His death makes a chasm which I shrink from contemplating. He was the senior Judge of the highest Court of the country, an active Professor of Law, and a Fellow in the Corporation of Harvard University. He was in himself a whole triumvirate; and these three distinguished posts, now vacant, will be filled, in all probability, each by a distinct successor. It is, however, as the Jurist that he is to take his place in the history of the world, high in the same firmament where beam the mild glories of Tribonian, Cujas, Hale, and Mansfield. It was his fortune, unlike that of many cultivating the law with signal success on the European continent, to be called as a judge practically to administer and apply it in the business of life. It thus became to him not merely a science, whose depths and intricacies he explored in his closet, but a great and godlike instrument, to be employed in that grandest of earthly functions, the determination of justice among men. While the duties of the magistrate were thus illumined by the studies of the jurist, the latter were tempered to a finer edge by the experience of the bench. In the attempt to estimate his character as a Jurist, he may be regarded in _three_ different aspects,--as Judge, Author, and Teacher of Jurisprudence, exercising in each a peculiar influence. His lot is rare who achieves fame in any single department of human action; rarer still is his who becomes foremost in many. The first impression is of astonishment, that a single mind, in a single life, should accomplish so much. Omitting the incalculable labors, of which there is no trace, except in the knowledge, happiness, and justice they helped to secure, the bare amount of his written and printed works is enormous beyond precedent in the annals of the Common Law. His written judgments on his circuit, and his various commentaries, occupy _twenty-seven_ volumes, while his judgments in the Supreme Court of the United States form an important part of no less than _thirty-four_ volumes more. The vast professional labors of Coke and Eldon, which seem to clothe the walls of our libraries, must yield to his in extent. He is the Lope de Vega, or the Walter Scott, of the Common Law. We are struck next by the universality of his juridical attainments. It was said by Dryden of a great lawyer in English history,--Heneage Finch,-- "Our laws, that did a boundless ocean seem, Were coasted all and fathomed all by him."