Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/21

 Rh

propriety of the alleged complimentary action. In comparing the verbiage and reasoning of this later opinion of Judge Peckham, with his earliest one delivered in the Court of Appeals as before referred to, I fail to per ceive either a gain or a loss of excellence. His style throughout the reports display evenness; an attribute which reviewers long ago awarded to all the volumes of Macaulay. From scope of learning Judge Peckham seems admirably adapted to become a justice of the high Federal Court, to the forum of which come controversies of wonderfully varied character, and which often raise questions of extreme acuteness. " He spoke all the languages of jurisprudence," said the late Henry J. Raymond, one of the founders of the New York Times, when pronouncing a eulogy of Daniel Webster. That remark may be applied to Judge Peckham. And how many of those languages must enter into the reflections of the justices of the United States Supreme Court. Is there not one language of international law, of con stitutional law, of prize and admiralty, of copyright, of the statutes — a patois, so to speak, to each State — of equity and of common law? Judge Peckham carries to Washington family prestige, judicial prestige, social prestige, and that kind of character-prestige which has always lucidly shone in the

Supreme Court, from the days of Jay, Rutledge, Ellsworth, Marshall, Taney and Chase, to these later days of Waite and Fuller. The social life of Albany will lose, and that of Washington will yet gain, by the departure of the new Judge from the capitol of the Empire State, and by his New Year's advent into the National Capitol. During the week before Christmas, his associates gave him a farewell dinner in the famous Oranje Bovcn club-house, under the shadows both of his family home and of the court-rooms of his career. There was a memorable leave-taking, and a mingling of sadness with felicitations upon his advance ment. "If only John Adams could have sur vived two years longer to witness with pride the inauguration of his son as second president of the name," was an exclamation from an historian. I might paraphrase it to read — as remembering the kindly face and genial tone of Rufus Wheeler Peckham the first — "if only he could have survived to witness with pride, in his green old age — himself constitutionally retired from the bench — the inauguration of his son as justice of the court in that capitol building where he had once directed the infant foot steps of the latter through the Congressional corridors which led towards the most power ful and dignified court in Christendom.

THE WILL OF A GREAT LAWYER. HOW CHIEF-JUSTICE MARSHALL DEVISED HIS ESTATE. By Sallie E. Marshall Hardy.

ON file in Richmond, Va., is the paper which devised and divided the large estate, consisting chiefly of land of "the great Chief Justice," as he is commonly called. Included in it is some of the land which is known in song and story as " Greenway

Court," the forest home of Lord Fairfax, that George Washington surveyed and where he was frequently a guest. The Chief Jus tice bought part of this land, the rest he re ceived as a fee for arranging the dispute between the State of Virginia and Lord Fairfax's heir, Dr. Fairfax of England, who,