Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/188

 Chancellor James Kent. and also by those who were attending a term of the Supreme Court held at Utica, includ ing Elisha Williams, Thomas J. Oakley, John C. Spencer, and Benjamin F. Butler: viri eruditissimi atque elarissimi. Immediately after this retirement he visited the Eastern States, accompanied by his only son, William Kent. This son was a worthy inheritor of his father's greatness. Eminent as a lawyer, able as a circuit judge of the first circuit of New York, distinguished as Royall professor of law at Harvard, being the successor of Judge Joseph Story, and be loved as a man. When he died in 186 1, the bar of New York City held a meeting to express the feelings of the profession on the sad event. The resolutions passed, and the eulogies pronounced, compose the ap pendix in Vol. 34 of Barbour's Supreme Court Reports, and the address of James T. Brady therein contained, for impressive elo quence and depth of sympathy, is a model of its kind, and well worth the perusal of any man. On returning from this journey, the Chancellor, for he will always be called the Chancellor, resolved to move away from Albany, and once more reside in New York. He intended to be chamber counsel, for to resume practice at the bar was not conson ant with the professional ideas then prevail ing. As he said to James I. Roosevelt, afterwards judge of the Supreme Court in New York City, " I would rather saw wood." His own memorandum is as follows: "The Trustees of Columbia College immediately tendered me again the old office which had lain dormant from 1795. I undertook (but exceedingly against my inclination) to write and deliver law lectures. In the two char acters of chamber counselor and college lecturer, I succeeded by steady perseverance beyond my most sanguine expectations. I have introduced my son into good business, I live aside of my daughter, and I take ex cursions every summer with my wife and daughter all over the country. I give a great many written opinions." It may not be out

161

of place here to state that the large law li brary of Chancellor Kent was, up to about a year ago, in the office of his great-grand sons William and Edwin C. Kent. It was decided to pack the books, and move them, and I had the pleasure of handling and ex amining many of the volumes at that time. Nearly every one contained marginal notes, and these notes now copied in typewriting number over eight hundred pages. In the early volumes of the Massachusetts Reports are many notes referring to the legal knowl edge and keen discernment of Chief-Justice Parsons. There are also pasted in obituary remarks on the death of judges and news paper articles on their lives. " I have read this volume with pleasure," he writes in a Connecticut Report; "these decisions are to the honor of the court." And this note in 3 Sumner, 230 is characteristic: " When will our judicial decisions be brought to beauty, terseness, and simplicity? The opinion here consumes forty pages, and it might very properly and with sufficient in struction have been compressed within two." But to return to his narrative : " Having got heartily tired of lecturing, I aban doned it, and it was then that my son pressed me to prepare a volume of the lectures for the press. I had no idea of publishing them when I delivered them." The first volume of his commentaries was published in 1826, and the whole work was completed in 1830, during which time he was chosen president of the New York Historical Society. To dwell at length on this lasting monument to his fame is unnecessary, for wherever law is known, studied, and practiced there is the white mark of acknowledged homage ac credited to the great American commen tator. The names of Blackstone and Kent are indissolubly linked together. As Judge Dillon admirably says in his recent schol arly and delightful work, " Laws and Juris prudence of England and America," "The American bar and people venerate the name