than the lines, full of deep feeling and poetic grace, read by Judge Pierrepont at the opening of this meeting. Sir, it is one of the greatest of posthumous triumphs for those who have been prominent in public affairs, when the appreciation of their excellences and the sorrow for their loss grow more intense as we recede from the circumference of the great circle within which they moved, and draw nearer to the centre where they were most familiarly known.

You have, no doubt, noticed, Mr. President, that this year has, thus far, been one of extraordinary mortality among men ranging in age from three score years to three score years and ten. Whether it be from the severity or the changefulness of the season, or some special atmospheric influences, that death has made such unusual havoc with them, we know not. But we do know that numbers have been stricken down, almost without warning, and apparently in the fulness of their strength. It was so with Mr. Dickinson. It is but a few days since he was moving about among us, in the active discharge of his official duties, with a frame which the hand of time seemed scarcely to have touched, except in blanching, somewhat more prematurely and completely than with most men of his age, the flowing hair by which his general appearance was so conspicuously marked.

But, sir, I must not draw too largely on the indulgence of the gentlemen assembled here. My purpose was to offer, in the briefest manner, my tribute to the common stock of sadness for the sudden death of the departed statesman, and of sympathy with his sorrowing friends, Having stood side by side with him in the Senate Chamber at an eventful period in our history, not always agreeing with each other in opinion, never differing in unkindness, always cherishing for him a sincere respect, which I have reason to believe was as sincerely returned, it was thought that a few words from me in remembrance of our former association would neither be inappropriate or unacceptable to the gentlemen assembled here, though their professional avocations brought them much nearer to him than myself in the closing scenes of his life. Having performed this office-a grateful and yet a sorrowful one, as all such offices are-I desire to make a single concluding remark. When we pass in review the varied incidents of his life-his youth of earnest and persevering labor, his manhood of official and forensic activity, his public services, the social position he occupied in his latter years as the well-earned reward of half a century of unremitting toil, and, above all, his fidelity to the cause of the Union through all vicissitudes-by conciliation as long as there was any hope of a peaceful solution of sectional controversy, and by a zealous and patriotic devotion to the Government when its existence was threatened by force, when we regard him under all these phases of his valuable life, we may truly say that a remarkable man has gone from amongst us, and that his career is a distinguished example of

successful effort, well directed and well sustained, in the acquisition of official and professional fame.

ADDRESS OF WILLIAM M. EVARTS, Esq.

MR. PRESIDENT, Gentlemen of tHE JUDICIARY ANd of the Bar:

As we have been interested listeners thus far to Chief Justice Bosworth, who brings to us knowledge of the early life of the eminent man whose decease we meet to lament, and to the observations of Mr Kirkland respecting his professional career, who has a wide range of knowledge, situated as he was in the earlier part of his own professional life, a witness of his exertions and his success, also to the history which General Dix has given of the public labors and political distinctions of Mr. Dickinson, I can find but one reason why, from this assembly of the Bar, I should have been asked by the Committee to bear a share, so grateful, indeed, to me, on this commemorative occasion-and that is in the fact that in the last scenes of the efforts at our bar of this lawyer, this public man, this public officer, I bore a part. For it was in the case of so great public importance now pending before his Honor, Judge Betts, in which the Government was represented by the District Attorney, Mr. Dickinson, and the claimants by myself, that his last appearance in public, his last exertions in the labors and duties of life, took place. At the adjournment of the Court on Monday of this week, I left it, by your Honor's indulgence, to perform the duty of attending the funeral of a deceased relative in a neighboring State, and Mr. Dickinson, it seems, went to meet that death which now brings us here. In these strenuous contests of our profession, death comes in a more or less impressive form always, to those who are active and vigorous in the exercise of the duties and labors of our calling; and to all of us the death of Governor Dickinson was impressive, for his robust frame, his vigorous constitution, his unbroken health, his moderate age, attracted as little as to any one, solicitude or expectation of his passing away from us. But to me who, in this last of his conflicts, was his opponent, it seems as it were in one of the contests of the ancient games, when one should find the swift runner dropping at his side in the cramp of death, or the strong wrestler's spent life yielding in the last struggle of the combat. Mr. Dickinson was a new comer to this bar, but he had been preceded by a distinguished reputation as a lawyer and as a public orator, so that at once he assumed, in the recognition of the community and of our profession, an eminent position, when the high station to which the Government had called him brought him here as a resident and a leader for the Government in all its public cases, as well as in the routine of the business of the office of District Attorney. This, for the first time, introduced him to the personal and social ac

quaintance of any considerable number of our citizens, and I think that every one who knows the facts will agree with me in saying that, in the domestic circles and the social life of this great community, he won universal favor by the manliness and sincerity of his bearing and conduct. Mr. Dickinson impressed everybody as an honest man and as an earnest man, and his honorable poverty, which in his youth led him forward to such great services, attended him during his life, and is at the close still the companion of his unsullied fame. In a communityin a nation-which, of late, at least, has shown so much of that greed of wealth which is sure to accompany so rapid a development of its resources, this is undoubtedly a great tribute to one who has had so many opportunities, so many reasonable occasions, as the world goes, for having made advantage to himself out of his services to the public. Mr. Dickinson impresses us all, too, as a man who was altogether on one side; not partly on one side and partly on another; and I need not say that, in any manly estimate of public duty or private conduct, that is a character entitled to respect and affection, and sure to command them.

My first personal knowledge of Mr. Dickinson grew out of the fact that, in the political agitations of 1850 and 1851, he was thrown mainly into a co-operation with the great leaders of the party of which I was an humble member, in company with the great leaders of the Democratic party, of which he had always been a prominent, zealous, and efficient advocate. The great tie which brings men together, and which was so conspicuously exhibited in the notable letter of Mr. Webster to Mr. Dickinson, at that time, brought together many men who, in the traditions or in the habits of their respective parties, had looked upon one another with suspicion, distrust, and hostility. Now, there, Governor Dickinson, in the active part he took, was wholly on one side of the great question then pending, which was of union or estrangement between the States. Mr. Webster was not so correct in the horoscope he cast for Governor Dickinson's future life, in that touching note of his, which has been read, as, twenty years before, when there was the first dawn of the trouble and darkness which were to burst over this country, he was in his prayer for himself, that when he should last look upon the sun in the heavens, he might behold our flag, without a single star obscured or a single stripe erased or polluted, he might not look upon States dissevered and belligerent, or upon a land drenched with fraternal blood. And, in the settlement of 1850, that great statesman found a serene sky for his country, upon which he last looked in death.' But you will remember that he foresaw for Governor Dickinson no probable occasion for as great fortitude, as great patriotism, as great services to this nation, as he had rendered in the pacification of our politics in 1850. Governor Dickinson lived to exercise the same spirit, to show the same determination to be wholly on one side, as much and through

out during the civil war, and for the Union first, always and forever, and to bear a part in civil life and in popular influence of the greatest importance in this whole struggle, which, happily concluded, permitted him to look once more upon the flag of his country without a single star obscured or a single stripe erased or polluted, however many honorable wounds it may have received in the smoke and fire of battle.

Now, Mr. President and gentlemen of the profession, we must pronounce the career of Governor Dickinson earnest, useful, distinguished, eminent, famous; yet it is made up of the materials of the life of Americans open to the same traits of character and the same powerful intellect, whoever shall possess them, and whoever shall exercise them. He possessed those traits of character, he exercised those forms of preparation, and he acted in those paths of conduct which, under institutions like ours, are the most useful to the country, and receive the largest share of popular favor and of public distinction. And yet there was not the slightest sacrifice of any private virtue, nor the least surrender of domestic duties. The judgment of his countrymen of his public conduct would have procured no such attendance about his obsequies as was shown at Binghamton, if his private character had been less pure, if his life had been less beautiful; and, under the clear light of that judgment of the thousands that were within the range of personal knowledge of him, we see the estimate which our kind makes of such men; for I am told that as the train which carried his remains, without the noise of bells or whistle of the engine, slowly and silently entered the station-house, thirty thousand of his fellow-citizens were there in sorrow to receive him, and that when the procession formed which followed him from his house through a distance of a mile and a half to the place of his burial, through this whole passage, from the home of his affections to that house appointed for all the living, there was one continuous unbroken stream of living affection and respect, that thus connected these two abiding places of mortality.

ADDRESS OF JAMES T. BRADY, ESQ.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BAR,

Although I accepted with pleasure the invitation to attend this meeting, and to say a few words to my brethren to-day, I did so with a consciousness that the state of my voice, which you may readily notice, would prevent my making any extended remarks, even if in the absence of that difficulty I felt the slightest inclination to do so. I have listened with you attentively to the truthful, eloquent and touching addresses of the gentlemen who have preceded me, to the eloquent elegies and eulogies of a good man. I do not know, gentlemen, how

those who have arrived at the period of life in which I exist estimate their fellow-creatures. Like you, I honor greatness, genius and achievements; but I honor more those qualities in a man's nature which show that while he holds a proper relation to the Deity, he has also a just estimate of his fellow-men, and a kindly feeling towards them. I would rather have it said of me, after death, by my brethren of the bar, that they were sorry I had left their companionship, than to be spoken of in the highest strains of gifted panegyric. When I think of Mr. Dickinson, I think of a man who, I am quite sure, had no guile in his nature, and who died leaving no living creature to rejoice at his death; and the man who can say that of himself, in the still watches of the night, when his conscience is inspected only by the Almighty and himself, need not, in my imperfect view of religious sentiment and duty, be much afraid to die.

I have no tear to shed over the grave of my friend, Mr. Dickinson. He might have lived longer, and his constitution seemed to indicate that he would; and for the sake of that dear partner of his young, as of his old affections, to whom Judge Bosworth so touchingly alluded, I wish that she had still retained his kindly attention and sweet society. But there is a time to die, appointed for all men. It was the will of the Creator that he should depart, and he has gone, gone gracefully and hopefully, out of this busy, distracting world. I say he went out of it gracefully, for we are told to-day (what I was delighted to hear), that almost the last act of his life which could properly be communicated to the public here, is, that in this spring time, with the vision of his sick wife before him, he went out, not amongst the children of the ground, which the poet has so beautifully called "the stars of earth," for a cluster of flowers to place in her delicate hand, but he culled them out of his own heart, and he has gone to the presence of his Maker with the odor of that intellectual bouquet pervading his soul.

I had the pleasure of enjoying the hospitality of Mr. Dickinson at Binghamton. It was on a memorable occasion-one of the many which illustrated that it seemed designed that, between him and myself, there should exist various and strong sympathies, political, professional and social. Mr. Dickinson and myself, as some gentleman here may remember, belonged to the small, despairing band in this State who carried into the political contest of the North, for the last time, the flag of the South, contending that the South should enjoy to the utmost, and with liberal recognition, all the rights she could fairly claim under the Constitution of the United States. How small that band was, all familiar with the political history of this State can tell. I was at his home. Hospitality is known and has always been known among all conditions of men. The fact that we have enjoyed it in the residence of a friend often prevents breaches of acquaintance, which,