principles in the capacity for their discharge thus committed, should have been so far fulfilled — that he should have left such invaluable legacies of his wisdom and learning to the profession and the world, in works of which we cannot weigh the worth, and which those that come after us, will not willingly let die. And we may well rejoice, moreover, that he should not have been called to pay the great debt to nature, until he had so largely and so nearly discharged that which it was his pride to acknowledge himself to owe to the science and the profession; one which he felt within himself such a conscious power to discharge, so far as it should be compatible with the sovereign dispensations of the divine will. And most devoutly do we rejoice that the record of his fidelity should have so fully been completed. Quicquid ex illo amavimus, quicquid mirati sumus, manet, mansurumque est in animis hominum, in æternitate temporum, fama rerum.

While we are thus called to feel, in his own expressive words, that "there is an excellence over which death hath no power, but lives on through all time, still freshening with the lapse of age;" and are also led to read the solemn sentence inscribed upon the portals of the grave; "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it," and are drawn to listen to the closing requiem of mortal labors, in the divine voice, "Blessed are the dead, that die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them; "we follow with this parting tribute of our affection and admiration the departure of his immortal spirit, entering upon that reversion of fame which awaits illustrious worth in this world, and, as we humbly hope, that high reversion which faith assigns to the pure and just in the future.

Resolved, That these resolutions be communicated to the Court at the opening of the term, and that a copy be also forwarded to the family of the deceased by the President.

PHINEAS BARNES, Sec'y.

STEPHEN LONGFELLOW, Pres't.

On the opening of the Circuit Court, on the same day, in pursuance of the foregoing, the Attorney of the United States, AUGUSTINE HAINES, Esq., presented these Resolutions to the Court, with an appropriate Address.

To these proceedings, his Honor, Judge WARE, the Associate Presiding Judge, responded as follows.

GENTLEMEN OF THE BAR:

On my part, as one of the Court, I receive with profound sensibility, and cordially respond to the terms in which you have ex

pressed yourselves in regard to the late presiding Judge of this Court. Having been associated with him for more than twenty years in the performance of judicial duties in this district, on this occasion, which brings back fresh to my recollection the incidents occurring in an official connection of such a length of time, in all respects so pleasant and instructive, and now forever dissolved; I should do injustice to my own feelings, if I should confine myself to a mere formal response to the sentiments which have been so appropriately expressed by the gentlemen of the bar.

Since the last term of this Court, by the dispensation of an allwise Providence, he has been called to the world of his fathers, prematurely, we shall be ready to say, when we regret the loss of what a few years more of life and health, if they had been spared, might have given to our common country, and especially to the profession to which his life had been devoted; but we can hardly say prematurely when we look to the monuments of learning and industry which he last left, or to the wide-spread fame which rests as a living glory on his memory. He has been called from the scene of his labors, full of honors and ripe with the fruits of a well spent life.

Judge Story, with an intellectual temperament which perhaps originally inclined him to the more graceful and attractive pursuits of general and polite literature, early applied himself to the severer studies of the law; and without wholly abandoning the cultivation of elegant letters as a graceful ornament in every profession of life, devoted the main energies of his mind to his chosen science. From the commencement of his professional studies, this became the great business of his life, and was continued with unwearied perseverance to its close. From such long and persevering devotion, continued with a zeal that never cooled, I may say with an enthusiasm that never faltered, much might be naturally expected even from common powers of mind. But when that patience of labor that asked for no repose, was united as it was in him with extraordinary quickness of apprehension, a remarkable tenacity of memory and rare maturity of judgment, great effects might naturally be expected. The result certainly has not disappointed what might have been the most sanguine anticipations of his friends.

He has placed himself among the very greatest lights of jurisprudence. If we may rank him with a Parsons, a Marshall and a Kent, of our own country, without apprehension that he will suffer by the comparison, so we may place him in company with the greatest names in jurisprudence that have adorned the annals of that country from which we have derived the body of our common law. There are few who will not admit that he was a fit companion for the Hales and Holts, the Hardwickes and Mansfields, who have illustrated the law in the land of our fathers. In the monuments of learning and industry which he has left behind him, he far excels any of them. His juridical works, including his judgments pronounced in litigated causes argued before him in the Circuit Court, together with his elementary treatises on various titles of the law, fill nearly thirty large volumes, the exclusive productions of his own mind, exclusive of his numerous and often very elaborate opinions comprised in the series of the Reports of the Supreme Court, extending through a period of thirty-four years. Few men, of whatever fertility or industry, in any department of human learning have ever written more. No magistrate and no author in any age has enriched the jurisprudence of the common law by so great an addition to its treasures, whether we regard his works in their actual amount or the variety of the subjects which they treat. Called upon by his official station to administer every branch of the law, his judicial opinions cover the whole ground of jurisprudence, and he has treated them all with such affluence of learning and accuracy of discrimination, that it is difficult to say with what department of the law he was most familiar. Whether he is dealing with the abstruse and technical points of the old common law, or the complicated and subtle, as well as the liberal and enlarged principles of equity, or again with the delicate and difficult constitutional questions which arise out of our mixed and complex system of simple and complex governments, or with those great subjects of international law which grow out of a state of war, and arise in the prize jurisdiction of the admiralty, his knowledge seems to be equally intimate and exact in all.

On all these matters, so various and important, he has been called upon officially to form and deliver opinions in which private rights

were involved and complicated, not only with great principles of law, but often with great public and national interests. It would be giving high praise to any magistrate to say that he exhibited intellectual endowments equal to the work. But in saying so much, I shall, I trust, be justified in adding that this would not be awarding the full measure of praise that may justly be given. On all these he has exhibited a depth of learning, an acuteness of discrimination, a profoundness of judgment, and a fertility of illustration, which, all together, have been equalled by few magistrates of any age, and been surpassed by none.

It may be too much to expect of any man, however wide his learning and however penetrating his judgment, that every decision made in the course of a long and laborious judicial life, should be free from all error. Never to fail in judgment does not belong to the condition of humanity. And if it shall hereafter appear on a more profound and critical examination, that error has in some cases crept into his judicial opinions, it will, I believe, also be found that he has left as great a number of judgments behind him, which will remain to future ages permanent landmarks of the law, as any other Judge that ever sat on the bench in this country or in England.

But there is one quality in the judicial opinions of Judge Story, in which, if they are not altogether permanent, they are not surpassed by those of any other Judge in the annals of jurisprudence. If there be a latent error in them, they usually themselves furnish the means by which it may be detected. For such was his conscientious diligence, the extent and profoundness of his learning, and the fertility of his mind, that the subject was seldom dismissed until it had been analyzed with the most thorough exactness, until all its analogies and distinctions had been critically examined, the whole dissected by a most subtle and accurate logic, and over all had been thrown the light of all the learning that pertained to the matter. So that if the reader hesitates as to its conclusion, the exuberant learning with which the opinion overflows will lead him to all the law which is applicable to the subject. So thorough and exhausting is the examination in some of his opinions, that they may be studied and relied upon, both as elementary and didactic

commentaries, and as copious and complete disquisitions on the particular points of law involved in the cases, so that the most careful researches into the sources of the law will add nothing to the fullness of the discussion. It may well be doubted whether any magistrate in any age ever has pronounced more judgments of this character, equally distinguished for the variety and extent of learning, by which they were illustrated, and the profound analysis by which both the rules of law and the judicial decisions bearing upon them have been reduced to their simple elementary principles.

But it is not only by profound and learned judgment that this eminent magistrate has enriched the science to which he devoted his life. He has given to the profession a large number of elementary treatises or commentaries on various titles of the law, at once so simple and clear in the method, that the unlearned may read them with the most easy and perfect comprehension of the whole matter that is treated, and at the same time so copious, exact and searching in the analysis and discussion of principles and cases as leaves nothing to be desired by the learned. It is when we regret the loss of other works of the same character which we were led to expect from his learning and diligence, that we are constrained to say, in our deep regret and sorrow, that this great light and ornament both of his country and of his profession has been prematurely taken from the scene of his labors.

From the contemplation of the great learning and laborious diligence which distinguished him as a magistrate, we may turn with singular satisfaction to the manner in which he discharged the various duties of his high and responsible office. All who have practised in his Court will bear witness to the uniform urbanity of his manner of presiding at trials. It was an urbanity that was extended to all. But to the younger and more inexperienced members of the bar, on their first introduction to the Court, it was something beyond mere official civility. It was marked with that gentleness and indulgence that seemed to belong more to the partial favor of a parent than the severe gravity of a Judge. And it was perhaps owing to this gentleness and suavity of manner in the presiding Judge, that in the sharp conflicts which so frequently