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.