It was our privilege in our legal novitiate (this is but _a phrase_; for a lawyer is always in his novitiate) to have been, at the Cambridge Law School, a pupil of Mr. Justice Story; and thus to have drank at the very fountain head of constitutional law—that branch of our national jurisprudence which can least fluctuate. Judges of a day and not of a generation, or crazy legislators with spasmodic wisdom, may alter, and overturn, and mystify by simplification, the laws and usages of every-day life; but it is scarcely to be apprehended that the current of our constitutional law will ever be diverted from original channels. There is danger rather of its being dammed into stagnation. While fully aware of his faults and foibles as a man, and his idiosyncracies as a judge and a legal writer, we have never wavered in loyalty to his judicial majesty, or found a flaw in the regard we paid to his memory. And no book was more welcome to Zimmerman in his solitude than these volumes regarding the illustrious judge, prepared by his son, were welcome to our Christmas-holiday leisure. Joseph Story was the eldest of eleven children, and lived to be indeed the "Joseph" of mark and renown to his father and brothers. He was born in Marblehead, September 18th, 1779. His father was a physician, and served during a portion of the Revolution as army surgeon. He died when the future judge was twenty-six years of age: yet what the son then was is best told by one sentence from the father’s will—after making his wife sole executrix, he recommends her to his son Joseph, adding, "and although this perhaps is needless, I do it to mark my special confidence in his affections, skill, and abilities." From the father, our lawyer thus panegyrized received friendly geniality and broad understanding; from the mother, indomitable will, vigor and enthusiasm.