Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches
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As mayor of New-York, he was at that time head of the judicial department of the city. Subsequently that officer has been relieved of these duties, and several local courts have been found necessary, to dispose of the cases which the tangled relations of commerce are constantly bringing forth. Some records of his ability both as a civil and a criminal judge still remain. A Catholic priest had been called upon to disclose what had been communicated to him at the confessional. In his opinion, Mr. Clinton sustained the sacred nature of the secret thus imparted, and subsequent legislation, doubtless founded on this case, extended the exemption not only to the clergyman, but also to the physician. He also aided with great energy in putting down and punishing riots, caused by excited political feelings. Nor should we omit to say, that before him was tried the peculiar case of Whistelo, in which the wit of Counsellor Sampson, and the peculiarities of Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill were equally conspicuous.
As a member of the Senate of New-York, he became ex officio also a member of the highest court in the State – the court for the trial of impeachments, and the correction of errors in the inferior courts. Several of his decisions are to be found in the volumes of New-York State Reports. He grappled with the subjects of insurance law, of libel, the power of committing for contempt, the construction of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the effect of foreign admiralty decisions. "Some of these," says Chancellor Kent, "are models of judicial and parliamentary eloquence, and they all relate to important questions, affecting constitutional rights and personal liberty. They partake more of the character of a statesman's discussions, than that of a dry technical lawyer, and are therefore more interesting to the general scholar."
As a legislator, it is quite sufficient to refer to the long list of laws drawn up and supported by him, as it is given in the eighth chapter of Professor Renwick's life, to appreciate the high class of subjects to which he applied his best efforts. We select only a portion. An act respecting a digest of the public laws of the State. An act to enlarge the powers of and to endow the Orphan Asylum society, – to amend the insolvent laws, to prevent the inhuman treatment of slaves, for the support of the quarantine establishment, to revise and amend the militia law, to incorporate the society for the relief of poor widows with small children, for promoting medical science, for the further encouragement of free schools, for securing to mechanics and others, payment for their labor and materials in the city of New-York. It has been urged that others by their efforts, or their votes, have been as useful as was Mr. Clinton, in procuring the passage of these and similar laws. Be it so. It is not even attempted to deny this. It would be treason to the great interests of humanity to claim exclusive honor for a single man. But he knows little of practical legislation, who is not perfectly aware how efficient and important it is to have one individual, eminent in talents, high in power, who is willing to initiate useful measures – propose their adoption, and support them with his best abilities.
In the matter of the Canals of New-York, this is his high honor; this his crowning glory. Even during life, he gave due credit to all who suggested or supported the work; but his pre-eminent merit is, that he adopted the canal policy as his own party policy. It has been said, in words which cannot be bettered, that "in the great work of internal improvement, he persevered through good report and through evil report, with a steadiness of purpose that no obstacle could divert; and when all the elements were in commotion around him, and even his chosen associates were appalled, he alone, like Columbus, on the wide waste of waters, in his frail bark with a dis-heartened and unbelieving crew, remained firm, self-poised and unshaken."
Heaven in its goodness allowed life till the great work was completed.
Of Governor Clinton's devotion to science and to literature, of his patronage and support of societies and institutions, for their diffusion, all are knowing; but it is not sufficiently understood, that these were amateur pursuits, followed during hours that he could scarcely spare from his legitimate duties. Whatever of imperfection or of crudeness may therefore be found in them, should be charitably considered.
His domestic habits were simple and unobtrusive. He was industrious through life – the earliest riser in the house – frequently, if not generally, making his office fire in the winter, and dispatching most of his voluminous correspondence before the breakfast hour.
In his family, he was every thing that became a man – a kind and faithful husband; an affectionate, indeed indulgent father; a warm, devoted, and often self-sacrificing friend. What wonder is it, that his memory should continue to be cherished with sincere love and ever increasing esteem.
STORY
It is a common saying among lawyers, that in proportion to the labor which their profession exacts, and the degree of distinction which success confers upon them during their lifetime, their fate is a hard one in the struggle for immortality. They are accustomed to say in a tone of half complaint, that the zeal and ability which would earn for them a cheap celebrity in some other pursuit, is expended upon the establishing of some nice distinction, or the solving of some intricate problem which no one but themselves can appreciate, and in which no one but themselves (and their clients) take any interest. There is some truth in all this. The whole community stands ready to read the last production of the literary man, so only that he make it worth reading, and often without requiring even so much; whereas, the neatest point that a lawyer could take is constitutionally repulsive to one-half of creation, and dry and unmeaning to the greater part of the remainder. Even those whose names are on the lips of men, owe their good fortune often to something other than their law. If Blackstone were not among the most classical writers of the English language, we should not have lived to see twenty-one English editions of his Commentaries. He was probably a less profound lawyer than several sergeants who practised before him in the Court of Common Pleas, whose names would escape an insertion in the most Universal Biographical Dictionary. So the successful lawyer must content himself with his worldly prosperity, – if in his lifetime he receives his good things, that must be his comfort, and in truth it is no small one.
But the nature of a lawyer's employment, even if he combine with it the kindred one of politics and legislation, is not apt to invest his home with that attraction to the stranger which the home of the literary man possesses. We are at once interested to know who the author is, who has charmed us by the quaintness of his conceits, or the freshness and purity of his style. We want to see the house and the room, where those intricate plots are matured, or those lifelike characters are first conceived. But Coke upon Littleton, seems pretty much the same, whether read upon the green slope of a country hill, or in the third story of an office down town. Besides, the author is at liberty to seek the most secluded spots, and dwell amongst the most romantic scenery, and surround himself with all that makes life beautiful to contemplate; and it is for his interest to do this, in order that his mind may be kept open to impressions, his spirits elevated and serene, and his whole life calm and happy. The lawyer on the other hand, must seek communion, not with nature, but with men; he must dwell among large communities, and rail even there where merchants most do congregate.
The home of the distinguished lawyer and statesman whose name is placed at the head of these lines, is an exception from the homes of others of his peers; if it be true that it is the fate of a lawyer's home to be an object of interest to its inmates alone. There was something in his frank, enthusiastic and generous nature, which made him always susceptible to the influences of home, and always fitted to awake and to wield those enchantments with which a home is invested. The secluded peninsula of Marblehead, with its long firm beach upon one side, and its rocky precipitous shore upon the other, begirt on three sides by the ever-changing Atlantic, is considered by his biographer to have had its effect in moulding the character of the boy; and in the quiet, tame inland beauty of Cambridge, with its academical proprieties, and its level streets, and its spacious marshes, through which the winding Charles "slips seaward silently;" many remain outside of the family circle, to testify to the magical attraction which once hung about the narrow brick house where he lived, and the cordial greeting which the visitor received at the hands of its former occupant.
Judge Story was born in the antiquated, primeval fishing town of Marblehead; a town presenting such a rocky and barren surface, that when Whitfield entered it for the first time, he was fain to inquire, "Pray, where do they bury their dead?" Story himself speaks of his birth-place as "a secluded fishing town, having no general connection with other towns, and, not being a thoroughfare, without that intercourse which brings strangers to visit it, or to form an acquaintance with its inhabitants." In fact it could not well be a thoroughfare, since it leads only from Salem to the sea, and the inhabitants of the latter town have a sufficiently ready access of their own. But though Marblehead with its scanty soil, and its isolated position, is neither an Eden nor a thoroughfare, it is at least a stout old place where men are grown; where an entire regiment was furnished for the cause of American Independence, completely officered and manned by brave men, to whom the dangers of war were but a continuation of previous lives of peril, and who supplied besides more privateers than history has recorded, to harass the enemy upon an element with which they were more familiar.
The town of Marblehead is supported by the fishery business. A large portion of its inhabitants are simple fishermen, whose manhood is passed in voyages to the Great Banks, and voyages back; a constant succession of those perils which are incident to the sea, with long winter evenings of sailors' yarns and ghost stories, in one monotonous round, till they finally depart
"On that drear voyage from whose night
The ominous shadows never lift."
It was among a population of this kind, and at a time when a long and disastrous war had crippled their resources, that the youthful Story began with his accustomed enthusiasm to acquire that education whose root is bitter when grown in the most favorable soil. Without advantages of good schooling, or a plentiful supply of books, he did what thousands of others, great and small, have done and are doing; that is, he acquired an education without the modern improvements on which our boys rely, and whose value their parents and teachers are so apt to over-estimate. In the shop of the Marblehead barber, the village great men assembled to hear the news, and to hold forth upon the condition and prospects of the young republic, as well as to have their ambrosial locks powdered and their beards removed. Here, in place of the modern lecture room, our young hero resorted, and listened reverently to oracular utterances from wise mouths in the intervals of the shaving brush and the razor. The village barber himself, endowed with an easy garrulity, more natural and professional than the stately reserve of his metropolitan brother, could, at his leisure, retail the wisdom of his many councillors, diluted to the point where it admitted of the mental digestion of a child.
This, together with the usual toils and discouragements of the classics, and the hopes and fears which a college examination inspires, made up a boy's life in Marblehead before this century began. The old Judge, late in life recalling these early Marblehead times, speaks of other influences, some of whose effect is, we imagine, derived from the fact that he is viewing them in his maturity, as they then appear, softened as seen down the long vista of nearly forty years. "My delight," he says, "was to roam over the narrow and rude territory of my native town; to traverse its secluded beaches and its shallow inlets; to gaze upon the sleepless ocean; to lay myself down on the sunny rocks, and listen to the deep tones of the rising and the falling tides; to look abroad when the foaming waves were driven with terrific force and uproar against the barren cliffs or the rocky promontories, which every where opposed their immovable fronts to resist them; to seek, in the midst of the tremendous majesty of an eastern storm, some elevated spot, where, in security, I could mark the mountain billow break upon the distant shore, or dash its broken waters over the lofty rocks which here and there stood along the coast, naked and weather-beaten. But still more was I pleased in a calm, summer day, to lay myself down alone on one of the beautiful heights which overlook the harbor of Salem, and to listen to the broken sounds of the hammers in the distant ship-yards, or to the soft dash of the oar of some swift-moving boat, or to the soft ripple of the murmuring wave; or to gaze on the swelling sail, or the flying bird, or the scarcely moving smoke, in a revery of delicious indolence."
When Story left Marblehead and entered Harvard College in 1795, he was brought in contact with somewhat different circumstances and different temptations from those which there await the youthful student in these days. Coming from a small and tolerably illiterate fishing town, into the midst of such literary shades, being in daily converse with young men at an age when the mind is lively, and full of the easy self-confidence which the mutual flattery of a College begets, his enthusiasm was quickened anew, and his generous nature attacked on its weakest side. "I seemed," he says, "to breathe a higher atmosphere, and to look abroad with a wider vision and more comprehensive powers. Instead of the narrow group of a village, I was suddenly brought into a large circle of young men engaged in literary pursuits, and warmed and cheered by the hopes of future eminence." There is, perhaps, no impropriety in saying, that at fifteen, we look abroad with a wider vision and more comprehensive powers than we do at twelve, and such young men as Channing, his friendly rival in College, and Tuckerman, his chum, might well be warmed and cheered by the hopes of future eminence. The students in those days enjoyed as much seclusion as now, with perhaps a little less general culture and a little more dissipation. But, as we have intimated, in some respects the changes were greater. The anti-republican system of "fagging" had not then become quite obsolete and forgotten, but existed at least in oral tradition, whereas now, its less rigorous substitute has recently fallen into disuse. In those days there was not even an unsuccessful attempt, to render the intercourse between the Professors and the students in any sense parental, but the formal and unconfiding manners of the old school were preached, as well as practised. The line of division between the College and the town was sharply drawn and unhesitatingly maintained on the part of the former, and the opportunities for social intercourse with Boston were comparatively limited, when omnibuses were unknown, and the bridge regarded as a somewhat hazardous speculation. Now the students are to be seen in Washington street on Saturdays, and there is scarce an evening's entertainment in Boston, without young representatives from Cambridge. And the old town itself has added so many new houses to its former number, that a great change is coming over the face of Cambridge society. The term "the season" is beginning to have its proper significance, the winter months being pretty well filled with the customary social observances. It is true that the College is still the controlling element. Festivities are mostly suspended during the first two months of the year, which is the time of the winter vacation, and revive again with the return of the spring and the students. But from faint symptoms which may be detected by the anxious observer, there is reason to fear that it may not be long before the great body of the students will have cause on their part, to complain of that exclusiveness which they have exercised as their prerogative for more than two centuries.
The four short years of Story's undergraduate existence were passed free, alike from this species of social pleasure and social anxiety. He was naturally fond of company, and had a healthy, youthful taste for conviviality; but he shrank instinctively from excesses, and was, fortunately, also ambitious to win a high rank for scholarship. His companions were of his own age, and those divinities who people the inner chambers of a young man's fancy at the age of nineteen, were not upon the spot to distract overmuch his attention from his studies. He left his home within the College walls before he had arrived at manhood, and returned again some thirty years after in the maturity of his powers, to repay to his foster mother the debt which he owed for his education, by imparting to her younger children the results of his experience. Cambridge is to be considered as his home; it was there that he won his greatest fame, it was there that he fondly turned to refresh himself after his labors on the full bench and the circuit; this was the home of his affections and his interests, and there his earnest and active life was brought to its calm and peaceful close.
In Brattle-street, a little distance on the road from the Colleges to Mount Auburn, there stands a narrow brick house, with its gable end to the street, facing the east, and a long piazza on its southern side. It is situated just at the head of Appian Way – not the Queen of Ways, leading from Rome to Brundusium, over which Horace journeyed in company with Virgil, and Paul's brethren came to meet him as far as Appii Forum and The Three Taverns, but a short lane, boasting not many more yards than its namesake miles; leading from Cambridge Common to Brattle-street, journeyed over by hurrying students with Horace and Virgil under their arms, without a single tavern in it, and hardly long enough to accommodate three. The external appearance of the house would hardly attract or reward the attention of the passer by. It stands by itself, looking as much too high for its width as an ordinary city residence in New-York, that has sprung up in advance of the rest of its block. The street in which it stands is flat and shady, but wonderfully dusty nevertheless, for Cambridge is a town
"Where dust and mud the equal year divide."
The old inhabitants may be supposed to be reconciled to that dust, of which they are made, and to which they naturally expect in a few years to return. Thus Lowell finds it in his heart to sing the praises of Cambridge soil,
"Dear native town! whose choking elms each yearWith eddying dust before their time turn gray,Pining for rain, – to me thy dust is dear;It glorifies the eve of Summer day."But, however native Cantabs may feel, the temporary resident hails the friendly watering-cart, which appears at intervals in the streets, since the old town has changed itself into a city.
A flower-garden on the south side, separates Judge Story's house from the village blacksmith, who has had the rare happiness of being celebrated in the verses of his two fellow-townsmen, the poets Longfellow and Lowell;
"Under a spreading chestnut tree,The village smithy stands;The smith, a mighty man is he,With large and sinewy hands,And the muscles of his brawny armAre strong as iron bands."His hair is crisp, and black, and long,His face is like the tan,His brow is wet with honest sweat,He earns whatever he can,And looks the whole world in the faceFor he owes not any man."Week in, week out, from morn to night,You can hear his bellows blow;You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,With measured beat and slow,Like a sexton ringing the village bellWhen the evening sun is low."And children coming home from schoolLook in at the open door;They love to see the flaming forge,And hear the bellows roar,And catch the burning sparks that flyLike chaff from a threshing floor."Among the children who thus looked in upon the old smith in former days, was Lowell himself, who has embodied this juvenile reminiscence in a few lines, which may be appropriately inserted here, and the curious reader may contrast the image they contain, with the parallel one in the concluding lines from Longfellow, quoted above.
"How many times prouder than King on throne,Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's,Panting have I the creaky bellows blown,And watched the pent volcano's red increase,Then paused to see the ponderous sledge brought downBy that hard arm voluminous and brown,From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees."The village blacksmith is dead now; the fires which he lighted in the forge have gone out, and an unknown successor wields the sledge, which may still be heard as ever, from the piazza of his neighbor's house, and down the road on the other side, as far as the row of lindens which overshadow a mansion once inhabited by the worthy old Tory, Brattle, who has given his name to the street.
The external appearance of Judge Story's house does not add much to the poetry of its surroundings. It runs back in an irregular way, a long distance from the street, and at its furthermost end, in the second story, is, or used to be, the library, commanding the same view which constituted such a recommendation to Dick Swiveller's house, namely, the opposite side of the way. There is not, therefore, an opportunity for much romance to cluster about it, nor is its attractiveness increased, when the reader is reminded that the story beneath answered the purposes of a woodshed. But the house which witnessed the daily labors of such a man, need not covet or pretend to those outside attractions which it unquestionably lacks.
Judge Story removed to Cambridge, for the purpose of taking charge of the Law-school connected with the University. This institution had just received an endowment from Nathan Dane, which, together with the labors and reputation of the new Professor, were the prime causes of its establishment upon such a durable foundation, that the number of its students was increased five fold. From this period, his time was divided among Washington, during the sitting of the Supreme Court, the first circuit in the New-England States, and Cambridge, which henceforward was his home. The Law-school he regarded as his favorite and most important field of labor, and always recurred to his connection with it, with pleasure and pride; and a word concerning this Institution may, with propriety, be coupled with a description of his personal habits, so that both together will furnish, better than any thing else, a correct picture of the daily life of the man.
At the time that Story accepted the Dane Professorship in the Law-school in Cambridge he had already achieved the labor of a lifetime. A lucrative business at the bar, was quitted for a seat upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. He began his political life as a democrat and stanch supporter of Jefferson, when there were not many such in Massachusetts; but in later life he became a whig. The natural effect of a judicial station upon a mind like his, was to make him cautious and conservative; and he finally seemed a little distrustful of even the party with which he was associated. In the convention of 1820, which formed the existing constitution of Massachusetts, he took an active part with such men as Webster, Parker, Quincy and Prescott, and many of our important mercantile statutes and bankrupt laws were drawn by him, nearly, or quite in the form in which they were finally passed by Congress. He had been for about eighteen years an associate Justice of the Supreme Court, when, without resigning that position, he assumed the almost equally onerous duties of a Professor of Law. This new field of activity was entered upon with earnestness and zeal, and it is not necessary to state the success with which his efforts were attended. Towards the students his manner was familiar and affectionate. He was fond of designating them as "my boys," and without assuming any superiority, or exacting any formal respect, he participated so far as he was able in their success and failure; and extended beyond the narrow period of the school, far into active life, that interest in their behalf which he had contracted as their teacher. His lectures upon what are commonly considered the dry topics of the law, were delivered with enthusiasm, and illustrated with copious anecdotes from the store-house of his memory and his experience, and filled with episodes which were suggested to his active mind at almost every step. Indeed, if one were disposed to point out his prominent fault as a legal writer, he would probably select that diffuseness of style and copiousness of illustration, which, though it contributes somewhat to fulness and perspicuity, does it nevertheless at the cost of convenient brevity; which can more easily be dispensed with in a poem than in a law-book. But that characteristic which might perhaps be considered as a blemish in his legal treatises, only rendered him better, qualified for a successful oral lecturer. A printed volume admits of the last degree of condensation, because repeated perusals of one page will effect every thing which could be expected from a prolonged discussion over many; and to text-books of law, the student or the practitioner resort principally for a statement of results, with the addition of only so much general reasoning as may render the results intelligible. In an oral lecture on the other hand, as the attention cannot be arrested; or time taken to overcome difficulties, repetition and reiteration, so far from being a blemish, is a merit. To these qualifications Story added engaging manners, and a personal presence, which gave him extraordinary influence over the young men who crowded to receive the benefit of his instructions. His zeal was contagious, and awakened similar feelings in his hearers, and the enthusiasm of the speaker and the audience acted and reacted upon each other. Many anecdotes are related to show the interest in the study of the law, which, under his magical influence, was awakened, not only among the few who are naturally studious, but among the whole body of the students almost without exception.