Like a strong current hastening to the main."
If Mr. Story had never been elevated to the bench it is not likely his name would ever have become national property. Although plunged into politics in his earlier life, he was not fitted for the life. His devotion to the law, and his dread of becoming that slave to party usages which all public men must necessarily more or less fashion of themselves, would have retained him in his native state, and made his usefulness sectional. To the politicians of the school of General Jackson, and to the administration of that President, he was particularly distasteful. His tenacious conservatism drew forth from the "old hero," on one occasion, the remark, that "he was the most dangerous man in the country." Lord Eldon, with his doubts and pertinacious toryism was not more unpopular among the reformers in England than was Judge Story—the last of the old regime of federal judges—with the bank radicals of 1832.
When Chief Justice Marshall died he felt almost broken-hearted. A new race of constitutional expounders had arisen around him. Brother justices, with modern constructions, and more liberal notions of national law, were by his side. In many decisions he was now a sole dissenter. His pride was invaded; his self-love tortured; his adoration of certain legal constructions which he had deemed immutable in their nature, was desecrated. And, for many years previous to his decease, he had contemplated resigning from the federal judiciary, and living alone for his darling law school.
This school was his adopted child. He had taken it in a feeble and helpless infancy. He had given it strength and increased vitality. He brought it up to a vigorous and useful maturity. It was loved by only a handful of students when he gave his name and talents to aid its life: but when he died, a hundred and fifty pupils were its warm suitors, and hundreds of lawyers over the whole union cherished its prosperity as a link in their own chains of happiness.
And, although he thought not of it, his labors in the law school secure for his memory in the present generation a more brilliant existence than his array of judicial decisions, and his thousands of written pages, can ever bestow. In some pine forest settlement of Maine, or in some rude court-house in California, there are lawyers who bring before them every day his genial smiles and his impressive lectures, looked upon and heard by them in former times at Cambridge. Over all the Union, in almost every village, town, and city, are his pupils. Each one of them may sometimes reflect with rapture upon their days of college life, or remember with[pg 181] pride their first professional success: but not one of these considerations of reminiscence is so grateful to his mind as the thought of his novitiate with Justice Story. Depend upon it he treasures up those Cambridge text-books, those Cambridge note-books whose leaves daguerreotype the learning of the eminent deceased, those catalogues of students where his name is proudly found, as the most valuable portions of his library. He will never part with them: but they will descend to his children.
It was our privilege and pleasure also to know Mr. Justice Story at Cambridge; to have spent days of pleasure in the hours of his society; to have rendered to his teachings the tribute of delighted attention and grateful recollection. We, too, have been fascinated with that conversation, whose variety of exuberance and sometimes egotism, were its greatest ornaments. In the sunshine of his intellect our mind has sunned itself, and been warmed into zealous and proselyting admiration. To his gray-haired teachings we have paid personal reverence, and we unaffectedly hope to have caught from his society and intercourse a spark of that professional enthusiasm which is the only true guiding-star of the plodding lawyer.
The December blasts are hoarsely sobbing to-night through Mount Auburn, the garden of his mortal repose—the hallowed spot which his eloquence consecrated in its origin, and which his religious love in his lifetime sacredly cherished. The snows of winter and the autumn-woven carpet of fallen leaves are heaped upon his honored grave, the sodded paths to which, in the glowing spring-time and fragrant summer, are pressed most frequent with the tread of faithful mourners. Years have passed since that honored grave was first closed upon him. Longer years have flown since we were under his teachings. But we seem to view him the same as of yore. Again the class is assembled in the hushed lecture-room as his familiar tread is heard at the door; or as the burst of applause, where there is no sycophantic flattery known or felt, greets his entrance to his seat. Again we see him adjusting his genial spectacles, and looking around upon the upturned faces with parental pride. Again we hear his mellowed, although often impetuous accents, expounding familiar principles of law, and descending to the consideration of "first things" with as much pride and carefulness as the artist treats his Rubens or Titian, which for years and years has hung before him in all lights and shades and in every combination of position.
Again, we occupy a modest corner of the library while he is holding his moot court; infusing into the dignity of his manner a marked suavity of disposition which never forsook him; or he is perpetrating some appropriate legal joke to his audience, who never played upon his ease or good nature.
Again, we have stolen into the self-same library while he is holding an equity term of his circuit, to listen to the words of judicial wisdom which came from his utterance, exuberant as pearls of fancy from the mouth of an inspired poet.
Again, we see him at the summer twilight, seated by the trellised portico of his hospitable and happy homestead, surrounded by family or friends, enjoying the amenities of life with unaffected pleasure, and sometimes awakening the garden echoes with his cheerful ringing laugh; or we see him in the same hour of the day driving under the venerable elms of the numerous commons, gazing and bowing around with all the pleasure which the king of the fairy book marked upon his face when the love of his subjects, among whom he passed, came forth with the evening breeze to bless and greet him.