358 



extent and with the chances that are common. He appeared will- 

 ing to abide his time : secure in the possession of sufficient abilities, 

 great good feelings, amiable manners, and strict integrity. He 

 made his way in due season without having encountered, what Mr. 

 Gibbon considered it necessary to traverse, under the spur of neces- 

 sity, — *' the thorny labyrinths of the law.^' He was happy at all 

 times in the friendship of those who could promote his interests, 

 while they extended to him personal kindness, and he cultivated 

 the regard of such individuals with benefit to his private relations, 

 and success in his public career. If he was favored with the smiles 

 of fortune principally while engaged in official life, he was always 

 faithful and intelligent, as well as upright and laborious as a civil 

 officer of the government. He held in succession, several important 

 places : District x\ttorney of the United States for the Eastern Dis- 

 trict of Pennsylvania (30th December, 1831) ; a second time 31st 

 December, 1835 ; Government Director of the Bank of the United 

 States (January, 1833) ; Solicitor of the Treasury (May, 1837) ; 

 Attorney-General (January, 1840). He was nominated for the post 

 of Governor of Michigan, and rejected by the Senate, 20th January, 

 1835, by a bare majority. His nomination for the second term of 

 Bank Director was rejected. That also of District Attorney, for a 

 second term, was at first rejected, although on the renewal of it, con- 

 firmed. His political friends, and those too of a personal character, 

 deemed these rejections to be owing to the state of party feeling, 

 rather than to any doubt of fitness on the part of the nominee. 

 During a portion of the time of his official residence at Washington, 

 the Commissioners under the Mexican Treaty met, and Mr. Gilpin 

 represented as an advocate, many of the largest claims that were 

 adjudicated by the Board. On these respectively, he received a 

 commission, which amounted in the whole to so considerable a sum, 

 as to become a broad foundation for the resources which he enjoyed 

 and judiciously invested during life, and bequeathed in ample bene- 

 volence at his death. 



If public offices were filled by him with much direct and incidental 

 pecuniary advantage, places of a social and municipal kind were oc- 

 cupied with like fidelity and no emolument. He was, for a conside- 

 rable length of time, a J)ircctor, and afterwards President of the 

 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and was a Director and 

 Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. He was 

 elected a Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania December 7, 

 1852, and presented his resignation April 0, 1858, on account of 



