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

Two

His manner to the jury was earnest and It is the disgrace of our country that its spirited; he managed his causes with tact judicial officers are the most poorly paid of (that great acquirement of the successful all professions and pursuits. And in every lawyer: being, as a distinguished barrister section of the Union, that distinguished lawnow dead and gone said to Dr. Hosack, the yer who accepts a seat upon the bench, must same sheet anchor to the advocate which mer-hold the glories of his honor at a very high cury 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 accom-year less than a ballet-dancer receives by plished. 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.

the month in all its principal cities. 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 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 ap-
pointment
of Law Professor in Cambrige
Law School.

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 judginent 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

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-Poetry, or the Arts, or Literature, or Love 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.

-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.

This brief survey of his life presents him then in several public aspects; as a student, as an advocate, as a statesinan, 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 minutia of detail, under every sun and in every clime "Grandeur may dazzle with its transient glare where law is recognized as a rule of human The herd of folly, and the tribe of care, Who sport and flutter through their listless days, action. His judicial fame can never be inLike motes that bask in Summer's noontide blaze, creased or diminished by individual estimate. With anxious steps round vacant splendor while, The law of patents, of admiralty and prizes, Live on a look, and banquet on a sinile; But the firm race whose high endowments claim the jurisprudence of equity, and above all, The laurel-wreath that decks the brow of fame; his luminous explorations of what were once Who warmed by sympathy's electric glow, In rapture tremble, and dissolve in woe, constitutional labyrinths, are monuments as Blest in retirement, scorn the frowns of fate, indestructible as the Pyramids. If every And feel a transport power can ne'er create." trace of their original oneness be lost, they Touching the poem from which these lines will yet live in the hours of future judicial are taken, we remember being shown the days, in professional acts, and in the guiding only copy of the published book which was policy of a remote posterity. His library of known to exist, by the family of the Judge. treatises are legal classics; and the worst de- The Assistant Librarian (who was born for fects which flippant carpers and canvassers his station in all that regards enthusiastic of their claims to merit have discovered in love of his duties), of the Harvard College their pages, have been their richness of detail library, showed us, with great triumph, a and polish of learning! And no one can small sheep-bound volume, entitled "Solideny that as a judge he was the very exam- tude and other Poems, by Joseph Story," ple which Hobbes' in his 'Leviathan,' car- printed sometime in the commencement of ried in mind when he thus wrote "the this century: saying, "the Judge has burned things that make a good judge or good inter- all the copies he can pick up, and this is only preter of the laws, are first-a right under- to be read here." This poem was a sore standing of that principal law of nature subject to the author. He viewed it as not

only a blot upon his dignity, but an annoy-
ance 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 fol-
lowing 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 of pearl unfold,
Arch piled on arch with columined 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 sublue each thought sublimely wild,
And crush, like Herod, fancy's new-born child."

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 It is highly probable that the learned Jus- was particularly distasteful. His tenacious tice, knowing his taste for the poetical and conservatism drew forth from the "old hero," fanciful, and his aptitude at the harmony of on one occasion, the remark, that "he was language, often erred in his judicial writings the most dangerous man in the country." and treatises, by avoiding beauty of expres- Lord Eldon, with his doubts and pertinacious sion, in fear lest the dignity of his subject toryism was not more unpopular among the should be injured by too much association reformers in England than was Judge Story with the creatures of fancy. We have known the last of the old regime of federal judges most accomplished lawyers err through this-with the bank radicals of 1832. 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 canse
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.

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 siniles 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

pride their first professional success: but Again, we have stolen into the self-same not one of these considerations of reminis- library while he is holding an equity term of cence is so grateful to his mind as the thought his circuit, to listen to the words of judicial of his novitiate with Justice Story. Depend wisdom which came from his utterance, exuupon it he treasures up those Cambridge text-berant as pearls of fancy from the mouth of books, those Cambridge_note-books whose an inspired poet. 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 And then we pass into "reverie," and live intellect our mind has sunned itself, and been a few minutes of "dream-life," recalling to warmed into zealous and proselyting admira- mind the maxims and sayings which were uttion. To his gray-haired teachings we have tered in our presence; and the many bright paid personal reverence, and we unaffectedly exemplars placed before his pupils, and the hope to have caught from his society and in- kindly greetings which were showered all tercourse a spark of that professional enthu-about-for he was no distinguisher of persons siasm which is the only true guiding-star of the plodding lawyer.

ing as dross the wealth of professional emi- | As when an unimagined Future streamed nence, he became from the love of it an ex-In that light lonely, as in the old dark, All over him in glory. Yet he stood pounder of law to its tyros. He has spread Lonely, but looking to that light for life. for thousands of adopted children a banquet and saw, through the deep Future shedding balm, Spring-pinioned Hope impetuously flew, of the treasures of legal lore, and next to re- His fame a tree in flower. verencing his paternal love they cherish with profound gratitude the memory of his slight-He saw but Christopher made famous? Look! est instructions. While the Union of his birthplace exists, her citizens will regard with unfeigned admiration his constitutional teachings. COLUMBUS AT THE GATES OF GENOA.