seat of government. The record of his decisions as district attorney, covering a vast range of topics, arising in municipal and constitutional law, and the law of nations, bears witness to his method and ability in the discharge of the duties of his office; while the reports of the Supreme Court speak to the profession and the public of his share in the handling of many impor tant questions, as the case of McCulloch and the State of Maryland; the Dartmouth College case; the New York steamboat case, Gibbons against Ogden, settling the constitutionality of the exclusive grant of navigating the waters of the state, given to Livingston and Fulton. ularity; of an enlightened ambition based upon the private virtues of selfdenial and integrity; of decision of character, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left from the path of honorable duty. The discourse overflows with the lessons of Wirt's own life, enforced with all the felicity of his accustomed rhetoric. Years bring with them wisdom and honor, and suffering as well. In 1831, Wirt was called upon to mourn the loss of his youngest daughter, at the age of sixteen. It was a sad and most touching affliction, and the feeling heart of the father bowed beneath the stroke. His activity continued, however, to the last. He even accepted the nom ination of the anti-masonic party for the Presidency, and thought of a provision for his family by a settlement in Florida. It was while in attendance on the Supreme Court at Washington, in the beginning of 1834, that the final messenger came. He took cold, an attack of erysipelas set in, and in a few days, on the eighteenth of Febru ary, he was no more. In 1829, Wirt, on his retirement from the district attorneyship, took up his residence in Baltimore, which continued his home during the few remain ing years of his life. He continued devoted sedulously as ever to his profession, and found time as of yore for those occasional literary exercises outside of his calling, which had been the delight of his youth. While at Washington, he pronounced a eulogy on Thus lived William Wirt, one of the Jefferson and Adams upon their decease. most amiable of men. Nothing can In 1830, he delivered an address before be more delightful than the exhi the Literary Societies of Rutgers Col-bition of character in his private lege, which has always appeared to us correspondence. It is frank, manly, in the very foremost rank of produc- overflowing with innocent, boyish entions of its class. He always loved the young, and on this occasion addressed them with surpassing ear nestness. He urged the claims of pa triotism, in the midst of the profligacy of party and the degradation of pop thusiasm. It must be a dull percep tion to which it will not afford pleasure and profit. We admire his professional success, his generous pursuit of litera ture, all the more for this revelation of his sensitive, playful, earnest nature. JOSEPH STORY. THE world is fortunate in possessing much more plentifully furnished with so admirable a narrative of the life of practitioners than some of the best of a man whom his country always found them are with patients, we recommend worthy of honor and esteem, as that pre- as a gentleman of abilities and integ sented to us in the biography of the rity in his profession, an assiduous late Justice Story by his accomplished assertor of the rights of his country, son. It is a model work in a depart- and a friend to mankind." There is ment of literature in which success is something in this language characterisquite out of proportion to the demand. tic of the times. The young physician Few legal biographies, in particular, did not belie the patriotic recommenhave been written with the same feli-dation. He was one of the ardent sons city. Its fidelity and calm appreciative of liberty who threw the tea into Bosspirit, with its store of interesting facts, leave subsequent narrators little to do but to glean from its ample pages. There are no concealments in the life of Story, nothing to be supplied, nothing to be forgotten by posterity; his course was open to the world; his life was of singular honesty and simplicity, and may readily be understood by all. Joseph Story was born at Marblehead, Essex County, Massachusetts, September 18, 1779. His grandfather was a Whig, though he held the office of Registrar in the Court of Admiralty. His father, also of Boston, Dr. Elisha Story, a physician of repute, removed to Marblehead in 1770, bearing with him a handsome circular letter from his brethren of the city, somewhat quaintly worded-"this our brother being about to depart from our healthy metropolis, ton harbor; he was by the side of Warren in the trenches on Breed's Hill; he was with Washington as army-surgeon in 1777, in the Jerseysa man of natural force and readiness, skilled in his profession, of cheerful manners, apt for the affairs of the world. He was a widower when he married Mehitable Pedrich, a young lady of nineteen, whom he introduced to his family of seven children. She became herself the mother of a large family, whose fortunes she sustained with spirit and dignity through the arduous years of the Revolution. Joseph Story, the subject of this sketch, was the eldest child of the marriage. The boy in his early years at Marblehead, profited by all the peculiarities of the place, studying the rough humors of its seafaring inhabitants, storing his mind with the prolific dis cussions of the barber's shop, where he was a privileged visitor, listening to wild legends of superstition, fostered by the weird presence of the sea with its mists and breakers; giving vent to the emotion of his solitary walks by the resounding shore thus early in verse; profiting, withal, by such education in learning as the town afforded. He had an early and happy introduction to good English literature, in the copious storehouse of Dr. Vicesimus Knox's "Elegant Extracts in Prose and Verse," a stock book of the last ration, which he always valued. gene An incident of his first presentation for examination at Harvard, shows the boy as the boy shows the man. At the age of fifteen, he formed the resolution to offer himself for the Freshman class, at the intermediate January vacation. Armed with the necessary Latin and Greek for admission to college, he was informed that he must add to his preparation a knowledge of the exercises of the class for the previous six months. The task seemed insurmountable, but there were yet six weeks of the vacation to make the attempt. His teacher was ill-qualified to offer him the needful aid in Greek; yet the youth, within the time, worked through Sallust, the Odes of Horace, two books of Livy, three books of Xenophon's "Anabasis," and two of the "Iliad," to say nothing of logic and rhetoric; a very respectable half-year's labor to be accomplished in a few weeks. At the end of the vacation, he passed the requisite examination, and was matriculated. His college course was to him an era of light and knowledge. Channing was his classmate, and he made friendships with youths of talent and virtue, which adorned his future life. He threw off the Calvinism, in which he had been indoctrinated at Marblehead, and adopted the Unitarian tenets and opinions. He also developed his talent for poetry, and paid some attention to the arts. At commencement, in 1798, when he graduated, he delivered a poem on "Reason." Channing was the foremost in college honors, Story was the second. Returning, from what had proved to him a delightful apprenticeship to learning, to his native Marblehead, he entered the law-office of Mr. Samuel Sewall, afterwards Chief Justice of Massachusetts. It was a severe study, in those days, to be exchanged for the easy company of the Muses; and the youth felt the shock of the introduc tion to the crabbed science, since mitigated to the pupil by labors kindred to his own. "I shall never forget the time," he himself writes, "when, having read through 'Blackstone's Commentaries,' Mr. Sewall, on his departure for Washington, directed me to read 'Coke on Littleton,' as the appropriate suc ceeding study. It was a very large folio, with Hargrave and Butler's notes, which I was required to read also. Soon after his departure, I took it up, and after trying it day after day with very little success, I sat myself down and wept bitterly. My tears dropped upon the book and stained the pages. It was but a momentary irresolution. I went on and on, and began at last to |