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 tribulations after having been prevailed upon to leave the New Hampshire court and accept the chair of Royall Professor at Cambridge:

I had no experience, nor even knowledge of the details of the service to be performed, as the President well understood; and on taking my seat, at the March term, 1848, having had no leisure for any preparation whatever, I encountered difficulties which seemed formidable, and were certainly embarrassing. I found that…to my dismay, Shipping and Admiralty was upon my list for that-term. My residence in the interior of a state which had but one port, the business of which was nearly all transacted in Boston, had given me no occasion to become acquainted with that branch of the law, and I tried in vain to escape by an exchange. Professor Greenleaf’s answer, that he was then in the middle of his topics for the course, showed that he could not comply with my request. So, frankly stating the difficulty, I told the students I would study the textbook with them. …In June, Professor Greenleaf’s health failed, and he left the School…thus wholly on my hands for the remainder of the term, with an experience of something more than three months to direct me.

Upon a new division of topics in the course of the vacation, with Professor Parsons, who succeeded Professor Greenleaf, I was desirous of retaining Shipping on my list, in the hope that my studies on that subject, during the last term, might avail me somewhat in another course of lectures; but the answer that his practice had been in Boston, and that branch of the law a specialty, could not but be admitted as a conclusive reason why I should give it up; as I did also the other textbook which had served as the basis for my other course of lectures; so that I entered upon my second term with the necessity of entire new preparation so far as lectures were concerned.

In appearance and character Parker was a type of the best of the New England country gentlemen of his day. He was of so dignified and commanding a figure that a