friend Dr. Lieber's "Cyclopædia Americana" a series of important articles on legal topics, ranging through the alphabet from "Common Law" and "Congress of the United States," to "Prize" and "Usury." In 1832 appeared his "Commentaries on the Law of Bailments," and the following year the three volumes of his "Commentaries on the Constitution." They were prepared in connection with his professional labors at the law school. In the preface of the latter work he states his obligations to the "Federalist," and the "extraordinary judgments" of Marshall, which he looked upon as carrying out the provisions of the instrument "with a precision and clearness approaching, as near as may be, to mathematical demonstration." The work was dedicated to Marshall, who accepted it in his quiet language, as "a comprehensive and accurate commentary on our Constitution, formed in the spirit of the original text,"-words from the Chief Justice emphatic as another man's elaborate eulogy. In 1834 appeared another instalment of his labors at Harvard, in his "Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws," a work which, for its powers of analysis and comprehensiveness, its style and learning, stands at the head of the author's legal productions. Judge Kent, whose wise and candid authority is sufficient on such a point, writes of it, "There is no such book extant in any single branch of the law, so full, and clear, and perfect; and there was no head of the law which stood more in need of such a production, giving us all the principles and reasoning of all the great jurists of Europe on the subject.” "I wonder," wrote Chief Justice Marshall to him on reading the work, "how you ever performed so laborious a task. You certainly love work for its own sake." In 1835, to these learned literary labors was added a collec tion of his miscellaneous writings, and in the following year a volume of "Commentaries on Equity Jurispru dence." Some years later appeared his work on "Promissory Notes," the last of the long series. Its publication shortly preceded his death. It was characteristic of his love of labor and the disinterestedness of his character, that when a statue of him was proposed by the merchants of Boston, he replied, "If they wish to do me honor in any way, let it not be by a statue, but by founding in the law school a professorship of commercial law." The sugges tion was adopted, and he was looking forward to these renewed labors after his retirement from the bench, for which he was making preparations, when in September, 1845, he was overtaken by sudden illness, a cold, followed by stricture and stoppage of the intestinal canal, which in a few days terminated his life. He died on the tenth of that month, at the age of sixty-six, at his home in Cambridge, and was buried in the neighboring cemetery of Mount Auburn, which had always been an object of his affectionate care. The friendly hands of the wise. and good have placed many garlands upon that honored grave. The worth of Story is to be measured by the most liberal eulogy. Disinterested, gener ous, kind, benevolent, in all the actions Blackstone, bringing literature to law of life, he brought to the study of the Poetry he always loved, and, like Kent law the graces of his richly endowed and Marshall, with whom he is associ nature. Such a man, so susceptible to ated in fame, was wont to unbend his all the charms and refinements of lite- mind in lighter literature. His taste rature, might have been excused the was with the classic worthies of Engprotracted, severer labors of the profes- land-with Milton, Shakspeare, Drysion; but having once put his hand to den, Pope, and the contemporaries of the work, Story sought no palliation, Johnson. Of the moderns his princimade no excuses. He was in harness pal favorites were Cowper and Crabbe. for half a century, devoting all his ac- He relished novels. We have noticed tive powers with unwearied assiduity to his early fondness for Smollett; his his arduous calling. His industry was age was solaced by the genius and enormous, worthy of the laureate Sou- humor of Dickens. He had an open they, "the most bookful of men," or of eye and sympathetic breast for all a German commentator. He was me- that was liberal and useful; from thodical to a degree, economizing odds the sober claims of science to the and ends of time, and seeking relief language of art and the stage. His from one study in another. He ap- conversational powers were great. pears always to have kept his mind in good humor, soothing the asperities of study by its gentler refinements; not sacrificing law to literature, but, like Kent calls them unaccountable. They were the growth of his love of know ledge and the better seeing of the heart. ROBERT FULTON. Tms distinguished mechanician and then penetrate the crust of the world original inventor was a genuine pro- in our western wilderness. duct of the American soil. The genius, indeed, of the men whom America produced in various departments of science in the last century, the Franklins, the Rittenhouses, the Kinnersleys, the Whitneys, should be more highly estimated than the parallel attainments of our own day. At present thousands of instructors and thousands of new influences are paving the way to fresh inventions. Common schools and academies furnish the pupil with profound elementary knowledge; libraries disclose the myriad achievements of the past; special newspapers and magazines carry knowledge to every hamlet; kindred sciences welcome and assist one another; social or ganizations encourage new discovery; government offers its prizes; accumulated commercial and manufacturing wealth rewards the inventor on the instant. How different this splendid triumphal procession from the first elements of science to fame and fortune, from the groping into light of the heaven-sown genius in the infant society of America a hundred years ago! It must needs have been a plant of no common hardihood, fully predestined to growth and vitality which could It has been remarked as a notewor thy coincidence, that Benjamin West and Robert Fulton came into the world in the same vicinity, in what was, at the time of their birth, a wild and uncultivated portion of the country, more remote from the seaboard in means of access and culture, than Arkansas is at present. It is owing to one of these men that the distance has been diminished and that we are enabled to make this truthful comparison. West was born at Springfield, Pa., in 1738. Robert Fulton first saw the light in a township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, then called Little Britain, but now bearing the name of Fulton, in the year 1765. His father, of the same name, was an emigrant from Ireland. He was at one time, we are told, a tailor; but at his son's birth was the occupant of a farm. He died too early to influence the child's education, which was picked up mainly by himself, though we hear of his being at school, and, as is not uncommon with boys of genius, of being accounted a dull fellow. This, in such cases, means simply that nature is working in a way of her own, independent of the schoolmaster. Of the anecdotes related of his intercourse with |