed and the "consideration money" paid over. And if the public really knew how much danger their pockets were in when the "buttons" were under the control of inexperienced lawyers, the number of "starvers" would be doubled. What "eminent" lawyer is there who does not look back to the "practice" of his youth, in perfect terror to witness the mistakes he made, as the helmsman, who has scudded through the breakers to the open sea, glances back at the dangers he escaped?

The young lawyers of a year back are, however, five years—perhaps ten—in advance of the lawyers of this year's growth. The latter have greater rivalry in the hordes of practitioners from the interior whom the "new code" have driven from their trespass quare clausum fregit into the city. Many of them, too, were men of mark in their ports of departure, bold and confident in their new haven!

One field, however, in the legal township of this city, offers room upon its face for tillers—the field of advocacy! It is ploughed by some twenty or thirty, and harrowed by some fifty or sixty. There are a dozen whom the ghosts of Nisi Prius flock to hear upon great occasions. And these will long hold the monopoly.

Why?

Because the advocate and barrister must have had vast experience at Nisi Prius (or the court where matters of fact are investigated by judge and jury); have acquired a practised tact; have had opportunities of testing their own calibre to know if they are fitted for emergencies—as the gunsmith tests his barrels before he "stocks" them. And the young lawyer has small opportunity afforded him to acquire this tact—to permit this testing. If he can play "devil" for a few years to some barrister of extended practice, or scent "occasions" like a blood-hound on the trail of the valuable fugitive from justice, then he is a happy man, and is in the fair way of soon becoming a monopolist himself.

Any juryman of two years' standing will corroborate our statement as to the openness of the field of legal advocacy. How often has he seen cause after cause "set down," "reserved," or "put off," because counsel are engaged elsewhere? How often has he heard the same advocate in four or five causes in the same week, in the same court, changing positions like the queen of an active chess-board; profiting his fame and pocket by means of only a hurried glance at the elaborate brief which his junior has "got up" for him?

Some one has said that the barrister works hard, lives well, and dies poor. Regarding the first two conditions of his life there is little doubt upon the question of truth; the dying in poverty may be problematical. Yet in a recent print, professing to furnish a list of wealthy tax-payers, the list contained four lawyers, and only one was a barrister. The instance proves little, for a lawyer may be very rich and yet pay no taxes. The assessors may fight shy of his bell-pull as they go their rounds, because of his penchant to find flaws in their actions and bring them official discredit in an apparently laborious task, but in reality a sinecure of an employment.

We have often asked ourselves if barristers have stomachs. Bowels of compassion they have not, that is certain; but have they stomachs? Say nine times in a year they dine at the same hour of the day; and then spoon their soup with the blood all drawn from the digestive apparatus to feed the brain. Yet they eat like aldermen and drink like German princes....

This much of idle reverie, as, with pen in hand, we laid down the two bulky and elaborately-published volumes whose title we have taken as text; this much of glance at the condition of the young and old advocate of to-day, before we digest our reflections upon the advocate and jurist of the past.

It was our privilege in our legal novitiate (this is but a phrase; for a lawyer is always in his novitiate) to have been, at the Cambridge Law School, a pupil of Mr. Justice Story; and thus to have drank at the very fountain head of constitutional law—that branch of our national jurisprudence which can least fluctuate. Judges of a day and not of a generation, or crazy legislators with spasmodic wisdom, may alter, and overturn, and mystify by simplification, the laws and usages of every-day life; but it is scarcely to be apprehended that the current of our constitutional law will ever be diverted from original channels. There is danger rather of its being dammed into stagnation.

While fully aware of his faults and foibles as a man, and his idiosyncracies as a judge and a legal writer, we have never wavered in loyalty to his judicial majesty, or found a[pg 177] flaw in the regard we paid to his memory. And no book was more welcome to Zimmerman in his solitude than these volumes regarding the illustrious judge, prepared by his son, were welcome to our Christmas-holiday leisure.

Joseph Story was the eldest of eleven children, and lived to be indeed the "Joseph" of mark and renown to his father and brothers. He was born in Marblehead, September 18th, 1779. His father was a physician, and served during a portion of the Revolution as army surgeon. He died when the future judge was twenty-six years of age: yet what the son then was is best told by one sentence from the father's will—after making his wife sole executrix, he recommends her to his son Joseph, adding, "and although this perhaps is needless, I do it to mark my special confidence in his affections, skill, and abilities." From the father, our lawyer thus panegyrized received friendly geniality and broad understanding; from the mother, indomitable will, vigor and enthusiasm.

Habit of observation and desire of knowledge were the prominent attributes of his childish character; nevertheless he was ardent in all the sports of boyhood. To the last he maintained a regard for his honor, which induced him while yet a lad, and under promise not to divulge the name of a schoolmate offender, to receive a severe flogging rather than to yield up his knowledge upon the subject. At the age of sixteen, in the midst of a Freshman term at Harvard College, he thought of matriculation; but upon inquiry learned that he must not only be examined upon the works of ordinary preparatory reading, but that it was necessary for him to expect a call upon the volumes which his class had dispatched during the past half year. At first he was daunted, but remembering there yet remained six weeks of vacation, he addressed himself to the necessary labor—the severity of which is best evidenced by the fact that in the short time above mentioned he read Sallust, the odes of Horace, two books of Livy, three books of the Anabasis, two books of the Iliad, and certain English treatises. This sounds like the railroad instruction now much in vogue; but its effects were permanent in value upon his mind. Few readers of his works will accuse him of a want of proficiency in Latin! But the often reading—the saepe legendo was ever his habit: for he remembered the couplet:

Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed saepe cadendo

Sic homo fit doctus non vi sed saepe legendo.

He passed muster with the college tutors in January, 1795. Among his classmates were the (afterwards Reverends) Dr. Tuckerman and Wm. E. Channing—to the genius and character of the latter of whom he always bore the most enthusiastic and hearty testimony. Indeed he contested with Channing for the highest honor. Channing won it, but always gave the honor himself to Story; while the latter always declared that the former won the just meed of his genius and scholarship.

Their graduation was in the summer of 1798: and immediately upon quitting college Mr. Story commenced the study of the law with Mr. Samuel Sewall, afterwards Chief Justice in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. Fourteen hours a day was over his quantum of study. Although sometimes disheartened, he never surrendered his determination to master the elements and details of his new profession.

Studying law in those days was a far different thing from its reading now. Then it was multum: now it is multa. No copious indexes and multifarious treatises were counted by thousands: no digests (directories to the streets, the avenues, the fountains and the temples of the science), abounded by scores. Libraries were carried about in wheelbarrows and not in processions of vans, when the inexorable moving day came around. Learned judges were not then compelled to hold courts in remote villages (resorting hereby to a coup de loi), in order to escape the cacoethes loquendi of case lawyers and presuming juniors. Legal lore was builded up like the massive stone and hard grained mortar of the edifices of that olden time—slowly, carefully, but lastingly; not as are builded now the brick and stuccoed mansions of the snob and parvenu. Not that abounding treatises and familiarizing digests forbid the idea of the perfect lawyer now-a-days: only that to-day the law student in the midst of a large library stands more in need (when thinking of the otium which accompanies certain dignity), to utter the ejaculation, "lead us not into temptation"—the temptation of possessing that knowledge which teaches where to seek for information, and not the kind which is information of itself.

In 1801 Mr. Story came to the Salem bar while at the age of twenty-two. After being three years at practice he married his first wife, who died within two years afterward, plunging him into the deepest grief. During his courtship he dabbled (as almost every young lawyer does until he finds that clients are severe critics) in poetry, and wrote a didactic poem of two parts in heroic verse, entitled "The Power of Solitude." Adopting the criticism of the biographers—its prominent defects were exaggeration of feeling, confusion of imagery, want of simplicity of expression, stilted and artificial style. But though dull as a poem, it shows facility and talent for versification, breathes a warm aspiration for virtue and truth, and is creditable to the scholarship of its author.

After the loss of his wife he sought relief from painful thoughts in the laborious duties of a large and increasing business. His position at the bar was prominent, and he was engaged in nearly all the cases of importance.[pg 178] His manner to the jury was earnest and spirited; he managed his causes with tact (that great acquirement of the successful lawyer: being, as a distinguished barrister now dead and gone said to Dr. Hosack, the same sheet anchor to the advocate which mercury or bark is to the physician), was ready in attack or defence, and possessed great eloquence of expression. As an advocate he showed a sagacity of perception which no intricacy of detail could blind, no suddenness of attack confuse, and which afterwards so distinguished him as a Judge. He was thrown among the leading lawyers; and undaunted as all young lawyers should be (although preserving their modesty of deportment and learning), he measured swords with the most accomplished. Although sometimes vanquished, he always received honors from even the victors.

It is a prevailing opinion with the junior members of the legal profession, that their seniors delight in snubbing them; that they are fond of being discourteous, and arrogant; that they are envious of some and insulting to others. But it is rare indeed that the seniors err on other ground in this respect than magnanimity. The industrious youngster, the self-reliant youngster, the firm but respectful youngster, the versed in elementary principles among youngsters, are always received with open arms. Law begets law. If the junior commences a suit a senior may answer it: and the reverse. The parson and the doctor are in perpetual interference with the neighbors and brethren of their particular calling. But lawyers, like bees in the beehive, must of necessity assist and succor each other, or there will be less honey laid away when the summer is past and the harvest ended.

Early in his professional career he became an ardent politician. He was a Jeffersonian Democrat, and at the bar of his residence stood almost alone in his partisan position. As such a party man he went into the State Legislature, and became an acknowledged leader. He possessed that great quality for a leader, the faculty of extempore speaking, joined with the ability to condense and elucidate the topics he took in hand. But he never submitted the convictions of his judgment to party dictation; and soon after his entering the arena of legislative warfare, he bravely stemmed party tide in advocating an increase of salaries for the State judges. The latter were all federalists, and it was not to be wondered that the republicans of that day, who wore in their noses the rings of party, should shrug their shoulders at the prospect of benefiting political opponents. But by his firm conduct, and by his confident assertion and able arguments in favor of the measure, it was carried. And to Joseph Story, more than any other man, Massachusetts is indebted for the opportunity of employing ablest judicial officers, without making their families beggars.

It is the disgrace of our country that its judicial officers are the most poorly paid of all professions and pursuits. And in every section of the Union, that distinguished lawyer who accepts a seat upon the bench, must hold the glories of his honor at a very high price, to surrender his ordinary professional emoluments for the wretched pittance which the various States dole out for days of public toil and nights of private study. We desire to look no further than this Empire State for examples. This Empire State, with its magnificent resources and proudly developing energies, should be the last to unite in adjudging its judicial officers to the labors of galley slaves, and to then pay them by the year less than a ballet-dancer receives by the month in all its principal cities. Two thousand five hundred dollars per year is the astounding sum which this same Empire State pays to its highest judicial officers. If we reverse the saying of Walpole, and read "every price has its man," we may not wonder if Dogberries and grandmothers are occasionally found upon the bench, dispensing their honest but destructive platitudes, and their Malaprop constructions of commercial law, to juries of astounded merchants.

From the arena of State politics, Mr. Story next changed his position to the temple of national discussions at Washington. His career in Congress was, however, limited to one session, and to a vacancy-seat occasioned by a death. He declined re-election; for in the words of his autobiographical account of this portion of his career, he had lost all relish for political controversy, and had found that an entire obedience to party projects required such constant sacrifices of opinion and feeling, that he preferred to devote himself with singleness of heart to the study of the law, which was at all times the object of his admiration and almost exclusive devotion. Public sentiment, however, forced him again into the State councils at home, where more liberty of professional engagement was permitted. He was in political life but a brief period again, before, in his thirty-second year, President Madison pressed his acceptance of a vacant Associate Justiceship in the Supreme Court of the United States, which had been declined by Levi Lincoln and by John Quincy Adams, then in Russia. Although the acceptance involved the surrender of heavy professional emolument, the high honor, the permanence of the tenure, and the opportunity of gratifying his juridical studies that he so much loved, joined in compelling his acquiescence.

"The atrocious crime of being a young man," which had compelled a hatred of William Pitt the younger, in a former day, was now brought up against him by many whose party subserviency fairly blushed before his manly integrity, and by others who envied him his success. But one year at the Circuit silenced all complaint. And in his thirty-third[pg 179] year he was acknowledged to be the able jurist whom, at his death in his sixty-sixth year of age, a whole nation mourned.

Dismissing for the present all consideration of his judicial life, and all estimate of his ability upon the bench, and passing over nearly twenty years of his life, we meet him in the possession of his fourth great honor in life—but an honor which was ever the first prized by him in all his after career—the appointment of Law Professor in Cambrige Law School.

Mr. Nathan Dane, whose Abridgement of American law in many volumes had obtained for him the gratitude of the profession at large, and the more substantial testimonial of pecuniary profit, had determined, about the fiftieth year of Judge Story's life, to repay the law some of the profits which its votaries had bestowed upon him, by donating ten thousand dollars for the establishment of a new professorship. He annexed to his donation, however, the condition that Judge Story should be the incumbent. To the great delight of the donor, and of the College Fellows, the Judge assented, and was inaugurated as Dane Professor of Law, with a special view to Lectures upon the Law of Nations, Commercial and Maritime Law, Federal Law and Equity—a station which he filled to the day of his lamented death.

This brief survey of his life presents him then in several public aspects; as a student, as an advocate, as a statesman, as a judge, and as an expounder of the great principles of law, which he worshipped with an idolatry of love.

To speak of his political career would not belong to the scope of our article. And to sit in judgment upon his judicial career would be our presumption. Older and abler pens must render their tributes to the extent and varied richness of his legal lore, which, taking root in principles, branched into the minutiæ of detail, under every sun and in every clime where law is recognized as a rule of human action. His judicial fame can never be increased or diminished by individual estimate. The law of patents, of admiralty and prizes, the jurisprudence of equity, and above all, his luminous explorations of what were once constitutional labyrinths, are monuments as indestructible as the Pyramids. If every trace of their original oneness be lost, they will yet live in the hours of future judicial days, in professional acts, and in the guiding policy of a remote posterity. His library of treatises are legal classics; and the worst defects which flippant carpers and canvassers of their claims to merit have discovered in their pages, have been their richness of detail and polish of learning! And no one can deny that as a judge he was the very example which 'Hobbes' in his 'Leviathan,' carried in mind when he thus wrote—"the things that make a good judge or good interpreter of the laws, are first—a right understanding of that principal law of nature called Equity, which depending not on the reading of other men's writings, but on the goodness of a man's own natural reason and meditation, is presumed to be in those most who have had most leisure and the most inclination to meditate thereon; second—contempt of unnecessary riches and preferments; third—to be able in judgment to divest himself of all fear, anger, hatred, love and compassion; fourthly and lastly—patience to hear, diligent attention in hearing, and memory to retain, digest, and apply what he hath heard."

Not the least amiable phase of the life of Judge Story, was the attention which he gave to letters and literary pursuits. He was no mere lawyer: no stringer of professional centos. He never hid his heart with the veil of dignity; nor smothered his fresh impulses (preserved intact from worldly rust since boyhood) with the weight of his judicial and professional labors. While he believed that the law was a jealous mistress, he knew that this mistress was too stable and sensible to decree that a gentle dalliance or seasonable flirtation with her maids of honor—Poetry, or the Arts, or Literature, or Love—was an unloyal act. He could turn from Grotius to Dickens, from Vattel to Thackeray. He could digest the points of the elaborate arguments of eminent counsel, and then turn aside to a gentle tonic from the administrating hand of Smollett or Walter Scott. Method was his master-key to all the combinations in the locks of labor.

Twice married he never ceased to eulogize the bliss of domesticity. Surrounded by loving eyes, the currents of his freshened affection flowed deeper and clearer every year. How he treasured home and home joys may be collected in the following lines from his poem on solitude (before referred to), written in his twenty-second year.

"Grandeur may dazzle with its transient glare

The herd of folly, and the tribe of care,

Who sport and flutter through their listless days,

Like motes that bask in Summer's noontide blaze,

With anxious steps round vacant splendor while,

Live on a look, and banquet on a smile;

But the firm race whose high endowments claim

The laurel-wreath that decks the brow of fame;

Who warmed by sympathy's electric glow,

In rapture tremble, and dissolve in woe,

Blest in retirement, scorn the frowns of fate,

And feel a transport power can ne'er create."

Touching the poem from which these lines are taken, we remember being shown the only copy of the published book which was known to exist, by the family of the Judge. The Assistant Librarian (who was born for his station in all that regards enthusiastic love of his duties), of the Harvard College library, showed us, with great triumph, a small sheep-bound volume, entitled "Solitude and other Poems, by Joseph Story," printed sometime in the commencement of this century: saying, "the Judge has burned all the copies he can pick up, and this is only to be read here." This poem was a sore subject to the author. He viewed it as not[pg 180] only a blot upon his dignity, but an annoyance to his professional fame. Numerous critics have laughed at it; but apart from the shorter poems, the main theme showed much aptitude of poetic imagery, invention, and harmony of expression. Glance at the following lines, which contain much of the genuine spark:

"Till nature's self the Vandal torch should raise,

And the vast alcove of creation blaze."

Or this—

"Blaze the vast domes inwrought with fretted gold,

The sumptuous pavements veins or pearl unfold,

Arch piled on arch with columned pride ascend,

Grove linked to grove their mingling shadows blend."

Or this—

"Let narrow prudence boast its grovelling art

To chill the generous sympathies of heart,

Teach to subdue each thought sublimely wild,

And crush, like Herod, fancy's new-born child."

It is highly probable that the learned Justice, knowing his taste for the poetical and fanciful, and his aptitude at the harmony of language, often erred in his judicial writings and treatises, by avoiding beauty of expression, in fear lest the dignity of his subject should be injured by too much association with the creatures of fancy. We have known most accomplished lawyers err through this same caution. Our biographer himself (Mr. William W. Story) has certainly done himself great injustice as a writer in his work on "Contracts," when, in the pages before us, he presents us with so much delicacy of fancy and rhetorical finish. Blackstone in his "Commentaries," Jones in his "Bailment" treatise, Stephens in his essay upon "Pleading," time-honored Fearne in his "Contingent Remainders," have shown how grateful and how suitable it is for the legal readers to find brilliancy of rhetoric adorning the most profound learning.

But certainly Judge Story possessed to a remarkable degree the faculty of condensation in his poetical works. His rhyme was not reason run mad; but reason in modest holiday attire. Where are lines at once so compact and so searching in their wisdom as the following, penned in 1832, as matters of advice to a young law student:

"Whene'er you speak, remember every cause

Stands not on eloquence, but stands on laws—

Pregnant in matter, in expression brief,

Let every sentence stand in bold relief;

On trifling points nor time nor talents waste,

A sad offence to learning and to taste;

Nor deal with pompous phrase; nor e'er suppose

Poetic flights belong to reasoning prose,

Loose declamation may deceive the crowd,

And seem more striking as it grows more loud;

But sober sense rejects it with disdain,

As nought but empty noise, and weak as vain.

The froth of words, the school-boy's vain parade

Of books and cases—all his stock in trade—

The pert conceits, the cunning tricks and play

Of low attorneys, strung in long array,

The unseemly jest, the petulent reply,

That chatters on, and cares not how, or why,

Studious, avoid—unworthy themes to scan,

They sink the speaker and disgrace the man.

Like the false lights, by flying shadows cast,

Scarce seen when present, and forgot when past.

Begin with dignity: expound with grace

Each ground of reasoning in its time and place;

Let order reign throughout—each topic touch,

Nor urge its power too little, or too much.

Give each strong thought its most attractive view,

In diction clear, and yet severely true,

And as the arguments in splendor grow,

Let each reflect its light on all below.

When to the close arrive make no delays

By petty flourishes, or verbal plays,

But sum the whole in one deep solemn strain,

Like a strong current hastening to the main."

If Mr. Story had never been elevated to the bench it is not likely his name would ever have become national property. Although plunged into politics in his earlier life, he was not fitted for the life. His devotion to the law, and his dread of becoming that slave to party usages which all public men must necessarily more or less fashion of themselves, would have retained him in his native state, and made his usefulness sectional. To the politicians of the school of General Jackson, and to the administration of that President, he was particularly distasteful. His tenacious conservatism drew forth from the "old hero," on one occasion, the remark, that "he was the most dangerous man in the country." Lord Eldon, with his doubts and pertinacious toryism was not more unpopular among the reformers in England than was Judge Story—the last of the old regime of federal judges—with the bank radicals of 1832.

When Chief Justice Marshall died he felt almost broken-hearted. A new race of constitutional expounders had arisen around him. Brother justices, with modern constructions, and more liberal notions of national law, were by his side. In many decisions he was now a sole dissenter. His pride was invaded; his self-love tortured; his adoration of certain legal constructions which he had deemed immutable in their nature, was desecrated. And, for many years previous to his decease, he had contemplated resigning from the federal judiciary, and living alone for his darling law school.

This school was his adopted child. He had taken it in a feeble and helpless infancy. He had given it strength and increased vitality. He brought it up to a vigorous and useful maturity. It was loved by only a handful of students when he gave his name and talents to aid its life: but when he died, a hundred and fifty pupils were its warm suitors, and hundreds of lawyers over the whole union cherished its prosperity as a link in their own chains of happiness.

And, although he thought not of it, his labors in the law school secure for his memory in the present generation a more brilliant existence than his array of judicial decisions, and his thousands of written pages, can ever bestow. In some pine forest settlement of Maine, or in some rude court-house in California, there are lawyers who bring before them every day his genial smiles and his impressive lectures, looked upon and heard by them in former times at Cambridge. Over all the Union, in almost every village, town, and city, are his pupils. Each one of them may sometimes reflect with rapture upon their days of college life, or remember with[pg 181] pride their first professional success: but not one of these considerations of reminiscence is so grateful to his mind as the thought of his novitiate with Justice Story. Depend upon it he treasures up those Cambridge text-books, those Cambridge note-books whose leaves daguerreotype the learning of the eminent deceased, those catalogues of students where his name is proudly found, as the most valuable portions of his library. He will never part with them: but they will descend to his children.

It was our privilege and pleasure also to know Mr. Justice Story at Cambridge; to have spent days of pleasure in the hours of his society; to have rendered to his teachings the tribute of delighted attention and grateful recollection. We, too, have been fascinated with that conversation, whose variety of exuberance and sometimes egotism, were its greatest ornaments. In the sunshine of his intellect our mind has sunned itself, and been warmed into zealous and proselyting admiration. To his gray-haired teachings we have paid personal reverence, and we unaffectedly hope to have caught from his society and intercourse a spark of that professional enthusiasm which is the only true guiding-star of the plodding lawyer.

The December blasts are hoarsely sobbing to-night through Mount Auburn, the garden of his mortal repose—the hallowed spot which his eloquence consecrated in its origin, and which his religious love in his lifetime sacredly cherished. The snows of winter and the autumn-woven carpet of fallen leaves are heaped upon his honored grave, the sodded paths to which, in the glowing spring-time and fragrant summer, are pressed most frequent with the tread of faithful mourners. Years have passed since that honored grave was first closed upon him. Longer years have flown since we were under his teachings. But we seem to view him the same as of yore. Again the class is assembled in the hushed lecture-room as his familiar tread is heard at the door; or as the burst of applause, where there is no sycophantic flattery known or felt, greets his entrance to his seat. Again we see him adjusting his genial spectacles, and looking around upon the upturned faces with parental pride. Again we hear his mellowed, although often impetuous accents, expounding familiar principles of law, and descending to the consideration of "first things" with as much pride and carefulness as the artist treats his Rubens or Titian, which for years and years has hung before him in all lights and shades and in every combination of position.

Again, we occupy a modest corner of the library while he is holding his moot court; infusing into the dignity of his manner a marked suavity of disposition which never forsook him; or he is perpetrating some appropriate legal joke to his audience, who never played upon his ease or good nature.

Again, we have stolen into the self-same library while he is holding an equity term of his circuit, to listen to the words of judicial wisdom which came from his utterance, exuberant as pearls of fancy from the mouth of an inspired poet.

Again, we see him at the summer twilight, seated by the trellised portico of his hospitable and happy homestead, surrounded by family or friends, enjoying the amenities of life with unaffected pleasure, and sometimes awakening the garden echoes with his cheerful ringing laugh; or we see him in the same hour of the day driving under the venerable elms of the numerous commons, gazing and bowing around with all the pleasure which the king of the fairy book marked upon his face when the love of his subjects, among whom he passed, came forth with the evening breeze to bless and greet him.

And then we pass into "reverie," and live a few minutes of "dream-life," recalling to mind the maxims and sayings which were uttered in our presence; and the many bright exemplars placed before his pupils, and the kindly greetings which were showered all about—for he was no distinguisher of persons so long as honor of feeling and uprightness of motive abounded in his presence.

He is gone! Yet in these pages of biography before us he will always live. From infancy to the ripened greatness of old age, his life is preserved to posterity by the hand of his faithful and grateful son, whose duty has been most ably and interestingly performed. The very minutiæ of his life are presented with fidelity and modesty of reference. Some may carp at this; to these let us say with the French proverbialist, Rien n'est indifférent dans la vie d'un grand homme; le genie se revéle dans ses moindres actions. The straws of every day life mark the direction of the breezes of individual action.

To the hearts of his pupils we would send this epitaph, and ask them if aught less tributary could be said of one who was and is to them a father.

Here sleeps the mortality of Joseph Story, who lived his days so well that he won in a short lifetime an immortality of fame. His career as a Man reflected lustre upon the lustre of an honored father's manhood, and added to the virtues which his mother bequeathed him. As a Politician, he rendered obeisance only to his conscience. As a Lawyer, he never disgraced his profession by a thought, and even honored it by his slightest acts. The colleague of Marshall, the two now shine together as twin stars in the often contemplated firmament of Judicial Renown. Not selfish of his Learning, it is scattered to the uttermost parts of the earth, and is treasured wherever it has fallen. The learning which he borrowed from continental Europe he repaid with magnificent interest. In Westminster Hall his name is associated with Nottingham, Hale, Mansfield, and Stowell. Counting[pg 182] as dross the wealth of professional eminence, he became from the love of it an expounder of law to its tyros. He has spread for thousands of adopted children a banquet of the treasures of legal lore, and next to reverencing his paternal love they cherish with profound gratitude the memory of his slightest instructions. While the Union of his birthplace exists, her citizens will regard with unfeigned admiration his constitutional teachings.