60 LIFE or 



public justice that holds the community together, the 

 Judges ought to he of a reserved and retired charac- 

 ter, und wholly unconnected with the iiolitical world. 

 He certainly acted up to all that the sentiment as- 

 serts ; and he found the benefit of it, the community 

 did also, iu a ready submission to those judgments, 

 more than one, in which a suspected infusion of party 

 would have been a disturbing ingredient. No one 

 who knew him in private life, had however any rea- 

 son to doubt his opinions, when the occasion fitly 

 called for their expression. Not deeming it discreet 

 to meet his fellow citizens in those assemblies where 

 either politics or their kindred subjects were to be 

 discussed, he seized with the more avidity, such oc- 

 casions of intercourse, as were presented by meetings 

 for public improvement, for philosophical inquiry, or 

 the cultivation of literature ; and in particular he at- 

 tended with great interest to the concerns of the 

 American Philosophical Society, of which as 1 have 

 mentioned before, he was chosen President, on the 

 death of Dr. Patterson, in the year 1824, and to those 

 also of the Athenaeum, of which he was the first, and 

 during his life the only President ; — the Trustees of 

 the University of Pennsylvania rarely missed him 

 from his seat, or the United Episcopal Churches, of 

 Philadelphia, from their Yestry, as the Warden of 

 his venerable friend and pastor Bishop White. It was 

 in this way that he diminished the distance to which 

 his office removed him from society ; keeping however 

 a constant eye upon that office, even when he moved 



