These observations on the professional and public life of the subject of our sketch have been so prolonged that the occasion will permit but a few further remarks upon his general attainments, his intellectual and moral character and usefulness as a citizen. It was the remark of Lord Bacon that "Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." Mr. Badger's reading was confined, with the exception of the dead languages, which he had acquired in his youthful studies, to the literature of our own language. With the most approved authors in this he had a familiar acquaintance, and, as already remarked, excelled in the accomplishments of a critic. The field of learning, which next to jurisprudence he most affected, and perhaps even preferred to that, was moral science. Upon the sublime truths of this science, in the conversations with his friends, his remarks and illustrations were often not unworthy of Alexander or Wayland, Butler or Whately. "In it," says one of the most intimate of his friends and contemporaries, "the rapidity of his perception and accuracy of his deductions were marvelous. Place before his mind any proposition of moral science, and instantly he carried it out, either to exact truth, most beautifully enunciated, or reduced it to an absurdity." To his acquisitions in the kindred topic of didactic divinity, or theology as a science, only a professional theologian can do justice. An earnest member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, though but a layman, he ventured on more than one occasion to discuss matters of discipline and doctrine in the character of a pamphleteer, in opposition to clergymen of note, and in a memorable instance with the head of the diocese himself with such signal success that, although the Bishop ultimately united himself with the Romish Church, whither Mr. Badger charged that he was tending, not another member of his denomination left its communion. He was averse to the labor of writing, and beyond an address before the Literary Societies of the University, the reports, by his own hand, of some of his speeches in Congress, and other pamphlets on subjects political or religious, has left few written performances. But he had the accuracy in thought and speech of a practiced writer.