He was happy in life, happy also in death. It was his hope, expressed in health, that he should not be allowed to linger superfluous on the stage, nor waste under the slow progress of disease. He was always ready to meet his God. His wishes were answered. Two days before his last illness he was in court, and delivered an elaborate judgment on a complicated case in equity. Since his death another judgment in a case already argued before him has been found among his papers, ready to be pronounced.
I saw him for a single moment on the evening preceding his illness. It was an accidental meeting away from his own house,—the last time that the open air fanned his cheeks. His words of familiar, household greeting still linger in my ears, like an enchanted melody. The morning sun saw him on the bed from which he never rose.
Thus closed, after an illness of eight days, in the bosom of his family, without pain, surrounded by friends, a life which, through various vicissitudes of disease, had been spared beyond the grand climacteric, that Cape of Storms in the sea of human existence.
"Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit,
Nulli flebilior quam mihi."
He is gone, and we shall see him no more on earth, except in his works, and the memory of his virtues. The scales of justice, which he so long held, have fallen from his hand. The untiring pen of the Author rests at last. The voice of the Teacher is mute. The fountain, which was ever flowing and ever full, is stopped. The lips, on which the bees of Hybla might have rested, will no more distil their honeyed sweets. The manly form, warm with all the affections of life, with love for family and friends, for truth and virtue, is now cold in death. The justice of nations is eclipsed; the life of the law is suspended. But let us listen to the words which, though dead, he utters from the grave: "Sorrow not as those without hope." The righteous judge, the wise teacher, the faithful friend, the loving father, has ascended to his Judge, his Teacher, his Friend, his Father in Heaven.
[THE WRONG OF SLAVERY.]
Speech at a Public Meeting in Faneuil Hall, Boston, against the Admission of Texas as a Slave State, November 4, 1845.