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 Life and Character of judge Wallace which anticipation was veriﬁed; and in the moulding and shaping, and in the advocacy of such measures as were then presented, the varied resources of Judge Wallace were called into play and I may say without derogation to others, made him the chiefest legislative factor in that body; in fact wherever he lived and moved, the baton of leadership was

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lawyer and of long abiding observation of and friendship for Judge Wallace, who said :— “Judge Wallace veriﬁed the truthfulness of the Baconian pronouncement that "talking made a ready man, reading a full man and writing an exact man.”

I do not hesitate to avow (and it is

not trenching upon the license accorded

without dissent placed in his grasp.

mortuary encomium when I declare)

The debates in both houses of Con gress are preserved in what is known as the Congressional Record and con

that I have never known, in a career

stitute an invaluable magazine of essays, law, and facts, such as cannot be found, owing to the entire freedom of speech permitted in that body, in any other deliberative body in the world, unless

it be that of Great Britain and some of the British dependencies. I have often thought, because I was an observer upon several occasions of the proceedings of the California Legislature, during his term of service, that it would have been a priceless legacy if the debates of that body had been preserved in volume form as is the case with reference to those of the federal Congress. {Judge

Wallace's mind was so stored,

as it

were, so surcharged, with the great,

salient,

important

facts

of

history;

his wonderful and varied knowledge

of the law of the land, and the common law of England upon which it is based, was such-—so replete with the beauties of literature, ancient and modern,

a

knowledge enabling him to embellish

every subject with which he dealt, that no lawyer or student could lay down unﬁnished any of his literary or forensic

productions. Riding along in the carriage attending the obsequies of Judge Wallace, I was struck with the justice and soundness of the remark of Dr. Taylor, Mayor of San

of some diversity of experience, a more felicitous talker or a reader of wider research, or a writer of more painstak ing exactitude than the man of whom I speak. I recall and reproduce with great pleasure an extract from his commemo

rative

remarks

upon

Chief

Justice

Sprague, upon the death of that dis

tinguished man, at the time when Judge Wallace was an Associate Justice upon our Supreme Bench. judge Sprague

had theretofore been a prominent mem ber of the state senate, from which he

had retired; alluding to that fact and commenting thereon, Judge Wallace said:— "But

though

retired

from

the

senate,

Sprague had not become inattentive to passing public events. Though he had declined to be any longer a senator, he was still a citizen and bound to the performance of what he esteemed the great duties imposed upon him by that relation. His soul was too ardent, his nature too earnest, and his sense of duty too high, to admit of inattention or

indifference upon his part, to principle asserted or measures projected, which he believed to involve the wellbeing of his country. It was therefore, and only therefore, that he was ready to enter the arena and do battle for what he deemed the right, and was willing to bear the standard which was the emblem of the principles be cherished, even though impending defeat and disaster were sure to whelm and trail it in the dust.”

Francisco, himself a man of diversiﬁed

Or again let me quote a gem from his eulogy upon the death of Hon.

accomplishments,

Edward

of

high

rank

as

a

Norton,

nomen

clare

et