With a mind thus deeply imbued with learning, it will be felt that he was formed less for the contentions of the forum than for the exercises of the academy. And yet it is understood that he declined several opportunities of entering its learned retreats. In 1806 he was elected Hancock Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages in Harvard University; and at a later day he was invited to the chair of Greek Literature in the same institution. On the death of Professor Ashmun, many eyes were turned towards him, as fitted to occupy the professorship of law in Cambridge, since so ably filled by Mr. Greenleaf; and on two different occasions his name was echoed by the public prints as about to receive the dignity of President of the University. But he continued in the practice of the law to the last. He should be claimed by the bar with peculiar pride. If it be true, as has been said, that Serjeant Talfourd has reflected more honor upon his profession by the successful cultivation of letters than any of his contemporaries by their forensic triumphs, then should the American bar acknowledge their obligations to the fame of Mr. Pickering. He was one of us. He was a _regular_ in our ranks; in other service, only a _volunteer_. The mind is led instinctively to a parallel between him and that illustrious scholar and jurist, ornament of the English law, and pioneer of Oriental studies in England, Sir William Jones, to whom I have already referred. Both confessed, in early life, the attractions of classical studies; both were trained in the discipline of the law; both, though engaged in its practice, always delighted to contemplate it as a science; both surrendered themselves with irrepressible ardor to the study of languages, while the one broke into the unexplored fields of Eastern philology, and the other devoted himself more especially to the native tongues of his own Western continent. Their names are, perhaps, equally conspicuous for the number of languages which occupied their attention. As we approach them in private life, the parallel still continues. In both there were the same truth, generosity, and gentleness, a cluster of noble virtues,--while the intenser earnestness of the one is compensated by the greater modesty of the other. To our American jurist-scholar, also, may be applied those words of the Greek couplet, borrowed from Aristophanes, and first appropriated to his English prototype: "The Graces, seeking a shrine that would not decay, found the soul of Jones."