FRANCIS CABOT LOWELL. 903 



they have been lost from sight, and he never pursued the subject in a 

 more permanent form. 



His service in the House covered the three years from 1895 to 1897. 

 How much farther he might have gone one cannot say, for in 1898 he 

 was offered and accepted the position of Judge in the United States 

 District Court for Massachusetts. Some of his friends saw that his 

 pohtical prospects were bright, and that by accepting an appointment 

 to the bench he would renounce them; but he knew how uncertain 

 they must be and felt that, with his practice at the bar no better than 

 it stood, to refuse would mean to leave the law and to give up his 

 profession altogether. For judicial work he was by intellect and 

 temperament well adapted, and whatever he may have abandoned, 

 the suitors and counsel in his court gained by his acceptance of the 

 place. Promoted in 1905 to the Circuit Court, he spent on the federal 

 bench the last thirteen years of his life. To the questions that came 

 before him he brought the ability, the careful thoroughness, the large 

 knowledge that he did to everything else he undertook, and it is 

 notable that of his many decisions an unusually small proportion 

 were over-ruled on appeal. 



From childhood he had qualities that made his life a singularly 

 useful and happy one. What he once said of the grandfather for 

 whom he was named might have been said of him, — that he had weak 

 appetites with a strong will — a rare and fortunate combination. He 

 seemed to embody the Greek idea of temperance, the possession of all 

 good tendencies in moderation and none of them in excess. His 

 political attitude was typical. Early in life, before he became 

 active in politics, he was, at the election of 1884, a Mugwump; but 

 ever after he was a consistent Republican. He saw, and made no 

 attempt to conceal, and scarcely to excuse, the faults of his own party, 

 yet he adhered steadily to it in office and out. This was charac- 

 teristic. Clear in perception, just in opinion, he was a partisan with- 

 out blindness and almost without prejudice, and that from a naturally 

 contented disposition. He liked the men and the things with which 

 he was associated — felt kindly toward them and was happy with 

 them. The serenity of his disposition never failed in public or in 

 private life. Even during the last two years of growing weakness he 

 worked to the utmost of his strength, enjoyed cruising in his boat in 

 the waters of Vineyard Sound and Narragansett Bay that he loved so 

 well and never in sickness or in health, in success or in disappoint- 

 ment, did he show the fretfulness that is the blight of modern life. 



A. Lawrence Lowell. 



