Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/285

 he kept unimpaired his kindness of temper and his superiority of intellect; he did more, sick, than others in health; and his few years bore the fruit of long life.”

At the untimely age of thirty-two, as he was completing his fourth year of service to his Alma Mater, came the inevitable result. His long-advancing illness took a suddenly fatal turn, and prematurely closed a career that might have been a landmark in the teaching of law. He expired peacefully in the night, the only person at his bedside being his devoted pupil, young Charles Sumner. His family, highly respected people of Blandford, Massachusetts, seem to have taken little interest in his fate. He lies buried in the almost forgotten “college lot” at Mount Auburn, beneath a monument procured through the exertions of some of his sorrowing students. No portrait of him is known.

The Royall Professorship, thus sadly vacated, was at once filled by the appointment of Simon Greenleaf, the eminent Reporter of the Supreme Court of Maine; and the school’s reputation rose yet higher.

Then were the days of the giants. For twelve years those twin kings of American jurisprudence, Story and Greenleaf, held absolute dominion, and moulded a whole generation of lawyers. More than eleven hundred students sat under their instruction. Better textbooks were seriously needed, and both professors addressed