318 CHARLES SMITH BRADLEY. 



the office of Charles F. Tillinghast, whose partner he became on being 

 admitted to the bar of Rhode Island, in 1841. He was soon eminent 

 in his profession, and for many years was one of its acknowledged 

 leaders. In politics he was always a Democrat. It was therefore a 

 very striking mark of appreciation which was shown when he was 

 elected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by the Republican legisla- 

 ture of Rhode Island, in February, 1866. He filled this office with dis- 

 tinction for two years, resigning it then on account of the pressure of 

 his private affairs. Soon after this, he was for several years one of the 

 lecturers at the Harvard Law School, and in 1876 he succeeded the 

 Hon. Emory Washburn as the Bussey Professor at that institution, and 

 held the office for three years. He was called to many other places of 

 honor and service. He was a member of the State Senate of Rhode 

 Island, and a Fellow of Brown University. He repeatedly led the 

 forlorn hope of the Democratic party in Rhode Island as a candidate 

 for the national House of Representatives and Senate, and as a member 

 of the National Convention of that party. 



He was a man of learning and of wide accomplishments, and of 

 spotless integrity and honor. As a lawyer, he had an extraordinary 

 quickness of apprehension, subtlety, fertility of resource, great native 

 breadth of good sense, and a vigorous understanding. He was a lover 

 and student of literature, and especially of art ; and there was in him 

 what one of his friends has happily called " a certain elegance about 

 his intellectual structure and movement, a mixture of grace and senti- 

 ment and imagination witli his logical and practical power, which 

 lifted him above the dry professional road he travelled by choice, and 

 with so much success." From the beginning he had always a great 

 charm of manners and character. In earlier life he was very slender, 

 and his aspect was that of a refined and thoughtful scholar. Later on, 

 his tall figure grew fuller, but never unwieldy ; and his handsome face, 

 and his head silvered with age, became noble, and expressive of strength, 

 dignity, and repose. 



He was accomplished as a public speaker, — indeed, he came near 

 being a very finished and remarkable orator. Public speaking was 

 easy to him. In preparing for it he wrote little, speaking mainly with- 

 out notes or from slight memoranda. His oration before the Phi Beta 

 Kappa Society at Cambridge, in 1879, was never written out ; he trusted 

 largely to the inspiration of the moment, as was his wont. Several of 

 his addresses, however, were reported, and have appeared in print. The 

 last of them, on " The Profession of the Law as an Element of Civil 

 Society," was delivered at the University of Virginia, in 1881. 



