In the Law Reporter for September, 1841, he published an article of singular merit, on National Rights and State Rights, being a review of the case of Alexander McLeod, recently determined in the Supreme Court of New York. This was afterwards republished in a pamphlet, and extensively circulated. It is marked by uncommon learning, clearness, and power. The course of the courts of New York is handled with freedom, and the supremacy of the Government vindicated. Of all the discussions elicited by that interesting question, on which, for a while, seemed to hang the portentous issues of peace and war between the United States and Great Britain, that of Mr. Pickering will be admitted to take the lead, whether we consider its character as an elegant composition, or as a searching review of the juridical questions involved. In dealing with the opinion of Mr. Justice Cowen, renowned for black-letter and the bibliography of the law, he shows himself more than a match for this learned Judge, even in these unfrequented fields, while the spirit of the publicist and jurist gives a refined temper to the whole article, which we vainly seek in the other production. In the North American Review for October, 1840, is an article by him, illustrative of Conveyancing in Ancient Egypt, being an explanation of an Egyptian deed of a piece of land in hundred-gated Thebes, written on papyrus, more than a century before the Christian era, with the impression of a seal or stamp attached, and a certificate of registry in the margin, in as regular a manner as the keeper of the registry in the County of Suffolk would certify to a deed of land in the City of Boston at this day. Jurisprudence is here adorned by scholarship. There is another production which, like the preceding, belongs to the department of literature as well as of jurisprudence: his Lecture on the Alleged Uncertainty of the Law, delivered before the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Though written originally for the general mind, which it is calculated to interest and instruct in no common degree, it will be read with equal advantage by the profound lawyer. It is not easy to mention any popular discussion of a juridical character, in our language, deserving of higher regard. It was first published in the American Jurist, at the solicitation of the writer of this sketch, who has never referred to it without fresh admiration of the happy illustrations and quiet reasoning by which it vindicates the science of the law. * * * * * In considering what Mr. Pickering accomplished out of his profession, we are led over wide and various fields of learning, where we can only hope to indicate his footprints, without presuming to examine or describe the ground.