Many years ago his judgments in matters of Admiralty and Prize arrested the attention of that famous judge and jurist, Lord Stowell; and Sir James Mackintosh, a name emblazoned by literature and jurisprudence, said of them, that they were "justly admired by all cultivators of the Law of Nations."[166] He has often been cited as authority in Westminster Hall,--an English tribute to a foreign jurist almost unprecedented, as all familiar with English law will know; and the Chief Justice of England made the remarkable declaration, with regard to a point on which Story differed from the Queen's Bench, that his opinion would "at least neutralize the effect of the English decision, and induce any of their courts to consider the question as an open one."[167] In the House of Lords, Lord Campbell characterized him as "one of the greatest ornaments of the United States, who had a greater reputation as a legal writer than any author England could boast since the days of Blackstone";[168] and, in a letter to our departed brother, the same distinguished magistrate said: "I survey with increased astonishment your extensive, minute, exact, and familiar knowledge of English legal writers in every department of the law. A similar testimony to your juridical learning, I make no doubt, would be offered by the lawyers of France and Germany, as well as of America, and we should all concur in placing you at the head of the jurists of the present age."[169] His authority was acknowledged in France and Germany, the classic lands of jurisprudence; nor is it too much to say, that at the moment of his death he enjoyed a renown such as had never before been achieved, during life, by any jurist of the Common Law. [166] Letter of Sir James Mackintosh to Hon. Edward Everett, dated June 3, 1824: Life and Letters of Story, Vol. I. p. 435. [167] Letter of Lord Denman to Charles Sumner, Esq., dated September 29, 1840: Life and Letters of Story, Vol. II. p. 379. The case to which Lord Denman referred was that of _Peters_ v. _The Warren Insurance Company_, 3 Sumner's Rep. 389, where Mr. Justice Story dissented from the case of _De Vaux_ v. _Salvador_, 4 Adolph. & Ellis, 420. [168] Hansard, Parl. Deb., LXVIII. 667. [169] Life and Letters of Story, Vol. II. p. 429. In this recital I state simply facts, without intending to assert presumptuously for our brother any precedence in the scale of eminence. The extent of his fame is a fact. It will not be forgotten, as a proper contrast to his fame, which was not confined to his own country or to England, that the cultivators of the Common Law have hitherto enjoyed little more than an insular reputation, and that even its great master received on the Continent no higher designation than _quidam Cocus_, "one Coke."