of whose declining life threw a cloud over the early prospects of his family, was born in Boston, June 17th, 1768, and after going through the steps of his preparatory education at the publick Latin Grammar School, was admitted to the University, when fourteen years old. His cotemporaries, who, in every instance that I know,-and these are not a few, considering the distance of time,-have since maintained for him a warm personal friendship, represent his course at that institution to have been in a high degree honourable, in regard alike to deportment and acquisitions, to the evidence which he gave of uncommon talent, and the attachment which he universally inspired. Having been employed a short time as a teacher in the school where his early instruction had been received, and afterwards completed the preparatory study of the law under the direction of Judge Tudor of this place, he established himself for its practice in the town of Castine, in Maine, then a recent settlement; and, in twelve years after leaving college, was already representative in Congress of the district within which that settlement was included. During part of the administration of Mr. Adams, the elder, he was United States Marshal for the district of Maine, from which office he was displaced on the accession of Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency. Three years after this, at the age of thirty-six, having meanwhile removed to Portland, he was invited to a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth. This proposition he saw fit, for the time, to decline; but accepted

it when renewed two years after, just before the late Chief Justice Parsons was elevated to that office. It was in the same year, that he presided at a criminal trial in this place,* involving questions of the most abstruse, delicate, and painful nature, and as fresh now in the memory of many of us as events of yesterday. On the death of Chief Justice Sewall in 1814, Judge Parker was placed at the head of the Court, of which he had now been eight years a member, and for sixteen years longer was permitted to preside over the administration of justice in our Commonwealth, having meanwhile also occupied the distinguished post of President of the Convention, called in 1820, to revise the State constitution. He died, as is well known, towards midnight of the last Lord's day, having been attacked, soon after waking the same morning, with an apoplexy, which from the first moment of its access, left to his distressed friends no hope, but that which refuses to expire except with extinguished life.

It would of course be only presumption in me, to undertake to speak of this great man in that character in which he is to be chiefly known to posterity. In the twenty-four years of his administration of our supreme judicature,-a longer period than any of his predecessors, under the constitution, has dispensed our laws from the highest tribunal,—he is said by those who are competent witnesses to the point, not only to have "won a name long to be remembered and treasured up

*The trial of T. O. Selfridge, on an indictment for manslaughter.

with the proud memorials of the Commonwealth," but to have produced "a body of law, which would do honour to the brightest periods of English jurisprudence ;”* and I observe that he is even pronounced in express terms, by one whose judgment is of the most approved currency, to have been "the most valuable publick servant, whom the judiciary department of this State has furnished." It was well known that his mind was one of the most rapid, perspicacious, and clear, as well as the most candid. His candour ensured a patient attention from him to the exposition of all reasons, but, with all this, there was no indecision in the man, except what belongs to that self-diffidence, and sense, at the same time, of the infinite worth of truth, which are perhaps always found united in the highest order of understandings. This led him, in his judicial capacity, to forbear to pronounce his judgments till he had weighed them carefully, and inspected them in all their bearings; but then they were found to be based on reasons which none but a very great or a very bold man would undertake to impugn; and in the reference of controversies to that joint tribunal which our institutions entrust with the inquisition into facts, the same distinctness of perception, and fairness of exposition were uniformly seen to be mingled. In making up his own decisions, or aiding those of others, most rarely did he seem to any to be carried

* Jurisprudent, No. for July 10, 1830.

The extract is from a notice in one of the newspapers of the day, bearing the initials of the Hon. John Lowell.

further than his reasons went. Ready, on unexpected emergencies, to draw from the stores of a patiently acquired learning, and reduce it to new applications, within the competency of none but a philosophical mind, nothing could exceed the laborious devotion with which he addressed himself to the solution of intricate questions continually coming under his cognizance. I had some acquaintance with his intellectual habits, and I have known something of the habits of others of the hardest working intellects of our neighbourhood; and it has been all along my impression, that, with all its vivacity, I have never known the mind so patient of severe labour, nor the mind, which during the period of my observation, has been so heavily tasked. This was no hardship to him. It never broke his spirit. It never quelled his gayety. He toiled strenuously and anxiously, as a good man must, in such a place, evolving such perplexities under such a responsibility. But he was widely useful, and he was purely happy. He had his reward for all, in the spreading reputation of the decisions of the court where he presided; the established and continually growing confidence of his fellow-citizens; the sense of the value of his services, to which his modesty could not be wholly blind; and the consciousness, worth all the rest, of the principle under which he rendered them.

It is chiefly in the exercise of the judicial function, that the late Chief Justice is to be remembered as a publick character. In the early part of his career, when trusts which he held furnished more occasion

for the assertion of his views on political questions which divided the community, the part which he took was the most uniform and decided; and in later years, he was never backward to express, in all becoming ways, the adherence of his ripened judgment to the men and principles which had secured his youthful preference. But, along with this perfect decision and unreserve, there was always seen such a private friendliness, and superiority to the besetting meannesses of party strife, that it is exceedingly rare to find a man so open and strenuous in the serious contests of party, and, at the same time, commanding, to such an extent, in his private relations, the respect and good wishes of opponents.

The original frame of Judge Parker's mind was such, that a discerning person,--who had undertaken to predict its destiny, before it had bent to the stubborn toils of one of the gravest sciences,-while he would have given it all credit for acuteness, comprehension, and strength, would have been likely to pronounce that it was to gain its high eminence in some walk of elegant literature. For works of imagination his taste was never lost nor abated. They made his customary relaxation from severer studies; and there are few of those, who dispense themselves from a less attractive application on account of their tasteful devotion to the literature of the day, but would find, that, even in this department, his well economized leisure had laid up richer stores than their own. His facility and taste in composition were equally uncommon. There are few