oring him we not only honor ourselves, but offer a just tribute to the cause of humanity.

MARSHALL W. WEIR addressed the court:

May it please the Court-When I was admitted to the bar of this State there was one lawyer practicing in our courts who was eminently conspicuous for his legal ability, scholarly attainments and refined deportment. He was then what he continued to be-the leader par excellence of our profession. We assemble to-day to do honor to the memory of that one, so recently taken from us by death, the Hon. GUSTAVUS KOERNER.

This occasion seems to me to be a particularly sad one. But few, if any, here present can remember a time when Governor KOERNER was not a prominent lawyer. Probably none of us remember a time when he did not exercise a marked influence in the affairs of our State. For more than three-score years he was identified with our State and national history. He was by nature generously endowed with mental capacity, and by education and continuous study he brought to the discharge of his duties a very high degree of intellectual culture and literary attainments. He was a ripe scholar and polished gentlemen, a statesman, jurist and diplomat. He served with credit to himself and to the people in the Illinois legislature. He shed lustre on the jurisprudence of our State by his service as one of the judges of our Supreme Court. As Lieutenant-Governor he presided over the deliberations of the State Senate. At an important period in the history of our country he represented our government as minister to Spain. In all positions and at all times he was true to himself and to his adopted country.

He received an excellent education in early life, taking the degree of LL.D. from the historic University of Heidelberg. He brought to the practice of his profession a mind thoroughly trained in the broad, underlying principles of law. He was more than a lawyer. He had attained the lofty conceptions of law had by the old Roman lawyers. They looked upon law as a branch of ethics whose foundations lay in right reason and the unalterable feelings of human nature. They believed it was as Cicero has portrayed it -not a thing thought out by the ingenuity of man, not a decree of the people, but an eternal entity, coeval in its origin and harmon

izing in its operations with the divine mind; that it was the recorded morality of a nation-a rule of social duty not less than that of civil conduct; that it was the sacred embodiment of the public will and understanding; the unanimous assent of a great people to the principles of a refined equity and enlarged benevolence, reduced to practice in the daily concerns of life with the precision, the consistency and uniformity of an exact science. He did not relax his studies on being admitted to the bar. As was truly said by a great Roman poet:

"Nil sine magno,

Vita, labore, mortalibus dedit."

And by one of our American poets:

"The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight;

But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night."

He was a student all his life. He himself said in this room, on a similarly sorrowful occasion, "The men of the greatest genius, in all ages and in all countries, have generally been the hardest workers." During the most active period of his professional life or the most pressing cares of public duty he never lost his interest in general literature. He was a great admirer of Homer, and continued to study that author, by way of recreation, in the original, up to a late period of life. At one time he had a mass of his own notes on the Iliad.

He was deeply interested in the cause of education and the uplifting of the people. Some who did not know him well, thought him, perhaps, exclusive and aristocratic in his ways. But he was not. That thought was but the tribute instinctively paid by less favored minds to his superior endowments. He was especially interested in the Belleville Public Library, and was one of the original founders thereof, and since its establishment to the day of his death served constantly as president of the board of directors. One of his chief pleasures during his last years was found in that library. It was my pleasure to meet him there frequently and elsewhere. On one occasion I remarked to him that I was about to visit his old University town,-Heidelberg,-and asked what he could suggest to me as objects of interest there. His countenance lighted up as he exclaimed: "Oh, everything! Everything!" But soon realizing that the sweet memories which he retained of that place could not be transferred to my mind on

sight of the city, he went more into detail, naming, of course, among other things, the University.

Born and reared in the city of Frankfort-on-the-Main,-a free city, though more or less under the influence of neighboring monarchical forms of government,-his mind became early imbued with the principles of republicanism. The cause of freedom ever found in him a zealous friend. He was one of the founders and promoters of the party in this country which resulted in making freemen of all who breathe our air. Patriots struggling for human freedom had a passport to his affections. He met Louis Kossuth in St. Louis in March, 1852, on the occasion of that patriot's visit to this country. The great Hungarian endeared himself to him at He was charmed with Kossuth's versatility of language, his sweet voice, his keen insight into motives, his close observation and deep reflection, and the justness of his judgment of men and affairs. He afterwards wrote: "Of one thing I am certain: No man could leave Kossuth without being conscious that he had been in the presence of a great man." That judgment of his on Kossuth is mine on himself. I have often felt when with him that I was in the presence of a great man. He was great. His qualities of heart and head made him great. No one who ever knew him but must revere his memory.

once.

Though passed from our sight, let us not think our friend is no more. Job propounded a question which in all ages has been of profoundest interest to thinking men: "If a man die shall he live again?" Cicero, who lived before the advent of the Man of Galilee, said: “If I err in believing that the souls of men are immortal, I am glad thus to err, and am unwilling that the error in which I delight shall be wrested from me." A century later another orator of equal learning and no less renowned said: "This mortal must put on immortality. Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?"

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FRANKLIN A. MCCONAUGHY addressed the court:

If your Honors please-In view of the wide difference in our respective ages it was not given to me to be a personal witness to the earlier and more active period of the career of GUSTAV KOERNER, but in later years abundant opportunity was afforded me to test

and prove his wide capacity, his varied accomplishments and the versatility of his mind. History and the traditions of his home supply the rest. It will be recorded of him that all the various public functions which he was called upon to perform were discharged with marked ability, a stern adherence to a rigid idea of duty, and a lofty and enthusiastic patriotism. His private life was singularly blameless, pure, regular and exemplary, and his accomplishments were as broad and varied as the field of science, law and letters. No act or word in his public or private life is known which can cause a blush to rise on the cheek of any of those who bear his name. They may well be proud of the culture and achievements for which it was and ever will be distinguished.

It has occurred on such occasions as this, that to the man who, with Othello, can fearlessly say, "Speak of me as I am," the ancient and inexorable maxim, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, operates more as a shadow than as a shield. It has through this come to be believed that every epitaph is a lie, and that all eulogy is half made up of extravagance and half of concealment,-one-half of expressio falsi and the other half of suppressio veri. It is well known that no man is absolutely perfect, and it might be better, and what is said be more fully accepted, were the trifling failings, lapses and weaknesses generally mentioned and everything told as it is. Then, in the case before us, where nearly all there is to say is good, and it is so proclaimed over his last resting place, it would be believed, indeed, not only by those who, with us, are living witnesses of its truth, but by those who shall come after us.

Of all those who have sought our shores from other lands since the foundation of our republic, KOERNER belonged to a class who have contributed most toward the advancement and the perpetuation of our free institutions. Thrown off their own shores by revolutionary upheaval brought on by their struggles for liberty, they came unimpelled by a single sordid hope or desire for pecuniary betterment of their fortune's estate, but a genuine love of freedom. They gathered the scattered remnants of their fortunes,their cherished Penates,—and came to us, sacrificing friends, family, home; their social positions and the yearnings of their ambition. Like the patriot and poet who bore KOERNER'S name a score of years before, his restless sword ever irresistibly leapt from its scabbard at freedom's every call,-there, in the land of his nativity; and here, in the land of his adoption.

How delightful is even the memory of a man moved by a lofty sentiment! It breathes upon us with a refreshing sweetness, wafted into our sordid and selfish world from the Arcadian clime of youthful imagination, laden with the perfume of the flowers of life's spring time.

It is not known to those even who knew KOERNER best and most intimately, what hopes, if any, he may have entertained of anything in that mysterious realm beyond the grave. If such there were, they were never intruded on others, nor did he intrude upon or question such hopes or beliefs in others. That liberty, in this as in all things, which he demanded for himself he fully accorded to others, and if a reward waits on men whose lives have been correct and according to the highest standard, KOERNER is secure.

Thus, full of years, of honors and usefulness, his life is finished. Like Newcome, (the most superb character in the greatest English fiction,) to the last call he has made the last response,—Adsum.

Mr. JUSTICE BAKER, on behalf of the court, responded: I am requested to express, in behalf of the court, our appreciation of and cordial concurrence in the sentiments expressed in the memorial and resolutions presented and in the remarks by which they have been accompanied. It is meet and proper that the members of the bar should ask that there should be spread upon the records of this court a testimonial of their affection and esteem for the late GUSTAVUS KOERNER, who at the time of his death was, as we believe, the oldest practicing lawyer at the bar of Illinois. And it is also meet and proper that we, his successors upon the bench of this court, should pay honor to the memory of the last survivor of the justices who sat here and presided in the Supreme Court of the State prior to the re-organization of the judiciary under the constitution of 1848.

Judge KOERNER was first admitted to the bar of this court in the year 1835. He was then a young man, but perhaps few young men, either before that time or since, have come to this bar better equipped for the duties assumed. He had the advantages of a thorough education at the University of Heidelberg, and was already well read in the principles of both the common law and the civil law. That he at once won and enjoyed the confidence of his fellowcitizens and clients, and speedily stepped into what was for that