With a mind thus deeply imbued with learning, it will be felt that he was formed less for the contentions of the forum than for the exercises of the academy. And yet it is understood that he declined several opportunities of entering its learned retreats. In 1806 he was elected Hancock Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages in Harvard University; and at a later day he was invited to the chair of Greek Literature in the same institution. On the death of Professor Ashmun, many eyes were turned towards him, as fitted to occupy the professorship of law in Cambridge, since so ably filled by Mr. Greenleaf; and on two different occasions his name was echoed by the public prints as about to receive the dignity of President of the University. But he continued in the practice of the law to the last.
He should be claimed by the bar with peculiar pride. If it be true, as has been said, that Serjeant Talfourd has reflected more honor upon his profession by the successful cultivation of letters than any of his contemporaries by their forensic triumphs, then should the American bar acknowledge their obligations to the fame of Mr. Pickering. He was one of us. He was a regular in our ranks; in other service, only a volunteer.
The mind is led instinctively to a parallel between him and that illustrious scholar and jurist, ornament of the English law, and pioneer of Oriental studies in England, Sir William Jones, to whom I have already referred. Both confessed, in early life, the attractions of classical studies; both were trained in the discipline of the law; both, though engaged in its practice, always delighted to contemplate it as a science; both surrendered themselves with irrepressible ardor to the study of languages, while the one broke into the unexplored fields of Eastern philology, and the other devoted himself more especially to the native tongues of his own Western continent. Their names are, perhaps, equally conspicuous for the number of languages which occupied their attention. As we approach them in private life, the parallel still continues. In both there were the same truth, generosity, and gentleness, a cluster of noble virtues,—while the intenser earnestness of the one is compensated by the greater modesty of the other. To our American jurist-scholar, also, may be applied those words of the Greek couplet, borrowed from Aristophanes, and first appropriated to his English prototype: "The Graces, seeking a shrine that would not decay, found the soul of Jones."
While dwelling with admiration upon his triumphs of intellect and the fame he has won, we must not forget the virtues, higher than intellect or fame, by which his life was adorned. In the jurist and the scholar we must not lose sight of the man. So far as is allotted to a mortal, he was a spotless character. The murky tides of this world seemed to flow by without soiling his garments. He was pure in thought, word, and deed; a lover of truth, goodness, and humanity; the friend of the young, encouraging them in their studies, and aiding them by wise counsels; ever kind, considerate, and gentle to all; towards children, and the unfortunate, full of tenderness. He was of charming modesty. With learning to which all bowed with reverence, he walked humbly before God and man. His pleasures were simple. In the retirement of his study, and the blandishments of his music-loving family, he found rest from the fatigues of the bar. He never spoke in anger, nor did any hate find a seat in his bosom. His placid life was, like law in the definition of Aristotle, "mind without passion."
Through his long and industrious career he was blessed with unbroken health. He walked on earth with an unailing body and a serene mind; and at last, in the fulness of time, when the garner was overflowing with the harvests of a well-spent life, in the bosom of his family, the silver cord was gently loosed. He died at Boston, May 5, 1846, in the seventieth year of his age,—only a few days after he had prepared for the press the last sheets of a new and enlarged edition of his Greek Lexicon. His wife, to whom he was married in 1805, and three children, survive to mourn their irreparable loss.
The number of societies, both at home and abroad, of which he was an honored member, attests the widespread recognition of his merits. He was President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; President of the American Oriental Society; Foreign Secretary of the American Antiquarian Society; Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Ethnological Society, the American Philosophical Society; Honorary Member of the Historical Societies of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland, and Georgia; Honorary Member of the National Institution for the Promotion of Science, the American Statistical Association, the Northern Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hanover, N.H., and the Society for the Promotion of Legal Knowledge, Philadelphia; Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, the Oriental Society of Paris, the Academy of Sciences and Letters at Palermo, the Antiquarian Society at Athens, and the Royal Northern Antiquarian Society at Copenhagen; and Titular Member of the French Society of Universal Statistics.
For many years he maintained a copious correspondence, on matters of jurisprudence, science, and learning, with distinguished names at home and abroad: especially with Mr. Du Ponceau, at Philadelphia,—with William von Humboldt, at Berlin,—with Mittermaier, the jurist, at Heidelberg,—with Dr. Prichard, author of the Physical History of Mankind, at Bristol,—and with Lepsius, the hierologist, who wrote to him from the foot of the Pyramids, in Egypt.
The death of one thus variously connected is no common sorrow. Beyond the immediate circle of family and friends, he will be mourned by the bar, among whom his daily life was passed,—by the municipality of Boston, whose legal adviser he was,—by clients, who depended upon his counsels,—by good citizens, who were charmed by the abounding virtues of his private life,—by his country, who will cherish his name more than gold or silver,—by the distant islands of the Pacific, who will bless his labors in the words they read,—finally, by the company of jurists and scholars throughout the world. His fame and his works will be fitly commemorated, on formal occasions, hereafter. Meanwhile, one who knew him at the bar and in private life, and who loves his memory, lays this early tribute upon his grave.
An Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, at their Anniversary, August 27, 1846.
Then I would say to the young disciple of Truth and Beauty, who would know how to satisfy the noble impulse of his heart, through every opposition of the century,—I would say, Give the world beneath your influence a direction towards the good, and the tranquil rhythm of time will bring its development.—Schiller.
In this Oration, as in that of the 4th of July, Mr. Sumner took advantage of the occasion to express himself freely, especially on the two great questions of Slavery and War. In the sensitive condition of public sentiment at that time, such an effort would have found small indulgence, if he had not placed himself behind four such names. While commemorating the dead, he was able to uphold living truth.
The acceptance of this Oration at the time is attested by the toast of John Quincy Adams at the dinner of the Society:—
"The memory of the Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist; and not the memory, but the long life of the kindred spirit who has this day embalmed them all."
This was followed by a letter from Mr. Adams to Mr. Sumner, dated at Quincy, August 29, 1846, containing the following passage:—
"It is a gratification to me to have the opportunity to repeat the thanks which I so cordially gave you at the close of your oration of last Thursday, and of which the sentiment offered by me at the dinner-table was but an additional pulsation from the same heart. I trust I may now congratulate you on the felicity, first of your selection of your subject, and secondly of its consummation in the delivery.... The pleasure with which I listened to your discourse was inspired far less by the success and all but universal acceptance and applause of the present moment than by the vista of the future which is opened to my view. Casting my eyes backward no farther than the 4th of July of last year, when you set all the vipers of Alecto a-hissing by proclaiming the Christian law of universal peace and love, and then casting them forward, perhaps not much farther, but beyond my own allotted time, I see you have a mission to perform. I look from Pisgah to the Promised Land; you must enter upon it.... To the motto on my seal [Alteri sæculo] add Delenda est servitus."
Similar testimony was offered by Edward Everett in a letter dated at Cambridge, September 5, 1846, where he thanks Mr. Sumner for his "most magnificent address,—an effort certainly of unsurpassed felicity and power,"—then in another letter dated at Cambridge, September 25th, where he writes: "I read it last evening with a renewal of the delight with which I heard it. Should you never do anything else, you have done enough for fame; but you are, as far as these public efforts are concerned, at the commencement of a career, destined, I trust, to last for long years, of ever-increasing usefulness and honor."
Mr. Prescott, under date of October 2d, writes:—
"The most happy conception has been carried out admirably, as if it were the most natural order of things, without the least constraint or violence. I don't know which of your sketches I like the best. I am inclined to think the Judge; for there you are on your own heather, and it is the tribute of a favorite pupil to his well-loved master, gushing warm from the heart. Yet they are all managed well; and the vivid touches of character and the richness of the illustration will repay the study, I should imagine, of any one familiar with the particular science you discuss."
Chancellor Kent, of New York, under date of October 6th, expresses himself as follows:—
"I had the pleasure to receive your Phi Beta Kappa Address, and I think it to be one of the most splendid productions in point of diction and eloquence that I have ever read. You brought a most fervent mind to the task, glowing with images of transcendent worth, and embellished with classical and literary allusions drawn from your memory and guided by your taste, with extraordinary force.... You have raised a noble monument to the four great men who have adorned your State, and I feel deeply humbled with a sense of my own miserable inferiority when I contemplate such exalted models."
These contemporary tokens of friendship and sympathy seem a proper part of this record.
To-day is the festival of our fraternity, sacred to learning, to friendship, and to truth. From many places, remote and near, we have come together beneath the benediction of Alma Mater. We have walked in the grateful shelter of her rich embowering trees. Friend has met friend, classmate has pressed the hand of classmate, while the ruddy memories of youth and early study have risen upon the soul. And now we have come up to this church, a company of brothers, in long, well-ordered procession, commencing with the silver locks of reverend age, and closing with the fresh faces that glow with the golden blood of youth.
With hearts of gratitude, we greet among our number those whose lives are crowned by desert,—especially him who, returning from conspicuous cares in a foreign land, now graces our chief seat of learning,[154]—and not less him who, closing, in the high service of the University, a life-long career of probity and honor, now voluntarily withdraws to a scholar's repose.[155] We salute at once the successor and the predecessor, the rising and the setting sun. And ingenuous youth, in whose bosom are infolded the germs of untold excellence, whose ardent soul sees visions closed to others by the hand of Time, commands our reverence not less than age rich in experience and honor. The Present and the Past, with all their works, we know and measure; but the triumphs of the Future are unknown and immeasurable;—therefore is there in the yet untried powers of youth a vastness of promise to quicken the regard. Welcome, then, not less the young than the old! and may this our holiday brighten with harmony and joy!
As the eye wanders around our circle, Mr. President, in vain it seeks a beloved form, for many years so welcome in the seat you now fill. I might have looked to behold him on this occasion. But death, since we last met together, has borne him away. The love of friends, the devotion of pupils, the prayers of the nation, the concern of the world, could not shield him from the inexorable shaft. Borrowing for him those words of genius and friendship which gushed from Clarendon at the name of Falkland, that he was "a person of prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of flowing and obliging humanity and goodness to mankind, and of primitive simplicity and integrity of life,"[156] I need not add the name of Story. To dwell on his character, and all that he has done, were a worthy theme. But his is not the only well-loved countenance which returns no answering smile.
This year our Society, according to custom, publishes the catalogue of its members, marking by a star the insatiate archery of Death during the brief space of four years. In no period of its history, equally short, have such shining marks been found.
Scholarship, Jurisprudence, Art, Humanity, each is called to mourn a chosen champion. Pickering the Scholar, Story the Jurist, Allston the Artist, Channing the Philanthropist, are gone. When our last catalogue was published they were all living, each in his field of fame. Our catalogue of this year gathers them with the peaceful dead. Sweet and exalted companionship! They were joined in life, in renown, and in death. They were brethren of our fraternity, sons of Alma Mater. Story and Channing were classmates; Pickering preceded them by two years only, Allston followed them by two years. Casting our eyes upon the closing lustre of the last century, we discern this brilliant group whose mortal light is now obscured. After the toils of his long life, Pickering sleeps serenely in the place of his birth, near the honored dust of his father. Channing, Story, and Allston have been laid to rest in Cambridge, where they first tasted together the tree of life: Allston in the adjoining church-yard, within sound of the voice that now addresses you; Channing and Story in the pleasant, grassy bed of Mount Auburn, under the shadow of beautiful trees, whose falling autumnal leaves are fit emblem of the generations of men.
It was the custom in ancient Rome, on solemn occasions, to bring forward the images of departed friends, arrayed in robes of office, and carefully adorned, while some one recounted what they had done, in the hope of refreshing the memory of their deeds, and of inspiring the living with new impulse to virtue. "For who," says the ancient historian, "can behold without emotion the forms of so many illustrious men, thus living, as it were, and breathing together in his presence? or what spectacle can be conceived more great and striking?"[158] The images of our departed brothers are present here to-day, not in sculptured marble, but graven on our hearts. We behold them again, as in life. They mingle in our festival, and cheer us by their presence. It were well to catch the opportunity of observing together their well-known lineaments, and of dwelling anew, with warmth of living affection, upon the virtues by which they are commended. Devoting the hour to their memory, we may seek also to comprehend and reverence the great interests which they lived to promote. Pickering, Story, Allston, Channing! Their names alone, without addition, awaken a response, which, like the far-famed echo of Dodona, will prolong itself through the live-long day. But, great as they are, we feel their insignificance by the side of those great causes to which their days were consecrated,—Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love, the comprehensive attributes of God. Illustrious on earth, they were but lowly and mortal ministers of lofty and immortal truth. It is, then, the Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist, whom we celebrate to-day, and whose pursuits will be the theme of my discourse.
Here, on this threshold, let me say, what is implied in the very statement of my subject, that, in offering these tributes, I seek no occasion for personal eulogy or biographical detail. My aim is to commemorate the men, but more to advance the objects which they so successfully served. Reversing the order in which they left us, I shall take the last first.
John Pickering, the Scholar, died in the month of May, 1846, aged sixty-nine, within a short distance of that extreme goal which is the allotted limit of human life. By Scholar I mean a cultivator of liberal studies, a student of knowledge in its largest sense,—not merely classical, not excluding what in our day is exclusively called science, but which was unknown when the title of scholar first prevailed; for though Cicero dealt a sarcasm at Archimedes, he spoke with higher truth when he beautifully recognized the common bond between all departments of knowledge. The brother whom we mourn was a scholar, a student, as long as he lived. His place was not merely among those called by courtesy Educated Men, with most of whom education is past and gone,—men who have studied; he studied always. Life to him was an unbroken lesson, pleasant with the charm of knowledge and the consciousness of improvement.
The world knows and reveres his learning; they only who partook somewhat of his daily life fully know the modesty of his character. His knowledge was such that he seemed to be ignorant of nothing, while, in the perfection of his humility, he might seem to know nothing. By learning conspicuous before the world, his native diffidence withdrew him from its personal observation. Surely, learning so great, which claimed so little, will not be forgotten. The modesty which detained him in retirement during life introduces him now that he is dead. Strange reward! Merit which shrank from the living gaze is now observed of all men. The voice once so soft is returned in echoes from the tomb.
I place in the front his modesty and his learning, two attributes by which he will be always remembered. I might enlarge on his sweetness of temper, his simplicity of life, his kindness to the young, his sympathy with studies of all kinds, his sensibility to beauty, his conscientious character, his passionless mind. Could he speak to us of himself, he might adopt words of self-painting from the candid pen of his eminent predecessor in the cultivation of Grecian literature, leader of its revival in Europe, as Pickering was leader in America,—the urbane and learned Erasmus. "For my own part," says the early scholar to his English friend, John Colet, "I best know my own failings, and therefore shall presume to give a character of myself. You have in me a man of little or no fortune,—a stranger to ambition,—of a strong propensity to loving-kindness and friendship,—without any boast of learning, but a great admirer of it,—one who has a profound veneration for any excellence in others, however he may feel the want of it in himself,—who can readily yield to others in learning, but to none in integrity,—a man sincere, open, and free,—a hater of falsehood and dissimulation,—of a mind lowly and upright,—of few words, and who boasts of nothing but an honest heart."[159]
I have called him Scholar; for it is in this character that he leaves so excellent an example. But the triumphs of his life are enhanced by the variety of his labors, and especially by his long career at the bar. He was a lawyer, whose days were spent in the faithful practice of his profession, busy with clients, careful of their concerns in court and out of court. Each day witnessed his untiring exertion in scenes little attractive to his gentle and studious nature. He was formed to be a seeker of truth rather than a defender of wrong; and he found less satisfaction in the strifes of the bar than in the conversation of books. To him litigation was a sorry feast, and a well-filled docket of cases not unlike the curious and now untasted dish of "nettles," in the first course of a Roman banquet. He knew that the duties of the profession were important, but felt that even their successful performance, when unattended by juridical culture, gave small title to regard, while they were less pleasant and ennobling than the disinterested pursuit of learning. He would have said, at least as regards his own profession, with the Lord Archon of the Oceana, "I will stand no more to the judgment of lawyers and divines than to that of so many other tradesmen."[160]
It was the law as a trade that he pursued reluctantly, while he had true happiness in the science of jurisprudence, to which he devoted many hours rescued from other cares. By example, and contributions of the pen, he elevated the study, and invested it with the charm of liberal pursuits. By marvellous assiduity he was able to lead two lives,—one producing the fruits of earth, the other of immortality. In him was the union, rare as it is grateful, of lawyer and scholar. He has taught how much may be done for jurisprudence and learning even amidst the toils of professional life; while the enduring lustre of his name contrasts with the fugitive reputation which is the lot of the mere lawyer, although clients beat at his gates from cock-crow at the dawn.
To describe his labors of scholarship would be impossible on this occasion. Although important contributions to the sum of knowledge, they were of a character only slightly appreciated by the world at large. They were chiefly directed to two subjects,—classical studies and general philology, if these two may be regarded separately.
His early life was marked by a particular interest in classical studies. At a time when, in our country, accurate and extensive scholarship was rare, he aspired to possess it. By daily and nightly toil he mastered the great exemplars of antiquity, and found delight in their beauties. His example was persuasive. And he added earnest effort to promote their study in the learned seminaries of our country. With unanswerable force he urged among us a standard of education commensurate, in every substantial respect, with that of Europe. He desired for the American youth on his native soil, under the influence of free institutions, a course of instruction rendering foreign aid superfluous. He had a just pride of country, and longed for its good name through accomplished representatives, well knowing that the American scholar, wherever he wanders in foreign lands, is a living recommendation of the institutions under which he was reared.
He knew that scholarship of all kinds would gild the life of its possessor, enlarge the resources of the bar, enrich the voice of the pulpit, and strengthen the learning of medicine. He knew that it would afford a soothing companionship in hours of relaxation from labor, in periods of sadness, and in the evening of life; that, when once embraced, it was more constant than friendship,—attending its votary, as an invisible spirit, in the toils of the day, the watches of the night, the changes of travel, and the alternations of fortune or health.
In commending classical studies it would be difficult to say that he attached to them undue importance. By his own example he showed that he bore them no exclusive love. He regarded them as an essential part of liberal education, opening the way to other realms of knowledge, while they mature the taste and invigorate the understanding. Here probably all will concur. It may be questioned, whether, in our hurried American life, it is possible, with proper regard for other studies, to introduce into ordinary classical education the exquisite skill which is the pride of English scholarship, reminding us of the minute finish in Chinese art,—or the ponderous and elaborate learning which is the wonder of Germany, reminding us of the unnatural perspective in a Chinese picture. But much will be done, if we establish those habits of accuracy, acquired only through early and careful training, which enable us at least to appreciate the severe beauty of antiquity, while they become an invaluable standard and measure of attainment in other things.
The classics possess a peculiar charm, as models, I might say masters, of composition and form. In the contemplation of these august teachers we are filled with conflicting emotions. They are the early voice of the world, better remembered and more cherished than any intermediate voice,—as the language of childhood still haunts us, when the utterances of later years are effaced from the mind. But they show the rudeness of the world's childhood, before passion yielded to the sway of reason and the affections. They want purity, righteousness, and that highest charm which is found in love to God and man. Not in the frigid philosophy of the Porch and the Academy are we to seek these; not in the marvellous teachings of Socrates, as they come mended by the mellifluous words of Plato; not in the resounding line of Homer, on whose inspiring tale of blood Alexander pillowed his head; not in the animated strain of Pindar, where virtue is pictured in the successful strife of an athlete at the Olympian games; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark with self-love and the spirit of vengeance; not in the fitful philosophy and boastful eloquence of Tully; not in the genial libertinism of Horace, or the stately atheism of Lucretius. To these we give admiration; but they cannot be our highest teachers. In none of these is the way of life. For eighteen hundred years the spirit of these classics has been in constant contention with the Sermon on the Mount, and with those two sublime commandments on which "hang all the law and the prophets."[161] The strife is still pending, and who shall say when it will end? Heathenism, which possessed itself of such Siren forms, is not yet exorcised. Even now it exerts a powerful sway, imbuing youth, coloring the thought of manhood, and haunting the meditation of age. Widening still in sphere, it embraces nations as well as individuals, until it seems to sit supreme.
Our own productions, though yielding to the ancient in arrangement, method, beauty of form, and freshness of illustration, are superior in truth, delicacy, and elevation of sentiment,—above all, in the recognition of that peculiar revelation, the Brotherhood of Man. Vain are eloquence and poetry, compared with this heaven-descended truth. Put in one scale that simple utterance, and in the other all the lore of antiquity, with its accumulating glosses and commentaries, and the latter will be light in the balance. Greek poetry has been likened to the song of the nightingale, as she sits in the rich, symmetrical crown of the palm-tree, trilling her thick-warbled notes; but these notes will not compare in sweetness with those teachings of charity which belong to our Christian inheritance.
These things cannot be forgotten by the scholar. From the Past he may draw all it can contribute to the great end of life, human progress and happiness,—progress, without which happiness is vain. But he must close his soul to the hardening influence of that spirit, which is more to be dreaded, as it is enshrined in compositions of such commanding authority.
In the department of philology, kindred to that of the classics, our Scholar labored with similar success. Unlike Sir William Jones in genius, he was like this English scholar in the multitude of languages he embraced. Distance of time and space was forgotten, as he explored the far-off primeval Sanscrit,—the hieroglyphics of Egypt, now awakening from the mute repose of centuries,—the polite and learned tongues of ancient and modern Europe,—the languages of Mohammedanism,—the various dialects in the forests of North America, and in the sandal-groves of the Pacific,—only closing with a lingua franca from an unlettered tribe on the coast of Africa, to which his attention was called during the illness which ended in death.
This recital exhibits the variety and extent of his studies in a department which is supposed inaccessible, except to peculiar and Herculean labors. He had a natural and intuitive perception of affinities in language, and of its hidden relations. His researches have thrown important light on the general principles of this science, as also on the history and character of individual languages. In devising an alphabet of the Indian tongues in North America, since adopted in the Polynesian Islands, he rendered a brilliant service to civilization. It is pleasant to contemplate the Scholar sending forth from his seclusion this priceless instrument of improvement. On the distant islands once moistened by the blood of Cook newspapers and books are printed in a native language, which was reduced to a written character by the care and genius of Pickering. The Vocabulary of Americanisms and the Greek and English Lexicon attest still further the variety and value of his philological labors; nor can we sufficiently admire the facility with which, amidst the duties of an arduous profession and the temptations of scholarship, he assumed the appalling task of the lexicographer, which Scaliger compares to the labors of the anvil and the mine.
There are critics, ignorant, hasty, or supercilious, who are too apt to disparage the toils of the philologist, treating them sometimes as curious only, sometimes as trivial, or, when they enter into lexicography, as those of a harmless drudge. It might be sufficient to reply, that all exercise of the intellect promoting forgetfulness of self and the love of science ministers essentially to human improvement. But philology may claim other suffrages. It is its province to aid in determining the character of words, their extraction and signification, and in other ways to guide and explain the use of language; nor is it generous, while enjoying eloquence, poetry, science, and the many charms of literature, to withhold our gratitude from silent and sometimes obscure labors in illustration of that great instrument without which all the rest is nothing.
The science of Comparative Philology, which our Scholar has illustrated, may rank with shining pursuits. It challenges a place by the side of that science which received such development from the genius of Cuvier. The study of Comparative Anatomy has thrown unexpected light on the physical history of the animate creation; but it cannot be less interesting or important to explore the unwritten history of the human race in languages that have been spoken, to trace their pedigree, to detect their affinities,—seeking the prevailing law by which they are governed. As we comprehend these things, confusion and discord retreat, the Fraternity of Man stands confessed, and the philologist becomes a minister at the altar of universal philanthropy. In the study of the Past, he learns to anticipate the Future; and in sublime vision he sees, with Leibnitz, that Unity of the Human Race which, in the succession of ages, will find its expression in an instrument more marvellous than the infinite Calculus,—a universal language, with an alphabet of human thoughts.[163]
As the sun draws moisture from rill, stream, lake, and ocean, to be returned in fertilizing shower upon the earth, so did our Scholar derive knowledge from all sources, to be diffused in beneficent influence upon the world. He sought it not in study only, but in converse with men, and in experience of life. His curious essay on the Pronunciation of the Ancient Greek Language was suggested by listening to Greek sailors, whom the temptations of commerce had conducted to our shores from their historic sea.
Such a character—devoted to works of wide and enduring interest, not restricted to international lines—awakened respect and honor wherever learning was cultivated. His name was associated with illustrious fraternities of science in foreign nations, while scholars who could not know him face to face, by an amiable commerce of letters sought the aid and sympathy of his learning. His death has broken these living links of fellowship; but his name, that cannot die, will continue to bind all who love knowledge and virtue to the land which was blessed by his presence.
From the Scholar I pass to the Jurist. Joseph Story died in the month of September, 1845, aged sixty-six. His countenance, familiar in this presence, was always so beaming with goodness and kindness that its withdrawal seems to lessen sensibly the brightness of the scene. We are assembled near the seat of his favorite pursuits, among the neighbors intimate with his private virtues, close by the home hallowed by his domestic altar. These paths he often trod; and all that our eyes here look upon seems to reflect his genial smile. His twofold official relations with the University, his high judicial station, his higher character as Jurist, invest his name with a peculiar interest, while the unconscious kindness which he showed to all, especially the young, touches the heart, making us rise up and call him blessed. How fondly would the youth nurtured in jurisprudence at his feet—were such an offering, Alcestis-like, within the allotments of Providence—have prolonged their beloved master's days at the expense of their own!
The University, by the voice of his learned associate, has already rendered tribute to his name. The tribunals of justice throughout the country have given utterance to their solemn grief, and the funeral torch has passed across the sea into foreign lands.
He has been heard to confess that literature was his earliest passion, which yielded only to a sterner summons beckoning to professional life; and they who knew him best cannot forget that he continued to the last fond of poetry and polite letters, and would often turn from Themis to the Muses. Nor can it be doubted that this feature, which marks the resemblance to Selden, Somers, Mansfield, and Blackstone, in England, and to L'Hôpital and D'Aguesseau, in France, has added to the brilliancy and perfection of his character as a jurist. In the history of jurisprudence it would not be easy to mention a single person winning its highest palm who was not a scholar also.
The first hardships incident to study of the law, which perplexed the youthful spirit of the learned Spelman, beset our Jurist with disheartening force. Let the young remember his trial and his triumph, and be of good cheer. According to the custom of his day, while yet a student in the town of Marblehead, he undertook to read Coke on Littleton, in the large folio edition, thatched over with those manifold annotations which cause the best-trained lawyer to "gasp and stare." Striving to force his way through the black-letter page, he was filled with despair. It was but a moment. The tears poured from his eyes upon the open book. Those tears were his precious baptism into the learning of the law. From that time forth he persevered, with ardor and confidence, from triumph to triumph.
He was elevated to the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, by the side of Marshall, at the early age of thirty-two. At the same early age Buller—reputed the ablest judge of Westminster Hall, in the list of those who never arrived at the honors of Chief Justice—was induced to renounce an income larger than the salary of a judge, to take a seat by the side of Mansfield. The parallel continues. During the remainder of Mansfield's career on the bench, Buller was the friend and associate upon whom he chiefly leaned; and history records the darling desire of the venerable Chief Justice that his faithful assistant should succeed to his seat and chain of office; but these wishes, the hopes of the profession, and his own continued labors were disregarded by a minister who seldom rewarded any but political services,—I mean Mr. Pitt. Our brother, like Buller, was the friend and associate of a venerable chief justice, by whose side he sat for many years; nor do I state any fact which I should not for the sake of history, when I add, that it was the long-cherished desire of Marshall that Story should be his successor. It was ordered otherwise; and he continued a judge of the Supreme Court for the space of thirty-four years,—a judicial life of almost unexampled length in the history of the Common Law, and of precisely the same duration with the illustrious magistracy of D'Aguesseau in France.
As judge, he was called to administer a most extensive jurisdiction, embracing matters which in England are so variously distributed that they never come before any one court; and in each department he has shown himself second to none other, unless we unite with him in deferring to Marshall as the greatest expounder of a branch peculiar to ourselves, Constitutional Law. Nor will it be easy to mention any other judge who has left behind so large a number of judgments which belong to the first class in the literature of the law. Some excel in a special branch, to which their learning and labor are directed. He excelled in all. At home in the feudal niceties of Real Law, with its dependencies of descents, remainders, and executory devises,—also in the ancient hair-splitting technicalities of Special Pleading,—both creatures of an illiterate age, gloomy with black-letter and verbal subtilties,—he was most skilful in using and expounding the rules of Evidence, the product of a more refined period of juridical history,—was master of the common law of Contracts, and of Commercial Law in its wide expanse, embracing so large a part of those topics which concern the business of our age,—was familiar with Criminal Law, which he administered with the learning of a judge and the tenderness of a parent,—had compassed the whole circle of Chancery in its jurisdiction and its pleadings, touching all the interests of life, and subtilely adapting the Common Law to our own age; and he ascended with ease to those less trodden heights where are extended the rich demesnes of Admiralty, the Law of Prize, and that comprehensive theme, embracing all that history, philosophy, learning, literature, human experience, and Christianity have testified,—the Law of Nations.
It was not as judge only that he served. He sought other means of illustrating the science of the law which he loved so well, and to the cares of judicial life superadded the labors of author and teacher. To this he was moved by passion for the law, by desire to aid its elucidation, and by the irrepressible instinct of his nature, which found in incessant activity the truest repose. His was that constitution of mind where occupation is the normal state. He was possessed by a genius for labor. Others may moil in law as constantly, but without his loving, successful study. What he undertook he always did with heart, soul, and mind,—not with reluctant, vain compliance, but with his entire nature bent to the task. As in social life, so was he in study: his heart embraced labor, as his hand grasped the hand of friend.
As teacher, he should be gratefully remembered here. He was Dane Professor of Law in the University. By the attraction of his name students were drawn from remote parts of the Union, and the Law School, which had been a sickly branch, became the golden mistletoe of our ancient oak.[164] Besides learning unsurpassed in his profession, he brought other qualities not less important in a teacher,—goodness, benevolence, and a willingness to teach. Only a good man can be a teacher, only a benevolent man, only a man willing to teach. He was filled with a desire to teach. He sought to mingle his mind with that of his pupil. To pour into the souls of the young, as into celestial urns, the fruitful waters of knowledge, was to him a blessed office. The kindly enthusiasm of his nature found a response. Law, sometimes supposed to be harsh and crabbed, became inviting under his instructions. Its great principles, drawn from experience and reflection, from the rules of right and wrong, from the unsounded depths of Christian truth, illustrated by the learning of sages and the judgments of courts, he unfolded so as to inspire a love for their study,—well knowing that the knowledge we impart is trivial, compared with that awakening of the soul under the influence of which the pupil himself becomes teacher. All of knowledge we can communicate is finite; a few pages, a few chapters, a few volumes, will embrace it; but such an influence is of incalculable power. It is the breath of a new life; it is another soul. Story taught as priest of the law seeking to consecrate other priests. In him the spirit spake, not with the voice of earthly calling, but with the gentleness and self-forgetful earnestness of one pleading in behalf of justice, knowledge, happiness. His well-loved pupils hung upon his lips, and, as they left his presence, confessed new reverence for virtue, and warmer love of knowledge for its own sake.
The spirit which glowed in his teachings filled his life. He was, in the truest sense, Jurist,—student and expounder of jurisprudence as a science,—not merely lawyer or judge, pursuing it as an art. This distinction, though readily perceived, is not always regarded.
Members of the profession, whether on the bench or at the bar, seldom send their regard beyond the case directly before them. The lawyer is generally content with the applause of the court-house, the approbation of clients, "fat contentions, and flowing fees." Infrequently does he render voluntary service felt beyond the limited circle in which he moves, or helping forward the landmarks of justice. The judge, in the discharge of his duty, applies the law to the case before him. He may do this discreetly, honorably, justly, benignly, in such wise that the community who looked to him for justice shall pronounce his name with gratitude,—