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 3i8 HOLMES. HOLMES. then at Springfield, Vt., where his father had a machine shop and cotton factory. Soon after the death of his mother, in 1828, he returned with his father to the farm in Peterborough. He attended the common schools of those places, and at the age of ten years began the study of Latin with the Rev. Addison Brown, of Peterborough, and con- tinued the same at the academy in Chester, Vt., under the Rev. Uriah Burnap. After pursuing English studies for one term at the academy in New Ipswich, N. H., he was sent, in the summer of 1831, to Phil- lips Academy, Exeter, N. H., to fit for NATHANIEL HOLMES. college, entered Harvard College in 1833, and graduated in the class of 1837. He was a member of several college societies, and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the end of his junior year. While continuing his studies, he taught school in winter at Milford, N. H., Billerica and Leominster, Mass., and in Weld's Latin school at Jamaica Plain. In the first year after leaving college he was engaged as a private tutor in the family of the Hon. John N. Steele, near Vienna, on the eastern shore of Maryland, where he began the study of law. In 1838-39 he completed his legal studies in the Harvard law school, at Cambridge, and in the office of Henry H. Fuller, of Boston. On being admitted to the bar in Boston, in September, 1839, he went directly to St. Louis, Mo., and began practice there in 1840. In the next year he entered into partnership with Thomas B. Hudson, who had been several years in practice, and from 1846 to '53 was in part- nership with his younger brother, Samuel A. Holmes. In 1846 he was appointed circuit attor- ney for the county of St. Louis, and be- tween 1850 and '55 was a director of the St. Louis Law Library Association, and held for two years the office of counselor of the board of St. Louis public schools, having important litigation concerning lands granted by Congress for the use of schools. Following changes in the direct- ory of the North Missouri Railroad Com- pany, occasioned by the war, he was chosen counselor of that corporation in 1862, and held the place until June, 1865, when he became one of the judges of the supreme court of the state, by the appointment of Gov. Thomas C. Fletcher, under the new constitution. He resigned this office in 1868 to accept the Royall professorship of law in Harvard University, and upon resig- nation thereof, in 1872, he returned to the practice of law at St. Louis. He was for several years, and while re- siding at St. Louis, one of the trustees of the St. Louis Medical College. In 1856 he took part in organizing the Academy of Science of St. Louis, and was for twenty- two years its corresponding secretary, and assisted in editing its published transac- tions. He received the degree of A. M. from Harvard University in 1S59. In 1870 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in the section of philosophy and jurisprudence. Judge Holmes retired from professional business at St. Louis in 1883, and returned to Cambridge, Mass., where he now re- sides. His judicial opinions are contained in vols, xxxvi. to xlii. of the Missouri Reports. A paper on the " Geological and Geographical Distribution of the Human Race " was read before the St. Louis Academy of Science, in 1879, and was pub- lished in vol. iv. of the Transactions. Between 1874 and '82 he delivered sev- eral lectures and addresses at St. Louis, some of which were printed in public jour- nals. In 1S66 he published a book on the " Authorship of Shakespeare," of which a third edition with an appendix was issued in 1S75, and a last edition, in two volumes with a supplement, in 1SS6 ; and in 1SS8