known to us, who could express their thoughts in so flowing, vivid, graceful and exact a style. The interests of our infant literature were always very near his heart. He was a vigilant and effective Trustee of Bowdoin College, and afterwards rendered still more important services, on frequent occasions, as an Overseer of our own, which conferred on him several years since the dignity of its highest degree. He was a Fellow of the American Academy, and two years President of the society of Phi Beta Kappa, preceding in that office the late President of the United States.

His uncommon power to simplify the abstrusest knowledge, combined with his distinguished professional attainments, recommended him to the chair of law instruction in the University, which he continued to fill, till within a short period, with the reputation which always followed him.

Judge Parker was, from principle, sentiment, habit, and experience, a religious man. Religiously educated and always well inclined, his mature manly reason saw, in the proposed evidences of our faith, the satisfactory credentials of a divine communication, and his heart promptly bowed to its authority. Sixteen years ago, along with another eminent christian magistrate, the first Mayor of this city, and the now widowed partners of both, he connected himself with this church of our Lord; and you, my brethren, can attest with me, how "holily, and justly, and unblameably" he has walked among us "in all the commandments and ordinances;" what an interest this church

has always maintained in his affections; what guidance we have been accustomed to find, as occasion offered, in his wisdom,-what impulse, at all times, in his example. For a long period an officer of our congregation, and always cheerfully taking a leading part on occasions of particular concern, he has never left us at a loss as to the feeling which he entertained for its prosperity. Becoming associated with you during the period of a ministry, whose premature termination was experienced by you to be one of the heaviest trials, the sentiment of personal friendship for him who was so early called away, seemed to strengthen his solicitude to watch over the trust bequeathed by one so prized and so lamented; and along with those of others, who, blessed be God! were animated by a kindred spirit, his endeavours have been prospered to preserve this religious community, through all subsequent events, in the "unity of the spirit," the unbroken "bond of peace."

The intelligent scriptural inquiries of this gifted mind had led to the adoption of views of christian doctrine, which on account of their connexion, more or less remote, with one cardinal point of true theology, are generally summed up under the denomination, Unitarian. But his reverential and hearty attachment to those views was just to itself, in being free from the slightest tinge of bigotry; and his undisguised avowal of the sense he entertained of their vast worth, owed none of its emphasis to expressions of unkindness towards dissentients. And while he bore every where

to the faith he had espoused that best testimony of a christian conversation, a sober, righteous, and godly life, while it was seen to have disciplined him to a chastened moderation in the trials of eminence, and an uncomplaining submission under those of painful bereavement, while in all places, publick and private, he was known zealously to support the institutions of our religion, habitually to recognize its principles, and firmly to assert its claims, he did not permit his interest to be doubted in practicable enterprises for its extension abroad, and the cultivation of the fruits which it yields, nor fail of such participation in enterprises of this nature as the specifick duties of a crowded life allowed. He was for a long time an attentive officer of the Massachusetts Bible Society; and the Evangelical Missionary Society for assisting in the support of the ministry in feeble parishes, and the association which led the way in the now auspicious reformation of prevailing intemperate habits, have respectively enjoyed the benefits of his countenance and counsels as their presiding officer.

I am not speaking to strangers, that I should enlarge, as if imparting information; and, if I were, I should be sure of failing to convey any thing like an adequate impression of the excellence, on which our affectionate memory is dwelling. I might go on to speak of the mild and facile virtues of the private man, which brought the distinguished magistrate within the range of the sympathies, and gave him a place in the hearts of the humblest of the good; of his

aptness to friendship, and constancy in that relation; of his free and cordial, and, at the same time, unostentatious hospitality; of his disinterestedness, which in the form of publick spirit, had so marked an influence, on the one hand upon his fortunes, and, on the other, upon his usefulness and his fame; of his thoughtful consideration for the exposed, whom official relations brought before him; of the tenderness of his commiseration for the guilty, and the readiness of his generosity to the destitute; of the expansiveness of his benevolent feelings; of his delicate deference to the aged, and familiar kindness to the young; of his equanimity and gentleness, smoothing all difficulties, and subduing all impatience in those who might be acting with him, and scarcely known to be ruffled amidst the unavoidable vexations incident to the transaction of intricate affairs; of the exemplary graces of his domestick character; of the frankness and expression of confidence in his deportment, putting all who approached him at their ease; of that habitual gayety of spirit, and power of ready adaptation to others' feelings, which only an exhaustless fund of kind and cordial feeling could supply; of the honest, equal, friendly personal regard which he inspired, rarely excited in either a strength or extensiveness approaching this, by the most respected and valued publick men. I might speak of these distinctions, and other such. I might speak of them long. But you would say, that what I had glanced at, I had described very unsatisfactorily, and that there was much which I had left wholly untold.

My brethren, it has pleased a wise and righteous God to remove from his place of earthly service one whom the community and his friends had very special cause to value. At a moment when all eyes were turned to him with a solicitude scarcely paralleled before, waiting for decisions of his mind of the most solemn nature, affecting human life and the publick safety, he is suddenly summoned himself to the award of a more awful tribunal. We could not justify ourselves in complaining of the visitation of that Being, who lent him to us for our good so long. I am struck with the view in which an event remarkably similar presented itself, years ago, to his own devout and discerning mind. In the reflections, which he has left on record, upon the death of Parsons, removed from the same station at the same age, he seems to be presenting to us those which he would have us weigh, under the affliction we are suffering from his own. "That such a man as this," he said from the bench on that occasion,-" that such a man as this, whose mind had never been at rest, and whose body had seldom been in exercise, should have lived to the age of sixty-three, is rather a matter of astonishment than that he should then have died. When the first painful sensations at so great a loss have subsided, it is not unsuitable to take consolation from the possible, if not probable consequences of a prolonged life. Beyond the age at which he had arrived, I do not know that an instance exists of an improvement of the faculties of the mind, but many present themselves of deplora