He was elevated to the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, by the side of Marshall, at the early age of thirty-two. At the same early age Buller--reputed the ablest judge of Westminster Hall, in the list of those who never arrived at the honors of Chief Justice--was induced to renounce an income larger than the salary of a judge, to take a seat by the side of Mansfield. The parallel continues. During the remainder of Mansfield's career on the bench, Buller was the friend and associate upon whom he chiefly leaned; and history records the darling desire of the venerable Chief Justice that his faithful assistant should succeed to his seat and chain of office; but these wishes, the hopes of the profession, and his own continued labors were disregarded by a minister who seldom rewarded any but political services,--I mean Mr. Pitt. Our brother, like Buller, was the friend and associate of a venerable chief justice, by whose side he sat for many years; nor do I state any fact which I should not for the sake of history, when I add, that it was the long-cherished desire of Marshall that Story should be his successor. It was ordered otherwise; and he continued a judge of the Supreme Court for the space of thirty-four years,--a judicial life of almost unexampled length in the history of the Common Law, and of precisely the same duration with the illustrious magistracy of D'Aguesseau in France. As judge, he was called to administer a most extensive jurisdiction, embracing matters which in England are so variously distributed that they never come before any one court; and in each department he has shown himself second to none other, unless we unite with him in deferring to Marshall as the greatest expounder of a branch peculiar to ourselves, Constitutional Law. Nor will it be easy to mention any other judge who has left behind so large a number of judgments which belong to the first class in the literature of the law. Some excel in a special branch, to which their learning and labor are directed. He excelled in all. At home in the feudal niceties of Real Law, with its dependencies of descents, remainders, and executory devises,--also in the ancient hair-splitting technicalities of Special Pleading,--both creatures of an illiterate age, gloomy with black-letter and verbal subtilties,--he was most skilful in using and expounding the rules of Evidence, the product of a more refined period of juridical history,--was master of the common law of Contracts, and of Commercial Law in its wide expanse, embracing so large a part of those topics which concern the business of our age,--was familiar with Criminal Law, which he administered with the learning of a judge and the tenderness of a parent,--had compassed the whole circle of Chancery in its jurisdiction and its pleadings, touching all the interests of life, and subtilely adapting the Common Law to our own age; and he ascended with