412 THEOPHILUS PARSONS. 



of 1848, on the resignation of Professor Greenleaf, he was appointed 

 Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University, and at the beginning 

 of the academic year 1848-49 he assumed the duties of his profes- 

 sorship, delivering the opening lecture in the Law School on Monday, 

 Aug. 28, 1848. About the same time he removed to Cambridge, 

 where he continued to reside until his death. He held his profes- 

 sorship and discharged its duties for more than twenty-one years ; 

 namely, until the middle of the academic year 1869-70, when he 

 resigned and retired from active pursuits. 



Professor Parsons, like his father, had great versatility of talent, 

 and like him was distinguished for his attainments in various branches 

 of learning ; but, unlike him, he was a very prolific writer, not only 

 upon legal subjects, but upon literary and religious subjects as well. 

 Any notice of him, therefore, which fails to present the many-sided- 

 ness of his intellectual character must necessarily be incomplete ; and 

 yet the present notice must be confined to his professional character, 

 as the writer is not competent to speak of him in any other. 



He had the great misfortune to lose his father just as he had nearly 

 reached that period of life when the latter would have been of price- 

 less service to him in the profession which he chose.* As it was, it 

 is doubtful if he derived from his father any professional advantage 

 whatever. Whether his choice of a profession was due in any degree 

 to his father's wishes or influence is not known. However that may 

 be, there is some reason for doubting whether the choice was a wise 

 one. It is clear that he never thoroughly enjoyed the practice of 

 law, and his talents, great and brilliant as they were, were not pre- 

 cisely of the kind to qualify him to excel in law as a science ; and it 

 is doubtful whether, under ordinary circumstances, he would have 

 achieved such a degree of success in the profession as would have sat- 

 isfied either himself or his friends. In a word, he had not what is 

 called a legal mind. So far as law depends merely upon principles 

 of right reason and abstract justice, he was fitted to excel in it, and 

 he liked it ; but in so far as it depends upon what is called technical 

 reasoning, he regarded it with aversion, and he seemed to have the 

 same inaptitude for that kind of reasoning that many persons of other- 

 wise fine talents have for mathematics, for example. Accordingly, he 

 always disliked the law of real property, and openly avowed his inca- 

 pacity for it ; and the same was true in a great measure of the com- 



* Chief-Justice Parsons died Oct. 30, 1813, when Professor Parsons was six- 

 teen years old and in his Junior year in College. 



