232 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



department in the classification of members in which I stand, and as 

 long and very friendly professional and social relations with one, and a 

 cordial acquaintance for many years with the other, have rendered my 

 remembrance of each of peculiar and atfectionate interest, I readily com- 

 ply with your suggestion, in a very humble and brief attempt to com- 

 memorate their claims upon our regard this evening, — confining myself 

 to the consideration of their peculiar moral and intellectual character- 

 istics, leaving the more particular elements of biographical account for 

 their appropriate place in the annual narrative. 



If I were influenced by no other motive to avoid all semblance of 

 exaggeration in such delineations, I should feel myself constrained to 

 the severest simplicity of truthfulness by the consciousness of the stern 

 reverence of it in one, and the equally firm and gentle love of it in the 

 other, as illustrated in their daily lives and conversation, and of the 

 reproach pressing on me, as in their presence, should I be guilty of 

 departure from it in speaking of them. 



Both were members of the legal profession ; both devoted their 

 best energies to the service of society in that department of moral 

 science ; and both illustrated its true dignity as a science in knowledge 

 of the principles of human nature and of society ; and as an art, in the 

 application of them to the relations of life and the rights and duties of 

 members of a community. 



I believe that the records of the juridical career of the late Chief 

 Justice Shaw justify the assertion, that no judge ever adorned the 

 bench, in England or America, whose decisions are more strikingly 

 illustrative of the law as a science, both in the abstract and the con- 

 crete. His mind seemed ever dwelling in principles and their unfold- 

 ings ; and with equal power and delight whether in abstract develop- 

 ment or practical application. It was thoroughly absorbed in the 

 perception and contemplation of the nature of Law, in its universal 

 application, as portrayed in Hooker's celebrated description : " Of Law 

 there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is in the bosom of 

 God, — her voice the harmony of the world ; all things in heaven and 

 earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the great- 

 est as not exempted from her power." 



No subject was presented, whether of morality or civil polity, of 

 science or of art, concerning which he did not instinctively seek the 

 ascertainment of its fundamental law, its reduction to first principles. 

 It mattered not whether it were the government of a state or the con- 



