It is generally supposed that such attainments and qualities are never united with much depth of learning in the law, nor with any extraordinary logical power. However rare the union may be, it certainly existed in him. His logic was never formal, never designedly made conspicuous, and its order and method often differed from those which other trained minds would have adopted; but it was keen, well compacted, founded on clear perceptions of the relations of the ideas or facts to which it was applied, and it was assisted, without being oppressed, by that great suggestive power which his brilliant and richly stored imagination supplied.

I have no doubt he had studied the common law laboriously in the early years of his professional life; and his great and varied practice was to him the daily occurring occasion for widening and deepening his legal learning. I came to this bar at the same time and in the same year, 1834, when he removed to this city, and for a period of nearly five years I have constantly had opportunities of estimating him as a lawyer. Viewed merely as a lawyer, I think he was in the front rank of the greatest I have known. Some, I think, have excelled him in knowledge of the older parts of the common law, particularly of those which relate to real property; some of them have been more deeply imbued with equity jurisprudence, to which few of as can be said to have been regularly trained; others have seemed to me to have been able to trace rules through obscure and devious ways up to their original sources and true proportions with more patient research and solid judgment; but if excelled in either of these particulars, how great and admirable were the stores of his legal learning, and how completely at his command for all the uses of his profession as an advocate. For, undoubtedly, it was in the trial and argument of causes that he best used his great and various powers. His vigilance, his quickness of perception, his foresight, his knowledge of the laws of thought, and his sagacity as to the motives and conduct of witnesses, which enabled him to examine them with extraordinary skill; his prudence, which did not prevent him from being bold and enterprising when he found prudence would be timidity, and the entire devotion of these and all his other great powers as a lawyer and an orator, without flagging for an instant, however protracted the trial might be; these formed a combination which I have not elsewhere seen, and which must be rare indeed. To his honor be it said, this devotion was not produced by a mere love of personal display, nor by any merely selfish motive. He had a true and just sense of his duty to those who entrusted their property and their reputation and liberty and lives to his care. He wanted the best thing done for the cause; true, he was as indifferent as any lawyer I ever knew, whether he or his colleague did it. If I may judge from my experience, his colleagues always had the full benefit of his suggestions and assistance to aid them to do their part well, without a thought of the effect which it might have upon himself. We all know that the contests of the bar severely try the feelings of those engaged in them; that only true dignity of character, united with great and constant self-control, and assisted by much native gentleness and kindness, can carry any one through them with unvarying good temper and good manners.

In looking back over the many forensic contests in which I have been engaged with Mr. Choate, as well as those at which, in another capacity, I have been present, I cannot recall one harsh word he ever spoke, or unkind act he ever did. Of his playful sarcasm I have doubtless had my share, as others have; but if I was ever in the least degree disturbed at it, it was my own fault, and not his; for its playfulness was always as apparent as its keenness. Dignified, modest and gentle himself, he always

regarded the feelings of his brethren; and to the bench his manners uniformly exhibited that respect which he felt for the office.

It is not easy to conceive and feel that we shall see him and hear him no more. And while we deplore our own loss, we may, perhaps, be inclined to regret that he could not have been spared to enjoy in old age the dignity, and honor, and repose which are the just earthly fruits of so laborious and useful a life. But, in the words of an ancient judge, "there must be an end of names and dignities, and of whatsoever is terrene." Let us remember that his earthly end has come while his powers were in full vigor, and that our recollections of him will be obscured by no shadows of advancing age. With the simple habits which he seemed to have brought from his childhood, I have known him to retire to rest with the setting sun; and now he has gone to his rest while his sun was still in the heavens, unclouded and shorn of none of its beams.

I am, with great respect,

Your obedient servant,

B. R. CURTIS.

Hon. Benjamin F. Hallett then paid a brief tribute to Mr. Choate, laying special stress upon the depth and sincerity of his religious sentiments. Almost the last public address made by Mr. Choate was a declaration of his faith in the truth and power of Christianity. When the most analytical mind of his age thus gave in his adhesion, it became skeptics to pause and make humble inquiry; it seemed as if no one should dare to doubt.

The resolutions were then unanimously adopted.

On motion of Hon. C. J. Loring, it was

Voted, That the Hon. Benjamin R. Curtis be requested, in behalf of this bar, to present these resolutions to the judges of the Supreme Judicial Court for the Commonwealth, at their next session in September, with a request that they be entered upon the records.

Voted, That the District Attorney of the United States be requested to present these resolutions at the next session of the U. S. District Court, with a request that they be entered upon the records.

Voted, That the Chairman and Secretary of this meeting be instructed to present these resolutions to the family of the late Mr. Choate.

THE

MONTHLY LAW REPORTER.

SEPTEMBER, 1859.

LORD BROUGHAM.

Henry, Lord Brougham, ex-Chancellor of England, was born at Brougham Hall, in Westmoreland, on the 19th of September, 1778.* The family, whose name has also been spelt Burgham, Broham and Brugham, is said to be the very oldest in the north of England, and to have been landed proprietors in Cumberland and Westmoreland, ever since the reign of Edward the Confessor. Henry Brougham, the father of the Chancellor, married the daughter of Rev. James Syme, D. D., and the niece of Dr. Robertson, the historian; and resided during most of his life at Edinburgh. Young Brougham was placed at the High School, of which Dr. Adam, the author of the work on Roman Antiquities, was then rector. Lord Cockburn, who was his contemporary at this celebrated academy, in his memorials of his own time, tells the following anecdote: "Brougham was not in the class with me. Before getting to the rector's class, he had been under Luke Fraser, who in his two immediately preceding courses of four years each, had the good fortune to have Francis Jeffrey and Walter Scott as his pupils. Brougham made his first public explosion while in Fraser's class. He dared to differ from Fraser, a hot but

* A writer in the North British Review, for May, in common with most biographers, erroneously states that Lord Brougham was born in St. Andrew's Square, Edinburgh, where he certainly passed his earlier years. In a speech at Leeds, in 1830, while contesting the county of York, his lordship said: I am a Westmoreland man by birth and possessions." See 52, Lond. Law Magazine, 2, note.

good-natured old fellow, on some small bit of latinity. The master, like other men in power, maintained his own infallibility, punished the rebel, and flattered himself that the affair was over. But Brougham reappeared next day, loaded with books, returned to the charge before the whole class, and compelled honest Luke to acknowledge that he had been wrong. This made Brougham famous throughout the whole school. I remember as well as if it had been yesterday, having had him pointed out to me as the fellow who had beat the master.' It was then that I first saw him."

In 1793, Brougham was transferred to the University of Edinburgh, of which he was a member for a number of years. While there he commenced his long-continued investigations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, which from the very first attracted much notice. In the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for the year 1796, is a paper entitled, "Experiments and Observations on the Inflexion, Reflexion and Colors of Light, by Henry Brougham, Jun., Esq. Read on the 28th of January, 1796." A second paper, entitled "Further Experiments and Observations on the Affections and Properties of Light," was read July 28th, 1797, and published in the transactions of that year; and on May 24th, 1798, there was a third paper by him on "General Theorems, chiefly Porisms in the higher Geometry." While thus, in addition to his regular studies, contributing to the publications of this celebrated Association, he was also one of the most prominent and active members of the University. He early joined the "Speculative Society," which had been instituted in 1704, and which enjoyed its golden era between the years 1794 and 1805, when Scott, Horner, Lord Henry Petty (now Marquis of Lansdowne), Jeffrey, Brougham and Cockburn, were among its members. In 1797, the "Academy of Physics " was established by Horner, Dr. Thomas Brown, Dr. Reddie and Brougham. "One fact," says the Law Magazine, "is too remarkable to be here omitted, as it strikingly illustrates, when viewed in connection with more recent legislation, the far-seeing sagacity and tenacity of purpose, which has distinguished Lord Brougham throughout his whole life. At a meeting of the Academy of Physics, on the 30th of September, 1797, Mr. Brougham and Mr. Horner laid before the society two papers with respect to a reform in the laws."