lar with the mass of the people, and soon won, and ever subsequently retained, the sincere respect and regard of all classes. He was always active and efficient in furthering matters of public enterprise, calculated to develop the resources or advance the interests of that section of the State. He had a heart that sympathized with all cases and occasions appealing for relief or benevolent aid. He acted as well as spoke, and gave in the spirit of liberality which he urged others to exercise. His death made that community a sad one. On Saturday last his remains were taken to the beautiful village of Binghamton, to find their final resting place in the cemetery of the town where he has so long resided in increasing honor.

On that day all business there was suspended, private dwellings as well as the public buildings were draped in mourning, and all classes of the community were awaiting the arrival of his remains, and accompanied them, with every demonstration of sincere grief and respect, to his late residence. No more need be said to illustrate the esteem with which he was cherished by those who knew him most intimately, or their grief at his loss.

The many who have admired or respected him, but never entered his dwelling, may desire to know something of his life, in the relations of husband and father. He was a gentleman of domestic tastes and habits. He was hospitable, but without the slightest effort at ostentatious display. He was emphatically an affectionate father, every mindful of the interests and happiness of his children. They reciprocated his interest in them, and requited it with steadfast affection, and the most sincere respect.

The widow who survives him, has been a great invalid during the whole period of my acquaintance with them. She has been largely dependent upon him, in the varying changes of uniform ill health.

Neither the exactions upon his time by active professional occupation, however great, nor the cares and anxieties of official and political life, however absorbing, ever found him weary or thoughtless in his attentions to her, or in consulting her comfort and happiness. But, notwithstanding her life has been that of an invalid, and his that of a man of uniform good health, he has been suddenly removed from the scenes of this life, and she survives, to mourn her great and irreparable loss.

In her deep mourning, there must come the consolation, that the kind and beloved husband, who so long and devotedly journeyed with her along the pathway of life, has gone to his rest, after a well-spent life, full of years and honor. But she has the more cheering consolation, that he died in the assured hope of a higher and happier life beyond the grave.

REMARKS OF CHARLES P. KIRKLAND.

The life of Mr. Dickinson furnishes a proud illustration of the beauty and beneficence of our form of Government. Born in humble circumstances, with no inheritance on his arrival at manhood but poverty and the name of honest parents, with no education except that obtained at the common schools of forty-five years ago, his time was spent from his majority till the age of twenty-eight in obtaining the means of support, in self-education, and in preparing himself for admission to the bar. This long period of legal clerkship was then requisite in his case, as he could furnish no certificate of time spent in classical studies. I was informed last evening by a gentleman who knew him in his younger days, that he was once an apprentice to a respectable but humble trade. But all this time he knew that wealth and birth were not passports in the "Great Republic" to eminence and fame; that the want of them was no bar to advancement; and under the genial influence of the consciousness of this truth he entered on the battle of life, and manfully fought his way to positions of honor and distinction. It is indeed wonderful that, under all his circumstances, he could have made the acquisitions requisite to enable him to obtain the reputation he subsequently enjoyed as a statesman, a lawyer, a speaker and a writer.

I met him first in the year 1832, at a convention in the County of Chenango, in reference to a matter then of great interest, and deemed of vital importance to his section of the State, and though he was at that time unknown to fame, I well remember his earnest and impressive appeals in behalf of the measure under consideration.

I will not dwell on his literary attainments, and will only say that the address which he delivered in July, 1861, before the Literary Societies of Amherst College, was the work of an accomplished and cultivated mind, and would have done no discredit to the best of our writers and orators.

In 1836, he was elected Senator of this State, and thus became a member of our highest court; and in 1837, the first year of his taking his seat in that body, he delivered a number of very able and learned opinions, which will be found in the reports of that day, and this, it must be remembered, only six years after his admission to the bar as counsel.

In 1842, he was Lieutenant-Governor of the State and ex-officio President of the Court just mentioned, and there again he manifested his ability as a lawyer and a judge.

From 1844 to 1851, he was a member of the Senate of the United States, and for much of that time was Chairman of the Committee on Finance. You will want no better evidence of the position he occupied in that distinguished body than is contained in a letter of Daniel Web

ster to him, written after they had served together as Senators six years, and when Mr. Webster's term had expired. I cannot gratify this large assemblage more than by reading that honest and heartfelt testimony of the great statesman and lawyer to the merits and worth of our departed friend.

[The Letter read by Mr. Kirkland, appears in the foregoing Biographical Sketch.]

Mr. Dickinson's reply to that letter could not have been surpassed in beauty of sentiment and elegance of diction by the most graceful writer of our country.

Mr. Dickinson is the only man who has lived since Washington, and the only man, it may well be said, who ever will live, who could with truth say that he could, if he had chosen, have been President of the United States. In 1852 he was offered the Presidential nomination, and, had he accepted it, would have been elected, as subsequent events demonstrated; but he magnanimously declined the proffered honor in view of what he then deemed his honorary obligation to another.

Since his retirement from the Senate of the United States he has had the offer of several distinguished positions: Collector of this port, Commissioner to settle the Oregon Boundary, Judge of the Court of Appeals of New-York, all which he declined.

Day after to-morrow (April 20th) will be the anniversary of the day which, after all, Mr. Dickinson himself regarded as the most memorable of his life. On that day the great uprising of the people at Union Square, in this city, took place. Mr. Dickinson, on the morning of that day, left his house, over two hundred miles distant, for the sole purpose of being present and taking part on that great occasion; and well do I remember his appearance, as he arrived in his travelling dress, and covered with the dust and smoke of a long railroad journey, just as the meeting was being organized. He came under the inspiration of a pure and exalted patriotism, and it may well be imagined how his enthusiasm kindled into the highest glow when he found himself speaking in the shadow of the statue of Washington, and under the folds of the flag suspended over it, that had just been brought from Fort Sumter by the noble Anderson and his brave companions. The address he then delivered was of exceeding power and eloquence. It is to be remembered that he then belonged to the party, and to the "strictest sect" of the party, opposed to that then in power, and that, as a necessary consequence, his example and his teachings were of ten-fold influence. If all who were present at, and actually participated in that meeting, and all who then sympathized with it, had remained firm in the faith and true to the spirit of that occasion, the war of the rebellion would have been of comparatively brief duration

-vast amounts of treasure would have been saved, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of our patriot heroes would have been spared. He persevered and continued steadfast to the end, and did more, it may with truth be said, for the preservation of the Union and the overthrow of the rebellion, than any other single individual. His fellow-citizens very soon gave him the most flattering testimony of their appreciation of his merit and his services; in 1861 he was elected Attorney-General of New York by the unprecedented majority of nearly one hundred thousand.

How grateful it was to him to witness the glorious results of the efforts of himself and his compatriots for the maintenance of the Union and the preservation of the Nation! And if it is given to him now to know what is doing here, we may feel well assured that nothing would be more satisfactory to him than the mention of his career since the 20th of April, 1861.

How awfully sudden, Mr. Chairman, the departure of our friend! On Monday, in the vigorous performance of his official duty in this very Hall-on Thursday his spirit returned to Him who gave it. And how vividly should this event remind us of the lesson, so often taught and so little heeded, of the uncertainty of life!

His character unsullied throughout life, presenting an uniform example of industry, perseverance, integrity-his sincerity and honesty acknowledged by all, and forming the basis of his powerful personal influence we have in him a model worthy of imitation everywhere; and his history, from its beginning to its end, may well be studied by every ingenuous and high-spirited youth of the Republic.

Nothing could be more grateful to me personally than to have the op. portunity of paying this feeble tribute of respect to the memory of one who rose from obscurity to the highest position, who exhibited so much intellectual power and so much moral worth; who, in his own person, presented so shining an illustration of the kindly effects of our free government on the individual man; who, in the time of his country's peril, stood manfully forth for her defence and salvation; and who was so eminently entitled to the respect, esteem and gratitude of his country

men.

MR. PRESIDENT,

REMARKS OF GENERAL JOHN A. DIX.

I have come, not without hesitation, to take part in this meeting; for, although my admission to the Bar of New York dates as far back as 1824, many years have elapsed since I withdrew from the practice of the law, and I have become unknown as a member of the profession. But I have yielded to the reflection that my association in the Senate of the United States with our deceased friend, during five annual sessions of

Congress, makes my presence here not altogether out of place, and enables me to speak of his many excellences of mind and heart with the advantage of a somewhat close and prolonged acquaintance. I believe I may truly say of Mr. Dickinson, that at every period of his life-from its first unassisted beginnings to the full development of his intellectual powers he was a man of more than ordinary vigor, intelligence and determination. He went out into the battle of life with no other armor than his own indomitable courage, and triumphed over all the obstacles to his success by the force of a steady and unwavering resolution. His walk may be said to have been in the open arena of intellectual conflict, relying less on resources gathered by abstraction and study, than on the knowledge gained by observation and experience in the ever-shifting scenes of active life, where men are brought into perpetual contact with each other; and it was to this practical discipline during the period of half a century, that he owed his efficiency and success in his professional and political career. His familiar acquaintance with men, their business, their interests, their pursuits, their habits of thought, and the influences by which they are most commonly governed, made him always prepared to take part in popular movements, always ready to act with decision, and always capable of speaking with point and effect.

Kindred to these qualities, and almost inseparable from them, were a boldness in action and a fearlessness in speech very rarely surpassed. I never knew a man more free from all concealment. What he thought of men or measures, he never hesitated to speak. There was nothing about him of what the world calls policy; nothing of what the phrenologists call secretiveness; nothing clandestine, nothing tortuous; but everything fair, open and direct. In controversy he might have been rough with an adversary; but he would have scorned to circumvent him by hidden and unworthy arts.

A man with characteristics like these could not be without ardent admirers and devoted friends; and that he possessed social virtues, of which the outer world could know little or nothing, but which his intimate associates appreciated at their true value, is manifest from the universal sorrow caused by his death in the town in which he lived, and in which the whole population, with a common and spontaneous accord, have, as stated by Judge Bosworth, clad their dwellings in the habili ments of mourning.

Such public demonstrations of respect go very far to embalm in the memory of a community the virtues of those to whom they are paid. But, sir, there is something higher and better. The estimation in which a man is held at his own fireside, is the best evidence of his purity and worth. No man was more beloved by his family than Mr. Dickinson; no family was more blessed than his in the bountiful affection it received and returned. We need no other proof of the truth of what I say