the jury, and the skill, of a different sort, in addressing
the court, his superior generalship in the conflicting
and unexpected developments during a trial which threaten
instant defeat, his fearlessness, and that perfect
self-possession which not only conceals his own fears
and weaknesses, but avails itself of the fears and
weaknesses of others, and of that deep insight into
human passions, penetrating far beyond the eye, or
the ear, or the ordinary reason: count the attainments
which such a man must possess to win supremacy in
such a sphere, and we must assent to the general opinion
which places supremacy in such a sphere one of the
highest achievements of human intellect and character.
Then contemplate that excellence which is shown in
the conduct of civil cases as contradistinguished
from criminal—that various power here, too,
of speech, in itself the lesson of a life to learn—the
skill, too, in addressing juries and the court with
equal effect; that knowledge of the law in its innumerable
doctrines, principles, and decisions, which made the
study even in Lord Coke’s day the work of twenty
years; the prompt application of this learning to
the rapid matter in hand; the magical use of the faculties
of the mind and the wondrous discipline which they
must have undergone, every hour, every minute demanding
a stretch of thought and an adroitness of discrimination
which have justly classed the dialectics of the bar
above all the dialectics of the schools; and the moral
as well as intellectual qualities necessary in an adept
in the varying practice of municipal law; and here,
too, we will yield to the general opinion which places
excellence in this single department one of the highest
achievements of mind; and then recall what such a judge
as Spencer Roane, the ablest and sternest judge of
the age, and politically hostile to Tazewell, said
when Tazewell pleaded the case of Long vs.
Colston before the Court of Appeals. Then let
us follow the profession beyond and above the region
of municipal law into the higher walk of the Laws
of Nations, and of that great practical part of those
laws, the law of admiralty. Consider what eminence
is, and what it involves, in this department which
the master spirits of ancient as well as of modern
time selected as their peculiar sphere; what the talents
are that may contend with the greatest intellects of
the age in that greatest of all our gladiatorial arenas,
the Supreme Court of the United States, and what various
and rare excellencies must unite in forming a man
who may stand forth and share in such generous battle,
and, still more, shall come off victorious from such
a field. And when, by blending all these characters,
each great in itself, and worthy of the ambition of
the highest talents and of the longest life, into a
single character, we have made a fame which the grandest
intellects of modern times might glory in attaining,
we have but one of the elements, developed during a
comparatively short period only of his career, that
make up the reputation of him whose memory we have
met this day to honor.


