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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 HARPER'S SCHOOL CLASSICS 
 
 For Supplementary Reading. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 
 
 These essays were all written in the vigor of life. 
 They were short enough to be struck off at a heat. 
 They consequently have the quality of exuberant vig- 
 or, high spirits, and conscious strength which delights 
 in exercise and rapid motion for their own sake. Like 
 the first flight of the falcon, they show a store of un- 
 subdued energy. 
 
 They are painted, indeed, with such freedom, vivid- 
 ness, and power that they may be said to enjoy a sort 
 of tacit monopoly of the periods and characters to 
 which they refer, in the estimation, of the general 
 public. 
 
 How many persons, outside the class of professed 
 students, know much of Lord Chatham, Lord Clive, 
 Warren Hastings, and many more, beyond what they 
 learn from the essays of Macaulay. -J. Cotter Mori- 
 son's Life of Macaulay, in Hurley's "English Men of 
 Letters Series." 
 
 WARREN HASTINGS. By LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 Giving the author's own view of the life and char- 
 acter of Mr. Hastings, pp. 179. 
 
 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 
 
 By LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 Keviewing the life and works of Addison. "The un- 
 sullied statesman, the accomplished scholar, the mas- 
 ter of pure English eloquence, the consummate paint- 
 er of life and manners." pp. 127. 
 
 LORD CLIVE. By LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 "The name of Lord Clive stands high on the roll 
 of conquerors. But it is found in a better list in the
 
 Harper's School Classics. 
 
 list of those who have done and suffered much for the 
 happiness of mankind." pp. 130. 
 
 FREDERIC THE GREAT. By LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 "A sketch of the life of the greatest king that has, 
 in modern times, succeeded by right of birth to a 
 throne." pp.125. 
 
 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. By LORD MA- 
 CAULAY. 
 
 Giving the author's view of the life and character 
 of the Right Honorable William Pitt, Earl of Chat- 
 ham, pp. 204. 
 
 WILLIAM PITT. By LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 An essay on the life and character of William Pitt, 
 the second son of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, pp. 
 102. 
 
 SAMUEL JOHXSOX, LL.D. By LORD MACAU- 
 LAY. 
 
 An essay on the life and character of Samuel John- 
 son, giving much interesting information of his con- 
 temporaries as well as of himself, pp. 135. 
 
 JOHX HAMPDEX LORD BURLEIGII. By 
 
 LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 These two essays are suggested respectively by the 
 two volumes: John Hanipden his Party and his 
 Times, by Lord Nugent, and Burleigh and his Times, 
 by Rev. Edward Nares. pp. 133. 
 
 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. By LORD MACAULAY. 
 "If one wanted to give an intelligent foreign critic 
 a good specimen of Macanlay a specimen in which 
 most of his merits and fewest of his faults are collect- 
 ed in a small compass one could not do better than 
 give him the article on Sir William Temple.' 1 Mori- 
 sou's Life of Macaulay. pp. 143.
 
 Harper's School Classics. 
 
 MACHIAVELLI HORACE WALPOLE. By 
 LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 Two essays written in the author's best vein. The 
 characterization of Machiuvelli is especially to be com- 
 mended to the student. 
 
 JOHN MILTON LORD BYRON. By LORD 
 MACAULAY. 
 
 Giving the author's view of the lives and characters 
 of two of the great lights of English literature, pp. 
 136. 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH JOHN BUNYAN 
 MADAME D'ARBLAY. By LORD MACAULAY. 
 After a brief characterization of Goldsmith and 
 
 Banyan, the author devotes the last eighty-five pages 
 
 to a consideration of the life and letters of Madame 
 
 D'Arblay. pp. 139. 
 
 LORD BACON. By LORD MACAULAY. 
 
 An essay on the life and character of Lord Bacon, 
 pp. 198. 
 
 THACKERAY'S 
 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. 
 
 From " Lectures on the English Humorists." In 
 Two Volumes. By W. M. THACKERAY. 
 
 SWIFT ; CONCRETE, and ADDISON ; STEELE. With 
 Copious Notes, pp. 209. 
 
 PRIOR, GAY, and POPE ; HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, and 
 FIELDING; STERNE, and GOLDSMITH. With Copi- 
 ous Notes, pp. 214.
 
 Harper** School Classics. 
 
 BY OTHER AUTHORS. 
 
 PETER THE GREAT. By JOHN LOTHROP MOT- 
 LEY. Author of " The Dutch Republic," etc. 
 Giving a brief account of the life and character of 
 
 Peter the Great, pp. 106. 
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. By EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 
 
 Giving some personal recollections of the author, 
 of the great American lawyer, statesman, and orator, 
 pp. 100. 
 
 GASPARB DE COLIGXY (Marquis de Chatillon), 
 Admiral of France. By WALTER BESANT, M.A. 
 An endeavor to present faithfully the record of his 
 
 life. " Other great men adorned that age of struggle 
 
 and upheaval he overshadows them all." Author's 
 
 Preface, pp. 224. 
 
 LIFE OF CHARLEMAGNE. By EGINHARD. 
 Translated from the text of " Monumenta 
 Germanise." By SAMUEL EPES TURNER, A.M. 
 With Xotes and a Map. pp. 82. 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. The Life, Times, and 
 Character of Oliver Cromwell. By the Rt. 
 
 Hon. E. H. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN, M.P. pp. 
 
 108. 
 
 Special terms for introduction. 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, Publishers, 
 Franklin Square, New York.
 
 SOME RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 RUFUS CHOATE 
 
 EDWIN P. WHIPPLE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by 
 
 HARPER & BROTIIEKS, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
 
 SOME RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OP 
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 
 
 RUFUS CHOATE enjoys a peculiar and ex- 
 ceptional fame among American lawyers, 
 statesmen, and orators, because of his un- 
 likeness to any of his celebrated contem- 
 poraries. One of his friends bluntly re- 
 marked, " Webster is like other folks, only 
 there is more of him ; but as to Choate, who 
 evej saw or knew // is like ? !J He not only 
 idealized but individualized every thing he 
 touched, and the driest law case, when he 
 was one of the counsel engaged, was con- 
 verted into a thrilling tragedy or tragi- 
 comedy founded on an actual event. He 
 was a poet at the heart of his nature, and 
 instinctively gave a dramatic or epical char- 
 acter to the leading persons concerned in a 
 jury trial. ' It was once common for legal 
 pedants, possessed of learning minus genius, 
 to denounce as " flummery" the arguments 
 of this advocate, who possessed learning 
 
 50802
 
 8 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 jpfaa genius; but it is now universally con- 
 ceded that he was profound in the knowl- 
 edge of the law, that he was both an acute 
 and comprehensive reasouer, and that his 
 practical sagacity in the conduct of a case 
 was as marked as the romantic interest with 
 which he invested it. It is to be feared, 
 however, that this shining ornament of the 
 legal profession will be hereafter known 
 chiefly by the traditions of his splendid suc- 
 cesses. My purpose is simply to record a 
 few memories illustrating the force and flex- 
 ibility of his genius and the geniality of his 
 nature. 
 
 My admiration of Mr. Choate was formed 
 a long time before I had the honor and pleas- 
 ure of making his acquaintance. At the pe- 
 riod when he was a young lawyer, practicing 
 in the courts of Essex County, he "pervad- 
 ed" if I may use one of his own terms 
 the Salem bookstores in his leisure hours. 
 He was specially attracted to the store of 
 Mr. John M. Ives, and he never entered it 
 without falling into conversation with some 
 legal or illegal brother interested in letters, 
 and he never left it without leaving in the 
 memory of those who listened some one of 
 the golden sentences which dropped as nat- 
 urally from his mouth as pearls from the
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 9 
 
 lips of the failed fairy. There was a cir- 
 culating library connected with Mr. Ives's 
 bookstore, and I have a vivid remembrance 
 when, as a boy, I was prowling among the 
 books on the shelves, suspending my decis- 
 ion as to taking out a novel of Richardson, 
 or Fielding, or Miss Porter, or Scott, of list- 
 ening, with a certain guilty delight, at the 
 chaffing going on among my elders and bet- 
 ters in the front store. I remember perfect- 
 ly how I was impressed and fascinated by 
 the appearance of Mr. Choate. He was not 
 a Thaddeus of Warsaw, or a hero of the 
 type which Mrs. Radcliffe had stamped on 
 my imagination ; but there was something 
 strange, something " Oriental," in him which 
 suggested the Arabian Nights. In after- 
 years I wondered, as I wondered then, that 
 such a remarkable creature should have 
 dropped down, as it were, into Essex Coun- 
 ty, There seemed to be no connection be- 
 tween the man and his environment. He 
 flashed his meaning in pointed phrase while 
 his interlocutors were arraying facts and 
 preparing arguments, and darted out of the 
 store with a ringing laugh before they had 
 time to send a cross-bow shaft in reply, or 
 retort to the Parthian arrow he had gayly 
 sped at parting. 
 A*
 
 10 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Boy as I was, I learned then what was 
 characteristic of Mr. Choate through life 
 his horror of commonplace. Why, he seem- 
 ed to say, argue about a thing which an in- 
 telligent human being should detect at the 
 first glance ? He always tried to evade 
 bores, in youth as in age ; and to him the 
 most dreadful of bores were well-meaning 
 men, deficient in quickness of apprehension 
 and directness of insight, who were fond of 
 exercising their powers of disputation in 
 the weary work of placing on a logical 
 foundation the indisputable. Godwin once 
 mentioned to Coleridge that he and Mack- 
 intosh had been engaged for three hours in 
 an argument without arriving at a definite 
 conclusion. "If there had been a man of 
 genius in the room," Coleridge retorted, " he 
 would have settled the question in five min- 
 utes." Choate had this impatience of a man 
 of genius with long-winded controversies. 
 
 I may add that, in my boyish remem- 
 brances, the beauty of Choate's face and 
 person early caught my fancy. He was an 
 Apollo, though, as he walked the streets of 
 Salem, he was an Apollo with a slouch. He 
 had a way of lifting his shoulders, and an 
 angular swinging of his frame, which were 
 as individual as they were inartistic. Yet
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 11 
 
 ho was, on the whole, the most beautiful 
 young rnaii I ever saw. Thought, study, 
 care, the contentions of the bar, the wear 
 and tear of an unreposing life, at last broke 
 up the smoothest and comeliest of human 
 faces into weird wrinkles, which he often 
 laughed at himself when he surveyed his 
 countenance as depicted by the photogra- 
 pher. Of one of these likenesses, in which 
 the sun had not spared a single thought- 
 ploughed mark, he said, " It is as ugly as 
 the devil ; but still I must admit it is like 
 very like." Yet in his youth that face al- 
 most realized the ideal of manly beauty. 
 His complexion was brown, but health in- 
 fused into it a faint red tint which made it 
 singularly charming to the eye. I recollect 
 as if it were yesterday one Sunday after- 
 noon when he entered Dr. Brazer's church 
 in Salem just before the services began. 
 He marched up the aisle I can hit on no 
 better expression than "marched" and en- 
 tered a pew just above that in which I was 
 seated. The sermon was no doubt good 
 as all the sermons of Dr. Brazer were good 
 but my attention was fixed on Choate. For 
 an hour I watched his expressive face, no- 
 ticing every variation of its lines, as they in- 
 dicated agreement or disagreement with the
 
 12 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 eloquent clergyman's Unitarian discourse; 
 and all I knew of the sermon was gathered 
 from what I considered its effect on the won- 
 derful creature who seemed to my boyish 
 imagination to have strayed into the pew 
 from some region altogether apart from 
 any civilization heretofore known to Salem. 
 There was something mysterious about him. 
 In glancing over the other pews, occupied 
 by the merchant aristocracy of the town, I 
 was struck by their commonplace character, 
 as contrasted with this stranger, who ap- 
 peared to belong to another race, and who 
 might, for all I knew, have been imported 
 by these merchants from Calcutta or Singa- 
 pore, bringing with him the suggestion of 
 
 "Gums of Paradise and Eastern air." 
 
 He was then in the perfection of his man- 
 ly beauty the beauty of robust physical 
 health combined with that indefinable beau- 
 ty which comes from the palpable presence 
 of intellect and genius in brow, cheek, eye, 
 lip, and the very pose of the head. I was 
 then about ten years old ; but the kind of 
 admiring wonder I then felt in looking at 
 him affected me, many years afterward, 
 when I had made his personal acquaintance. 
 There was always in him something "rich
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 13 
 
 and strange," something foreign to our New 
 England "notions," something which dis- 
 tinguished him from all other eminent Amer- 
 icans. A humorous friend of mine once de- 
 clared that he was originally intended for an 
 inhabitant of Jupiter, hut the earth caught 
 him in his passage and hauled him in. Mr. 
 Choate, in some such way, always seemed 
 to me to have been arrested by the inso- 
 lent gravitating power lodged in the earth, 
 and drawn violently into our prosaic New 
 England while he was joyously speeding on 
 to his appropriate home in some distant 
 Mars or Jupiter. 
 
 As regards Mr. Choate's whole nature, I 
 was impressed not so much by any partic- 
 ular faculty as by its central force. He 
 was fundamentally strong at the heart of 
 his nature strong ill personality, strong in 
 will, strong in mental manhood ; and he 
 used his rare powers not merely to please, 
 persuade, astonish, and convince those whom 
 he addressed, but to overcome them. He 
 must have been personally conscious of that 
 grand mood which Wordsworth celebrates : 
 
 "Such animation often do I find, 
 Power in my breast, winga growing in my mmd." 
 
 In his diary, July, 1844, he indicates what
 
 14 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 he considers should be the characteristics 
 of a legislator's speech. These are : " Truth 
 for the staple, good taste the form, persua- 
 sion to act, for the end." It was the "per- 
 suasion to act" that was always in his mind, 
 whether he addressed a popular gathering, 
 a jury, or the Senate of the United States. 
 
 Indeed, in jury trials his main object was 
 to influence the icills of the twelve men be- 
 fore him. He addressed their understand- 
 ings ; he fascinated their imaginations ; he 
 stirred their feelings ; but, after all, he used 
 all his powers in subordination to that one 
 primal power which dwelt in his magnetic 
 individuality, by which he subdued them, 
 bringing on that part of their being which 
 uttered its reluctant "yes" or "no" the press- 
 ure of a stronger nature as well as of a lar- 
 ger mind. As an advocate, he thoroughly 
 understood that men in the aggregate arc 
 not reasonable beings, but men with the ca- 
 pacity of being occasionally made reasona- 
 ble, if their prejudices are once blown away 
 by a superior force of blended reason and 
 emotion in other words, by force of being. 
 His triumphs at the bar were due to the 
 fact that he was a powerful man, victorious 
 over other men because he had a stronger 
 manhood, a stronger selfhood, than uny
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 15 
 
 body on the jury he addressed. On one oc- 
 casion I happened to be a, witness in a case 
 where a trader was prosecuted for obtain- 
 ing goods under false pretenses. Mr. Choate 
 took the ground that the seeming knavery 
 of the accused was due to the circum- 
 stance that he had a deficient business 
 intelligence in short, that he unconscious- 
 ly rated all his geese as swans. He was 
 right in his view. The foreman of the 
 jury, however, was a hard-headed practi- 
 cal man, a model of business intellect and 
 integrity, but with an incapacity of under- 
 standing any intellect or conscience radi- 
 cally differing from his own. Mr. Choate's 
 argument, as far as the facts and the law 
 were concerned, was through in an hour. 
 Still he went on speaking. Hour after hour 
 passed, and yet he continued to speak with 
 constantly increasing eloquence, repeating 
 and recapitulating, without any seeming 
 reason, facts which he had already stated 
 and arguments which he had already urged. 
 The truth was, as I gradually learned, that 
 he was engaged in a hand-to-hand or 
 rather in a brain-to-brain and a heart-to- 
 heart contest with the* foreman, whose 
 resistance he was determined to break 
 down, but who confronted him for three
 
 16 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 hours with defiance observable in every 
 rigid line of Lis honest countenance. " You 
 fool!" was the burden of the advocate's in- 
 genious argument; "you rascal !" was the 
 phrase legibly printed on the foreman's in- 
 credulous face. But at last the features 
 of the foreman began to relax, and at the 
 end the stern lines melted into acquiescence 
 with the opinion of the advocate, who had 
 been storming at the defenses of his mind, 
 his heart, and his conscience for live hours, 
 and had now entered as victor. He c m- 
 pelled the foreman to admit the unpleasant 
 fact that there were existing human beings 
 whose mental and moral constitution differ- 
 ed from his own, and who were yet as hon- 
 est in intention as he was, but lacked his 
 clear perception and sound judgment. The 
 verdict was, "Not guilty." It was a just 
 verdict, but it was mercilessly assailed by 
 merchants who had lost money by the pris- 
 oner, and who were hounding him down as 
 an enemy to the human race, as another 
 instance of Choate's lack of mental and 
 moral honesty in the defense of persons ac- 
 cused of crime. The fact that the foreman 
 of the jury that returned the verdict be- 
 longed to the class that most vehemently 
 attacked Choate was sufficient of itself to
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 1? 
 
 disprove such allegations. As I listened to 
 Choate's argument in this case, I felt as- 
 sured that he would go on speaking until 
 he dropped dead 011 the floor rather than 
 have relinquished his clutch on the soul of 
 the one man on the jury whom he knew 
 would control the opinion of the others. 
 
 Mr. Choate was well aware of the con- 
 temptuous criticisms made on the peculiari- 
 ties of his manner, both in respect to elocu- 
 tion and rhetoric. Having within himself 
 the proud consciousness of unrecognized 
 power, he notes in his diary, under the date 
 of September, 1844: "If I live, all block- 
 heads which are shaken at certain mental 
 peculiarities shall know and feel a reason er, 
 a lawyer, and a man of business." Now as 
 every blockhead is still entitled to the claim 
 of being "a man and a brother," there is 
 something delicious in this substitution of 
 " which" for " who" in referring to the cere- 
 monious and pompous blockheads of the bar; 
 for, grammatically, this change of the pro- 
 noun reduces them from the dignity of per- 
 sons into "animals and inanimate things." 
 
 Mr. Choate of course possessed the art of 
 
 concealing the art by which he overcame 
 
 opposition. In his steady pressure on the 
 
 wills of the jury he appeared to be cozily 
 
 B
 
 18 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 arguing "with them, or lifting them into a 
 region of impassioned sentiment and imag- 
 ination Avhere he was at home, and where 
 the jury were made to feel that they shared 
 with him all the delights of such a lofty 
 communion with every thing beautiful and 
 sublime. In the- celebrated Tirrell trial, the 
 inhabitants of Boston, constituting them- 
 selves into a jury, deciding on the evidence 
 presented in newspaper reports, had de- 
 clared that the accused was guilty of mur- 
 der, and should be hanged. The judgment 
 of the most eminent representatives of the 
 bench and the bar was this that the ver- 
 dict of "Not guilty" was legally right and 
 just. But the jury had a hard time of it when 
 they returned to their usual avocations, as 
 all their companions and friends jeered at 
 them for being take j in by Choate's humbug. 
 One of these jurymen defended himself by a 
 statement which has survived : " Oh !" h6 
 declared, "we didn't care a sixpence for 
 that stutf about som-nam-bulism ; but then, 
 you know, we couldn't believe the testimony 
 of them abandoned women. Now could we?" 
 He had yielded to Choate without knowing 
 it, and had yielded on the point where tho 
 government's case was defective a point 
 which Choate had specially emphasized.
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 19 
 
 During Mr. Choate's contests with the 
 leaders of the Suffolk bar lie was once 
 opposed by an impudent advocate from 
 another State, imported specially to put 
 him down by sheer force of assurance. 
 Choate described him as perverting the law 
 with " an imperturbable perpendicularity 
 of assertion" which it was difficult to upset. 
 On this occasion the lawyer closed his ar- 
 gument with the remark that he was more 
 confirmed in his view of the law of the case 
 because the distinguished counsel opposed 
 to him had taken the same ground in an 
 argument a few days before at Lowell. In- 
 stead of denying the false assertion, which 
 most lawyers would have done, Choate qui- 
 etly replied, " Yes, and was overruled by the 
 Court." It seems to me that this is a won- 
 derful example of his quickness in instantly 
 deciding on the right way of meeting before 
 a jury a seemingly crushing appeal to pop- 
 ular prejudice. 
 
 On one occasion Mr. Choate was called 
 upon to defend a Roman Catholic priest 
 who was accused of making what appeared 
 to be the first approaches of a criminal as- 
 sault on a girl he met in one of the side 
 streets of Boston. The advocate took what 
 was in all probability the true view of the
 
 20 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 situation, that the priest was returning from 
 his church absorbed iii his devotions, had 
 accidentally met the girl in his path, and 
 that the abrupt jostling with the fair pros- 
 ecutor was accidental. But the case was 
 prosecuted with all the animosity of Prot- 
 estant prejudice, and the foreman of the 
 jury was an orthodox deacon. I remember 
 of the case only this statement: "I have 
 proved to you, gentlemen, that this collision 
 was purely an accident ; such an accident, 
 Mr. Foreman, as might have happened to 
 you or to me returning from a Union meet- 
 ing, or a liberty meeting, or a Jenny Lind 
 concert, or, what is infinitely better, a monih- 
 1y concert of prayer." If solemni ty was ever im- 
 aged in a human countenance, it was when 
 Choate, advancing to the deacon, brought 
 his sad, weird, wrinkled face into close 
 proximity with the foreman's, and in low, 
 deep tones uttered that magical form of 
 words by which orthodox Protestants rec- 
 ognize each other all over New England 
 the "monthly concert of prayer." I think 
 he gained his case by that happy display 
 of sympathy with the absorption in divine 
 things which is supposed to follow such a 
 "concert" in all Congregational churches. 
 In one of Mr. Choate's contentions at the
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 21 
 
 bar, his opponent, a man distinguished for 
 his high moral character, took it into his 
 head that his learned brother had im- 
 pugned his honesty ; and he made a fervid 
 speech, declaring that such an imputation, 
 during his long professional career, had nev- 
 er been even insinuated before. Mr. Choate, 
 preserving his admirable composure, dis- 
 claimed any such imputation, with the pre- 
 liminary statement that he was quite un- 
 prepared "for such a tempestuous outbreak 
 of extraordinary sensibility" on the part 
 of his friend. His power of constructing 
 what may be called architectural sentences 
 like this on the spur of the moment was by 
 no means the least of his gifts. Adjectives, 
 quaint, witty, or resounding, instantly came 
 at his call to describe, illustrate, or qualify 
 any substantive that was uppermost in his 
 mind at the time. 
 
 In an insurance trial in which Mr. Choate 
 was engaged he spent a day or more in the 
 cross-examination of a witness who swore 
 positively as to the facts in dispute, but 
 who was compelled by the advocate's search- 
 ing questions to admit his general bad char- 
 acter. The testimony of this scamp had to 
 be broken down, or the. case must be lost. 
 In addressing the jury, Mr. Choate gave a
 
 22 :50ME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 vivid presentation of the vices and crimes 
 of the witness, whom he represented as the 
 basest and meanest of mankind, and then 
 asked, " Do you suppose, gentlemen, that in 
 this vast violation of all the sentiments and 
 virtues that bind men together in civil so- 
 ciety, veracity alone would survive in the 
 chaos of such a character? the 'last rose 
 of summer' on such a soil?" The empha- 
 sis on "veracity" and "such" was potent 
 enough to kill the witness. The jury dis- 
 believed him, and Mr. Choate gained his 
 case. The rogue may or may not have tes- 
 tified trnly as to the point under discussion, 
 but truth could not be reasonably expected 
 from a person who was self-convicted of 
 almost every wickedness but perjury. 
 
 In his arguments for persons who had 
 become complicated in seemingly criminal 
 acts of which they were, at least, not so 
 guilty as they were accused of being, his 
 masterly way of putting himself, by imagi- 
 nation, in the place of his clients, and ex- 
 hibiting all the pathos that could be elicited 
 from their embarrassments and struggles, 
 often drenched his clients themselves in ir- 
 repressible tears. They hardly knew before 
 what heroes and martyrs they were. They 
 wept at the eloquent recapitulation of what
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 23 
 
 tlioy liad suffered and done; they became 
 poetic personages, worthy of the pen of Scott 
 or Dickens ; indeed, they were so much af- 
 fected that they considered Lawyer Choate 
 should charge little for presenting them be- 
 fore the community in their true light, and 
 therefore often forgot or neglected to pay 
 him any thing. His dramatic power in ex- 
 hibiting the interior feelings of the half 
 guilty, the quarter guilty, and the guilty 
 who are perfectly innocent in their own con- 
 ceit, and therefore regard a prosecution as a 
 persecution, was so wonderful that many of 
 the persons who were acquitted through his 
 exertions never paid him what they would 
 have paid an advocate who had less identi- 
 fied himself with their interests and char- 
 acters. Indeed, after his work was done 
 he appeared himself to set a modest esti- 
 mate on its value. The occasions when he 
 obtained large fees were due to his partner, 
 who made the contracts beforehand ; for Mr. 
 Choate generally considered the obstacles 
 in the way of getting a verdict for his cli- 
 ents formidable until the case was settled, 
 and was indifferent to the amount of the 
 fee only after he had succeeded. 
 
 But he was not only an accomplished law- 
 yer : he was, at times, an eager politician. I
 
 24 SOME KECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 will try to recall some sentences in his popu- 
 lar addresses. In a campaign appeal to the 
 Boston Whigs, when Polk, a comparatively 
 unknown inau,was the Democratic candidate 
 for the Presidency, Mr. Choate gave full play 
 to his peculiar \vit and fancy. "We will," 
 he exclaimed, " return James K. Polk to the 
 Convention that discovered him !" In depict- 
 ing Polk's sure defeat, he declared that he 
 would "disappear like the lost Pleiad, where 
 no telescope could find him!" In reading 
 an " open letter" of the Free-soil Democrats, 
 "surreptitiously" published in the New York 
 Evening Pof,he paused at the end, as if over- 
 come by surprise. " I find, gentlemen, that 
 this letter is marked 'private and confiden- 
 tial/ and such, I trust, you will consider it !" 
 The idea of confiding a secret of that sort 
 to three thousand people struck every man 
 in the audience with a sense of its humor, 
 and there was a roar of applause, which for 
 some minutes prevented the orator from 
 proceeding. On another occasion he ad- 
 dressed a Union meeting in Faneuil Hall, 
 composed equally of Whigs and Democrats. 
 I wish types could express the wit of one 
 passage by indicating the rise, culmination, 
 and sudden fall of his voice. " You Whig !'' 
 he exclaimed, " and YOU DEMOCRAT WHO
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 25 
 
 ARE JUST AS GOOD AS A WHIG in your 
 own opinion!" The last clause should be 
 printed ill the smallest type which the print- 
 er can command. The laughter which suc- 
 ceeded the qualification was deafening, and 
 it came from the representatives of both 
 parties. 
 
 When Mr. Sumner's first election to the 
 Senate of the United States was in doubt, 
 Sumner met Choate as he was entering the 
 Court-house. " Ah, Mr. Choate," said Sum- 
 ner, pleasantly, "marching, I suppose, to 
 another forensic triumph ?" Choate had on 
 his old camlet cloak known to all members 
 of the bar and drawing it melodramatic- 
 ally up over his weird face, and looking like 
 one of the witches in Macbeth, he mocking- 
 ly answered, in his deepest tones, " Glamis 
 thou art, and Cawdor !" and then disappear- 
 ed through the door. Sumner was accused 
 of lacking the perception of humor, but he 
 always told this incident as if he had it in 
 a high degree. 
 
 A distinguished Free-soiler, after the nom- 
 ination of Taylor for the Presidency, accost- 
 ed Mr. Choate in the street, and told him 
 that the Free-soil section of the Whig party 
 was determined to oppose the nomination 
 at the polls. "What can you do?" said 
 B
 
 26 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Mr. Choate. "Perhaps little," was the re- 
 ply; "but at least Massachusetts can lire 
 her gun in the air." " Yes," at once retorted 
 Mr. Choate, " and hit her guardian angel in 
 the eye." 
 
 When Dr. Webster, the murderer of Park- 
 man, was in prison after his conviction, Mr. 
 Choate met in a street car an eminent cler- 
 gyman who was inclined to believe that the 
 criminal was innocent, and who visited him 
 frequently. " How do you find the object 
 of your pastoral care ?" asked Mr. Choate. 
 "Well," was the reply, "I always find him 
 I'M." "And," returned Mr. Choate, " it will be 
 long, I think, before you tind him out" In- 
 deed, in repartee he always had the last 
 word. Xobody ever went away from him 
 with the consolation that he had surpassed 
 him in quickness of retort. 
 
 In one of his literary lectures Mr. Choate 
 referred to the fact that Marie Antoinette, 
 after her unsuccessful attempt to escape 
 with her husband from France, entered on 
 the eveuingof that day her new prison-house 
 a beautiful woman, and on the next morn- 
 ing emerged from it with her loveliness all 
 gone. He put it in this way: "The beauty of 
 Austria fell from her brow, like a veil, in a sin- 
 gle night." Any body who appreciates the
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 27 
 
 meaning of the word " imagination" can not 
 fail to note the force of " the beauty of Aus- 
 tria" It was not merely the queen's indi- 
 vidual beauty, but the beauty of her mother, 
 Maria Theresa, and of all the princesses of 
 the Hapsburg house since its foundation, 
 that fell from her brow "like a veil" in a sin- 
 gle night. The hopelessness of the struggle 
 of all rank and beauty against the ghastly 
 uprising of an oppressed people is also indi- 
 cated in this grand imaginative generaliza- 
 tion. The beauty was a mere " veil," that 
 must be dropped when the fierce passions of 
 a famished and enraged populace overturn- 
 ed all the sentiments which sprung from an 
 aristocratic chivalry, based on a worship of 
 beauty nobly born. What was most curi- 
 ous in this utterance was the lowness of the 
 tone of the orator's voice as he delivered it. 
 I am sure that the words " like a veil" could 
 not have been heard by fifty people among 
 the three thousand Avho listened to the lec- 
 ture. I happened to be very near the speak- 
 er, and noted how completely he seemed 
 abstracted from the audience when, in a 
 tone of thrilling, tender sadness, he inter- 
 polated this statement as a parenthesis be- 
 tween the rush of words which preceded 
 and followed it.
 
 28 SOME liECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 On one hot summer afternoon, a day or 
 two after he had delivered his address on 
 Kossuth before the literary societies of a 
 Vermont College an address all ablaze 
 with the characteristics of his resplendent 
 rhetoric, but still with a statesman-like 
 judgment and forecast regulating its im- 
 passioned eloquence I met him at the Bos- 
 ton Athenaeum, and naturally alluded to the 
 splendid success of his oration. "Ah!" he 
 replied, with an immense yawn, "was it a 
 success? I thought not. By-the-Avay, didn't 
 you talk to the same societies last year '" I 
 was reluctantly compelled to admit that I 
 was guilty of the offense. " Well, the truth 
 is (between ourselves, mind you!) that I 
 found you had so corrupted the young men 
 with your confounded rhetoric, that my 
 plain common.-sense had no effect on them 
 whatever." The impressive seriousness with 
 which this reproof was given was only re- 
 lieved by a power, which Mr. Choate pos- 
 sessed, of indicating the humor of a remark 
 through a peculiar flash from the white por- 
 tion of his left eye, while the rest of his 
 countenance remained in immovable and 
 impenetrable gravity. The v.iuk he gave 
 me ! shall I ever forget it ? 
 
 On another of the occasions when I had
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 29 
 
 the pleasure of meeting him the topic was 
 the relative rank of the great generals of 
 the world. "On the whole," he said, "I 
 think we must take Hannibal as the great- 
 est of them all. For just look at the ef- 
 frontery of the fellow scaling the Alps 
 with a lot of Carthaginians ragamuffins, 
 niggers to fight the Destiny of Rome ! And 
 then, you know, the scamp, with his rascal 
 rout, nearly succeeded in his purpose of 
 overturning the design even of Divine Prov- 
 idence ! You may depend upon it, he is the 
 biggest general of the whole gang of them !" 
 
 Choate was never tired of eulogizing 
 Cicero and Burke. "The man," he once 
 said to me, " who will write an article ade- 
 quately describing, comparing, and contrast- 
 ing those two men of genius Avill do a great 
 work." "But," I answered, "that is the 
 very thing that all of us are eager for you 
 to do. You can do it better than any body 
 else." " Oh, of course," he answered, with 
 a shrng of his shoulders ; "you may be sure 
 it shall be done." Of course he never did it. 
 
 On a transient meeting Avith him, the con- 
 versation turned on the charge that Burke's 
 seeming apostasy to the cause of liberty in 
 his works on the French Revolution was 
 caused by a desire for power and a pension.
 
 30 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 I alluded to the impossibility that character 
 arid passion could be subsidized as well as 
 imagination and genius; that Burke must 
 have been morally honest in writing the 
 works that incidentally gave him some fif- 
 teen thousand dollars a year, and that those 
 writers who accused him of being bought 
 by the English court grossly misapprehend- 
 ed him. " Misapprehended him !" exclaimed 
 Choate; "they were leasts! BEASTS!" The 
 way he rose from his chair and strode about 
 the room as he uttered this opinion con- 
 vinced me, at least, that his own political 
 course could never have been influenced by 
 the desire either of power or money. In- 
 deed, every body who knew Choate knew 
 that there was nothing in the power of tho 
 people of the United States to give in the 
 way of political preferment that he regarded 
 as worth striving for as a matter of political 
 ambition. He had been a Representative 
 and a Senator in Congress, but as he grew 
 old he disliked every thing in politics which 
 drew him away from his library during the 
 brief hours of leisure which his profession- 
 al engagements enabled him to enjoy. He 
 spoke for his political party and his politic- 
 al convictions when he was called upon to 
 do so, but the ordinary details of politics
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 31 
 
 were abhorrent to him. They were a bore. 
 The only assaults on his political integrity 
 were made during the later years of his life. 
 Those who opposed his opinions and I 
 ranked among them must have known 
 that it was a real sentiment of patriotism, 
 however misdirected, and not any paltry 
 love of lucre or place, that inspired the 
 thrilling addresses with which he bravely 
 confronted the dominant sentiment of Mas- 
 sachusetts after 1850. It is curious that 
 those who accuse him of cowardice and 
 time-serving at this period forget that only 
 obloquy could result from the position he 
 took. The coward and the time-server are 
 seen in the wake of the reformer when the 
 reformer has the vote of the State with him 
 Choate withstood an impulse so strong that 
 any sagacity much less keen than his must 
 have known that it was more politic to fol- 
 low than to withstand the movement ; but 
 he deliberately chose the unpopular side, 
 and cheerfully submitted to be lampooned 
 by hundreds of politicians who would have 
 hailed him as the noblest and most elo- 
 quent of men if he had only drifted with 
 the stream instead of manfully breasting it. 
 His opinions were so opposed to mine, that 
 it is a delight to record this testimony to
 
 32 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 his political honesty. He bad nothing to 
 gain by tbe course be pursued, aiid be bad 
 mucb to lose. Now tbat tbe passions of 
 tbat time have subsided, all Republicans 
 can afford to do justice to Cboate. He was 
 not on their side ; but had he been on their 
 side they would have forced honors upon 
 him. He never, by-tbe-way, during his po- 
 litical career had any need to solicit office ; 
 it was always freely urged upon him as a 
 testimony of bis fellow-citizens to his genius 
 and capacity. 
 
 But to return to my recollections of him. 
 It was impossible to meet him for even half 
 a minute, as he was striding from his dwell- 
 ing to his daily business, without eliciting 
 from his ever-active mind some quaint re- 
 mark. A friend of mine greeted him one 
 day just as he was turning from Washing- 
 ton Street into a narrow lane leading to the 
 Court-house. Mr. Choate answered the sal- 
 utation, and, as he turned to go down tbe 
 narrow passage, said, with much mock grav- 
 ity, " Convenient, though ignominious!" 
 
 He was once engaged in the great legal 
 controversy between the different owners of 
 water-power on the Blackstone Eiver. The 
 case was one which really rested on nice 
 mathematical computations, and was final-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 33 
 
 ly settled by mathematicians. Choate was 
 puzzled by tbe intricacy of tbe case, and 
 meeting Mr. Folsom, tbe librarian of tbe 
 jBoston Athenaeum, one morning in a book- 
 jstore, be said to him: "Pray, Mr. Folsom, 
 jbave we in the Athenaeum any books relat- 
 ing to tbe flow of water, the turning of it 
 back, and playing tbe devil with it gener 
 ally?" 
 
 There was so much intensity i n Mr.Choate's 
 nature that I often wondered lio\v he could 
 help tormenting himself in thinking over 
 the cases be lost where the verdict should 
 have been for the side on which he was en- 
 gaged. One afternoon, after he had made 
 an address to tbe Legislature, or a commit- 
 tee of the Legislature, of one of the New 
 England States, and bad plainly failed of 
 success through a political prejudice excited 
 against him by the opposing counsel, I met 
 him calmly exploring the alcoves of the 
 Athenaeum in search of some book. In al- 
 luding to the palpable injustice of tbe recep- 
 tion of bis legal argument the day before, I 
 expressed my astonishment that be should 
 seem so careless about tbe result* " Oh !'' 
 he answered, "when I have once argued a 
 case, and it is settled, I am done with it. I 
 cast it forcibly out of my mind, and never 
 C
 
 31 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 allow it to trouble niy peace. I should go 
 mad," lie added, with a sudden lift of bis 
 hand tlirougli his abundant locks, " if I al- 
 lowed it to abide in my thoughts. What, 
 by-the-vray, do you think of this curious 
 life of Shelley, written by a fellow who 
 calls himself a Jefferson somebody Hogg ?" 
 In an instant the conversation was thus 
 changed to Shelley and his latest biogra- 
 pher. I never met a man whose genius was 
 as sensitive as his who had such a complete 
 control of his mind and sensibility. He was 
 the absolute autocrat of all the thoughts 
 and fancies teeming in his fertile mind, ex- 
 ercised over them a tyrannous dominion, 
 and never allowed them to possess him, but 
 always possessed them. 
 
 One of the charms of Mr.Choate's conver- 
 sation was his habit of exaggeration. To 
 attend the performance of Mozart's Don Gio- 
 ranni was like listening, he said, to ten thou- 
 sand forests of birds. He knew that no ex- 
 aggeration in mere words could adequately 
 express the delight that a sympathetic mind 
 feels in coming into vital acquaintance with 
 a work of transcendent genius in any depart- 
 ment of literature and the fine arts. Ten 
 thousand birds would be a small testimony 
 to the melodies of Mozart; but ten thousand
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 35 
 
 forests of birds is a comparison which indi- 
 cates the rapture of wonder and admiration 
 which Mozart's masterpiece excites in all 
 souls capable of feeling its beauty. With 
 this tendency to verbal exaggeration Choate 
 had that instantaneous humorous recoil 
 from extravagant assertion characteristic 
 of ardent natures whose sense of the ludi- 
 crous is as quick as their sense of the beauti- 
 ful aud the sublime. "Interpret to me the 
 libretto," he said to his daughter, " lest I di- 
 late at the wrong emotion." Sydney Smith 
 never said any thing better than that! 
 
 Nobody at the bar ever equalled him in 
 paying ironical compliments to the judges 
 who blocked his way to the hearts and un- 
 derstandings of juries. Judge Shaw was 
 specially noted for the gruff way in which 
 he interposed such obstacles, and Shaw's 
 depth of legal learning was not more con- 
 spicuous than his force of character. "'Tisn't 
 so, Mr. Choate," was a frequent interruption, 
 when Shaw was on the bench and Choate 
 was arguing a case before him. Choate's 
 side remarks on the judge have passed into 
 the stereotyped jokes of the bar, and are 
 now somewhat venerable. One is, I think, 
 not commonly stated in the exact words. 
 " I always approach Judge Shaw," he said,
 
 36 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 'as a savage approaches his fetich, know- 
 ing that he is ugly, but feeling that he is 
 great." Of Judge Story he once remarked, 
 "I never heard him pronounce a judgment 
 in which he did not argue the case better 
 than the counsel on either side; and for 
 which," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, 
 "he might very properly have been impeach- 
 ed." He delighted in gravely joking with 
 a judge. Thus he once asked that a case 
 might be postponed, owing to his engage- 
 ment in another court. The judge replied 
 that the case was one in which he might 
 write out his argument. With a mock so- 
 lemnity, which it always seemed to me no 
 other human countenance could so readily 
 assume, he replied, " I write well, your Hon- 
 or, but slowly" As his handwriting resem- 
 bled the tracks of wild-cats, with their claws 
 dipped in ink, madly dashing over the sur- 
 face of a folio sheet of white paper, the as- 
 sembled bar could not restrain their laugh- 
 ter. Indeed, it is affirmed that he could not 
 decipher his own handwriting after a case 
 was concluded, and had to call in experts 
 to explain it to himself. He congratulated 
 himself on the fact that if he failed to get 
 a living at the bar, he could still go to China 
 and support himself by his pen ; that is, by
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 37 
 
 decorating tea-cliests. On one occasion he 
 was employed by a Lalf-crazed litigant to 
 carry a case, dismissed by the court below, 
 to the Supreme Court of the State. It was 
 a case resembling the one immortalized by 
 Scott that of Peter Peebles versus Plain- 
 staines ; but tiie Peter Peebles in this con- 
 troversy was as rich as he was litigious. 
 Choate frankly told him that the excep- 
 tions his counsel had taken were of no ac- 
 count in law; but the client insisted that 
 he should present them to the assembled 
 judges, and was indifferent as to the fee. 
 There never was a more solemn face pre- 
 sented to a bench of jurists than the face 
 of Choate as he argued point after point of 
 this hopeless case ; but it was observed that 
 every time he made a new point he intro- 
 duced it with a sly wink to some one of the 
 lawyers in attendance. The bench and the 
 lawyers were tormented with the agony 
 which comes from laughter decorously sup- 
 pressed, while the advocate, except his oc- 
 casional winks to his brother lawyers, was 
 the very personification of legal gravity. 
 
 At dinner parties he was the most de- 
 lightful of companions. "That," he re- 
 marked of some "Ashburton sherry," which 
 was rather strong than delicate " that is a
 
 38 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 very good Fauenil-Hallish drink !" His talk 
 oil books was always delightful and dis- 
 criminating, with an occasional eccentric 
 deviation from the general judgment on an 
 author, which made it all the more fascina- 
 ting. The world of books, indeed, was that 
 " real world" in which he lived whenever 
 the pauses of his professional engagements 
 enabled him to indulge in the luxury; and 
 he adroitly dodged every social imitation 
 in order to devote to Bacon, Shakspeare, 
 Milton, and Burke his favorite English au- 
 thors the hours Avhich others lose in what 
 is ironically called " Society." In fact, few 
 people in Boston could converse with him 
 unless they met him in his daily walk 
 around the Common, or in the AtheuaBum, 
 or as he went from his residence to the 
 Court-house. Yet no Bostouiaii seemed 
 more open to conversation, and certainly no 
 one ever left, in his chance meetings with 
 acquaintances of all grades and pursuits, 
 such an impression of good nature and 
 brilliancy. Boston swarms to-day with ad- 
 mirers of Choate who only met him. acci- 
 dentally, as I did. In a minute's conversa- 
 tion he condensed what could have been ob- 
 tained from no other celebrities of the city 
 in an hour's discourse. He appeared, flash-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 39 
 
 ed on you a remark, and then disappeared 
 to his work. Yet more people knew him 
 and talked about him than knew or talked 
 about any other eminent Bostoiiian. 
 
 Mr. Choate greedily devoured every book 
 relating to ancient Greece, even the most 
 ephemeral. Of one of these he said : " The 
 author seems to know a good deal, but he is 
 too confident as to those mysterious Pelas- 
 gians, at the bottom of the whole history ; 
 he Pelasyizes too much." The English his- 
 torians of Greece, even Thirl wall and Grote, 
 he thought were more or less biassed by 
 party feelings. In writing about ancient 
 Greece, "they were consciously or uncon- 
 sciously influenced," he said, " by their opin- 
 ions as to the personal and political charac- 
 ter of Charles James Fox." As to his own 
 method of learning the history of Greece, it 
 may be affirmed that he studied the works 
 * of the Greek orators, philosophers, and his- 
 torians in order to become mentally a citi- 
 zen of Greece, and thus to look at Greek 
 life through a Greek's eyes. By his realiz- 
 ing imagination he instantly nullified the 
 hard conditions of Time ; sent his mind and 
 heart back two thousand or twenty-five 
 hundred years to contemplate a civilization 
 entirely different from ours ; and often, while
 
 40 SOME KKCOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 lie was striding arouud Boston Common in 
 the age of Buchanan, he was really mak- 
 ing himself a contemporary of the age of 
 Pericles. His imagination was in ancient 
 Athens, while his body was in what is iron- 
 ically called " the modern Athens." As he 
 pushed rapidly along in his favorite after- 
 noon walk it Avas plain that he was not re- 
 garding the objects before his bodily eyes, 
 but those before his mental vision ; that he 
 was attending, perhaps, the performance of 
 a tragedy of Sophocles or a comedy of Aris- 
 tophanes; or was indulging in a pleasant 
 game of chaffing with Socrates, in some 
 Athenian mechanic's shop, on the transcend- 
 ental "good aud fair," as contrasted with 
 tiie descendental bad and mean ; or was con- 
 testing with Demosthenes a cause before the 
 " fierce democracy" of Athens ; or was ex- 
 hibiting, in a visit to Aspasia, that exqui- 
 site courtesy to women in which he excelled 
 all other gentlemen of his time. If I ever 
 crossed him in his walks, and saw the weird 
 eyes gazing into distant time aud space, I 
 made it a point of honor not to interrupt 
 his meditations, but to pass on with a sim- 
 ple bow of recognition. Why should I, for 
 the sake of five minutes' delightful conver- 
 sation, interrupt this hard- worked man of
 
 RUFUS C1IOATE. 41 
 
 genius in his glorious imaginative commun- 
 ion with the great of old ? The temptation 
 was strong, hut I al ways overcame it. When 
 he Avas in Boston, I ventured to accost him; 
 when he was in Athens, I very properly con- 
 sidered that he was in much better company 
 than any which Boston could afford ; and, as 
 an humble denizen of the place, I thought it 
 judicious not to obtrude myself into a se- 
 lect circle of immortals to which I was not 
 invited. 
 
 To obtain a complete idea of Mr. Choate's 
 various talents and accomplishments, the 
 reader is referred to the edition of his works, 
 in two octavo volumes, published in Boston 
 in 1862, and edited by Professor S. G. Brown, 
 who also contributed a long and excellent 
 biography. The biography includes copious 
 extracts from Mr. Choate's private journals 
 and familiar correspondence. These enable 
 us to penetrate to the inmost heart of the 
 man, and prove how false were many of the 
 rash judgments passed upon him while he 
 lived. It also contains a number of com- 
 munications from his legal and political as- 
 sociates and opponents, who, whether they 
 agreed or disagreed with him, preserved a 
 vivid impression of the force and fertility of 
 his mind, and the manliness and kindliness 
 C
 
 42 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 of iiis nature. But its great merit consists 
 ill vindicating Mr. CLoate from tlie vulgar 
 imputations on his legal and political integ- 
 rity; that is, on his intellectual conscien- 
 tiousness. It shows conclusively that lie 
 considered the exercise of his powers in jury 
 trials as an " office" and not a " trade ;" that 
 he was convinced that his part in the deter- 
 mination of a cause was as much provided 
 for in the law of the land as the parts as- 
 signed to the judge, to the opposing counsel, 
 and to the jury ; and that as an " official" in 
 the administration of justice, it would be 
 scandalous for him to spare time, labor, 
 knowledge, eloquence, in defense of his par- 
 ticular client. That course v.*as decreed by 
 the whole theory of English and American 
 law. He felt the obligation imposed upon 
 him so keenly, that, in his early private 
 memoranda, when a cause was decided ad- 
 versely to his view, he reproached himself 
 for not having done more for his client ; in 
 other words, for riot having fulfilled his 
 duties, as an official in the administration 
 of the law, Avith more address, ability, and 
 command of the law. It was only by de- 
 grees that he surmounted this self-distrust, 
 and became able to dismiss from his mind 
 at once a case when it had been finally
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 43 
 
 settled. The volumes edited by Professor 
 Brown contain also Mr. Choate's most val- 
 uable literary and patriotic addresses, and 
 his best speeches while he was a Senator of 
 the United States. Whatever may be the 
 criticisms on his political career, there can 
 be no donbt that he never had, like the eld- 
 er brother mentioned in Scripture, any "ul- 
 terior views on the fatted calf." He was 
 almost forced by his party into every high 
 political position he occupied. He was not 
 without political ambition, but it was an 
 ambition disconnected from any possibility 
 of personal emolument, and, indeed, sadly 
 interfering with his professional business 
 and with his natural desire to provide a 
 modest competence for his family. Every 
 thing mean and base in politics he absolute- 
 ly loathed. To him "machine politics" were 
 equally a bore and a blunder. But when 
 great national interests were at stake he 
 was willing to sacrifice what few hours he 
 could steal from his professional engage- 
 ments, from his study of the poets, histo- 
 rians, and philosophers of Greece and Rome, 
 from his delightful communion with the 
 spirits of Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, and 
 Burke, to the preparation of orations de- 
 signed to influence the legislative or pop-
 
 44 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ular mind at periods where what is called a 
 "crisis" threatens the interests of a nation. 
 The editor has demonstrated that whether 
 Mr. Choate was right or wrong in the vary- 
 ing aspects of his political creed, he was 
 pure from all forms of avarice the insidi- 
 ous avarice of fame no less than the more 
 open avarice of money and office. In short, 
 he was at heart a patriot, even when the 
 course he took disappointed many of his 
 best friends and admirers. 
 
 What Professor Brown does not notice 
 probablj' as beneath the dignity of biog- 
 raphy are some of the peculiar relations of 
 Choate with Webster. They were strong 
 personal and political friends; when Web- 
 ster desired to raise money, he sometimes 
 got Choate to indorse his note ; when Web- 
 ster ventured on a daring political move, he 
 got Choate to indorse his policy; and the 
 result was that in either case the indorse- 
 ment entailed on Choate pecuniary embar- 
 rassment or popular obloquy. If one should 
 consult the archives of the Boston Mer- 
 chants' Bank, there would doubtless appear 
 sufficient reasons why Choate should have 
 been occasionally troubled with a want of 
 money, on account of heedlessly affixing the 
 hieroglyphic which passed for his name on
 
 RUFU8 CHOATE. 45 
 
 the back of a promise to pay which bore 
 the more flowing and familiar signature of 
 Daniel Webster ; and whenever his immense 
 popularity as au orator Avas at all abated, it 
 was generally found that what he lost in 
 popular estimation was due to his honest 
 and cordial indorsement of his friend's po- 
 litical conduct. The only occasion on which 
 he was ever charged with showing the white 
 feather was in his contest with Clay during 
 the early days of Tyler's Administration. 
 Clay was the champion of a bill for the es- 
 tablishment of a United States Bank. The 
 bill was sure to pass both Houses of Con- 
 gress. Choate had been probably informed 
 by Webster that the President would veto 
 it unless certain clauses were omitted, and 
 he> eagerly urged that such omissions be 
 made, in order to insure its becoming a law. 
 Clay instantly detected that some commu- 
 nication had passed from the Secretary of 
 State to the Senator of Massachusetts, and 
 pitilessly forced Choate into a corner, 
 whence it was impossible for him to es- 
 cape. "Why are you so confident that the 
 bill will be vetoed ? What right have you to 
 suggest to the Senate of the United States, a 
 co-ordinate branch of the government, that 
 the Executive is opposed to a bill, before it
 
 46 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Las been presented to him for his signa- 
 ture ? What arc your private means of in- 
 formation ? Tell us the name of the man 
 from whom you received such information." 
 What could be done by dexterity in evad- 
 ing the real point in issue Choate did mar- 
 vellously well; but his friend Webster had 
 got him into a " fix" from which neither cour- 
 age nor ingenuity could get him out. Clay 
 was insolent and overbearing, for he was at- 
 tacked by one of his periodical fits of hatred 
 against his great rival for the prize of the 
 Presidency, who was then Secretary of 
 State, and he lavished on Choate the wrath 
 he intended to fall on Webster. It was 
 sounded all over the country that Choate 
 had quailed before Clay. Even in the State 
 he represented Choate was long considered 
 to have lacked, in this instance, that intre- 
 pidity which he had never before failed to 
 .show in any contest at the bar or in the 
 Senate. The truth is that Clay, on the 
 next meeting of the Senate, magnanimously 
 apologized for the rudeness of his assault, 
 and shook hands with Choate with all the 
 cordiality that can be expected from a 
 statesman who is immeasurably ambitious. 
 As far as Choate was wrong in this con- 
 flict it was owing to his friendship for Web-
 
 RUFUS CIIOATE. 47 
 
 ster ; and that tliero was not a taint of cow- 
 ardice in his nature was soon after shown 
 in his contest with the great fire-eater of 
 the South, the redoubtable Senator M'Duf- 
 fie, of South Carolina. His reply to M'Duf- 
 fie's violent and insolent assault on his 
 tariff speech is a masterpiece of argument, 
 edged with every appliance of scorn, sar- 
 casm, and invective which his wit and fan- 
 cy could command. There was no question 
 as to his courage in that encounter. M'Duf- 
 fie was a duellist debater, whose body was 
 riddled with bullets received in many a 
 quarrel which his effrontery had provoked ; 
 but he submitted to Choate's " punishment" 
 without a thought of sending him a chal- 
 lenge. It is doubtful if his contentious and 
 belligerent temper ever before quietly en- 
 dured such a series of polished insults as 
 Choate heaped upon him. 
 
 Still it must be admitted that Choate, 
 in his political connection with Webster, 
 seemed to submit to the control of a master- 
 mind. No two men could be more widely 
 contrasted in their characters, in their men- 
 tal processes, in their style of expression. 
 They were often brought into conflict in 
 the trial of causes; at times it appeared as 
 if they were mortal enemies, so strenuous
 
 48 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 was each in supporting his particular side; 
 ar,:l as ail advocate, Choatc grappled with 
 Webster mind Avith mind and man with 
 man with an intrepid pertinacity which 
 left no doubt on the court and jury that 
 his respect for him did not control the ve- 
 hement logic and still more vehement rhet- 
 oric with which he urged, against Webster's 
 arguments and eloquence, the strong points 
 of the case he was employed to state and 
 defend. On one occasion, while Webster 
 sat gravely listening to the impassioned el- 
 oquence of his opponent, he turned to one 
 of the junior counsel and remarked : " Some 
 of our technical brethren of the bar would 
 call all that flimsy humbug ; if it be so, 
 which I deny, it is still humbug which stirs 
 men's souls to their inmost depths. It is 
 reason impelled by passion, sustained by le- 
 gal learning, and adorned by fancy." There 
 were few advocates that Webster feared 
 more than Choate when there Avas a trial 
 of strength between them. On such occa- 
 sions it was observed that he studiously re- 
 frained from ai)3 r attempt to riA~al his oppo- 
 nent in eloquence. He adopted a dry, hard, 
 sensible tone of statement and argument. 
 He ironically complimented the learned 
 counsel opposed to him for his impassioned
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 49 
 
 flights of eloquence, Avhicb, as poetry, lie 
 had himself enjoyed as much as he supposed 
 the twelve honest and practical men who 
 were to decide on the case had doubtless 
 enjoyed them. Nothing could be better, if 
 , questions of fact and law were to be influ- 
 enced by beautiful displays of wit and im- 
 agination, than his learned brother's argu- 
 ment; but, gentlemen and here Webster 
 assumed all the weight and consequence 
 which his imposing form and penetrating 
 voice naturally gave him this is a ques- 
 tion not of poetry, but of fact. It is purely 
 a matter of commonplace, every-day occur- 
 rence. There are no heroes and no hero- 
 ines in it, no tragedy and no comedy, but 
 plain people like you and me mere Smiths 
 and Robinsons and you are called upon to 
 decide between them as you would decide 
 a dispute between your own friends and 
 neighbors. He would then, proceed to re- 
 duce all the circumstances of the case to 
 the low level of actual life, pitilessly ridi- 
 cule Choate's high-wrought rhetoric, and 
 exhibit the bare, skeleton facts, stripped of 
 all their coverings, in connection with the 
 law that applied to them, confident that 
 there were twelve solid and sensible Web- 
 sters in the jury-box who would sustain 
 C* D
 
 50 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Liin in his judgment of the case. He some- 
 times succeeded, sometimes failed, in this 
 process of disenchantment ; but, at any rate, 
 he rarely, in his legal contests with Choatc, 
 availed himself of his latent power of over- 
 whelming declamation, in which his logic 
 was made thoroughly red-hot with passion, 
 and, so to speak, burned its way into the 
 minds of the jury. Thus in the famous 
 " Smith will" case, in Northampton, Choato 
 was opposed to Webster, and made one of 
 the most learned, ingenious, powerful, and 
 impassioned arguments ever addressed to a 
 Massachusetts court. Webster replied by 
 a simple statement of the case, and studi- 
 ously avoided any rivalry with Choate in 
 respect to eloquence. He obtained the ver- 
 dict, not so much by the force of his argu- 
 ment as by the singular felicity with which 
 he conducted the examination of the prin- 
 cipal witness in the case, who was afflicted 
 by a nervous timidity which, in a jury trial, 
 might have been converted into an indica- 
 tion of insanity, had not Webster extended 
 to him his powerful protection, and pre- 
 vented the other side from cross-examining 
 him into delirium. As the case really de- 
 pended on the sanity of this witness, Choate's 
 magnificent argument proved of no avail.
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 51 
 
 It is a pity, however, that his subtle analy- 
 sis of morbid states of mind which are ever 
 on the point of toppling over into insanity 
 has not been preserved. 
 
 But while, as an advocate, Clioate boldly 
 confronted Webster in the trial of causes, 
 and at the bar was ever ready to put his 
 individuality as well as his intellect and le- 
 gal learning into opposition to Webster's, 
 he showed, as has been previously stated, 
 an unmistakable sense of inferiority to him 
 in statesmanship, and in questions of pub- 
 lic policy almost always followed his lead. 
 He did it in his own peculiar way, but every 
 body more or less felt that he was a follower 
 and not a leader in matters of the higher 
 politics of the country. There were sev- 
 eral occasions notably that after Webster 
 had made his speech of the 7th of March, 
 1850 when he might have easily assumed 
 the leadership in Massachusetts of the 
 party \vhich, ten years after, obtained the 
 control of the whole political administration 
 of the country ; but he preferred, against 
 all temptations that could be presented to 
 his ambition, to stand by the man whom he 
 had deliberately elected as his chief. There 
 was no servility in this choice ; it was rath- 
 er owing to an inward feeling that in po*
 
 52 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 litical experience and sagacity lie was no 
 match for the great lawyer he had fear- 
 lessly enough encountered at the bar. 
 
 Perhaps the weight and power 'of Web- 
 ster's character were due as much to the 
 hours he spent in the woofts and fields and 
 on the ocean, chatting with farmers or sail- 
 ors as he was engaged in hunting or fishing, 
 as to the hours he spent in his study. He 
 was essentially an out-of-doors man, devot- 
 ing a full third of the year to the pursuits 
 or sports of a country gentleman ; often, in- 
 deed, following out the trains of a logical 
 argument while he was tramping along 
 through muddy forests, rifle in hand, eager 
 for an opportunity to get a good shot at 
 game, or framing sonorous periods as his 
 boat swayed up and down on the waves of 
 the Atlantic, while he was eagerly watch- 
 ing an opportunity to hook a large cod or a 
 giant halibut. It is reported that the cele- 
 brated passage, which every school-boy in 
 the land knows by heart, " Venerable men ! 
 yon have come down to us from a former 
 generation," was both conceived and audi- 
 bly uttered as he was exultingly hauling in 
 a huge fish; and the dying cod or halibut, 
 however sad might be his condition in re- 
 spect to a more important matter than list-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 53 
 
 ening to eloquence, had at least the ad van- 
 tage of being the first living thing that 
 heard that immortal apostrophe to the sur- 
 vivors of the Revolutionary war. Now such 
 communion with nature, both passive and 
 active, gave to Webster's logic and eloquence 
 an objective character. The breath of ihe 
 pine woods of NCAV England, the exhilara- 
 ting ocean breeze, in some mysterious way 
 stole into his profoundest arguments ad- 
 dressed to the Senate or the Supreme 
 Court, while his intimate knowledge of or- 
 dinary men in their ordinary occupations 
 recommended what he said as conformable 
 to the plain good sense of average mankind. 
 "He is one of our folks," was the general 
 judgment pronounced at thousands of New 
 England village firesides wheu one of his 
 great speeches in the Senate was read aloud 
 to the assembled family ; and they thought- 
 fully pondered on it the next day, when 
 they were urging reluctant oxen through 
 miry roads, or were ploughing their fields. 
 
 Now Choate, superior to Webster in quick- 
 ness of apprehension and imagination, was 
 an in-doors man. The larger portion of his 
 mature life was passed in the stifling atmos- 
 phere of the courts, or in what Milton calls 
 "the still air of delightful studies;" that is,
 
 54 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 in his library. He, of course, was not so 
 foolish as to neglect exercise ; but his exer- 
 cise was commonly confined to long walks 
 through the streets or around the Common 
 of Boston. No one ever enjoyed Nature 
 more intensely; but he never sojourned 
 with her. His friend Charles G. Lor ing, 
 one of his competitors for the leadership 
 of the Suffolk bar, once invited him to pass 
 a summer day at his beautiful residence on 
 the Beverly shore. Mr. Choate was full of 
 enthusiasm as he walked among the wood- 
 land paths or gazed at the varying aspects 
 of sky and ocean ; he doubtless stored up in 
 his mind images of natural beauty which 
 flashed out afterward in many a popular 
 speech or legal argument ; but he exhaust- 
 ed the capacity of the place to feed his eye 
 and imagination in half a dozen hours. " My 
 dear Loring," he said, in parting, " there has 
 not been a twentieth part of a minute since 
 I entered this terrestrial paradise that I have 
 not enjoyed to the top of my bent ; but let 
 me tell you that should you confine me here 
 for a week, apart from my work and books, 
 I know that I should die from utter ennui. 
 You are fortunate in being able serenely to 
 delight in it day after day." Now this did 
 not indicate any incapacity in Mr. Choat-.
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 55 
 
 to take into Ms mind all that ocean and 
 woodland scenery suggests, but simply his 
 incapacity to dwell long upon what other 
 less active and restless minds find to be a 
 perpetual source of tranquil delight. In 
 the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" Byron 
 described in immortal verse the architecture, 
 the statues, the paintings, which make Rome 
 a holy city to the artist and the poet. The 
 stanzas devoted to St. Peter's Church, the 
 Apollo Belvedere, the Venus de Medici, the 
 Dying Gladiator, not to mention others, are 
 in the memories of all who visit Rome ; still 
 it is not remembered that Byron staid in 
 Rome only a few days, though in that brief 
 period he did more than an ordinary man 
 of talent could have done by residing there 
 for years. Choate, in the same swift way, 
 rapidly assiinirated what he saw in a nov- 
 el scene, and, with a similar restlessness 
 of brain, hurried away to some new expe- 
 rience. He honored Webster as much as he 
 could honor any man of his time ; still, if 
 ho had been asked to pass a fortnight with 
 Webster at Marshfield or at his New Hamp- 
 shire farm, and had accompanied him day 
 after day in his shooting or fishing expedi- 
 tions, not even Webster's conversation could 
 have saved him from being devoured with au
 
 50 SOME HE COLLECTIONS OF 
 
 impatient desire to escape from the monot- 
 ony of such an existence. All the eccen- 
 tric originals of the neighborhood, whom 
 Webster delighted in year after year, he 
 would have delighted in for a lay, and theu 
 dismissed them from his mind as intolerable 
 bores ; the mountain or ocean scenery might 
 have enthralled him for a few days more ; 
 but the shooting and fishing, in which Web- 
 ster took such pleasure, would have seemed 
 to him a scandalous waste of time, which 
 might have been more profitably bestowed 
 on ^Eschylus and Aristophanes, on Thucydi- 
 des and Tacitus, on Hooker and Jeremy Tay- 
 lor, on Bacon and Burke, 011 Shakespeare and 
 Milton. By the necessity of his mental con- 
 stitution he could find no repose except in 
 varying the direction of his intellectual ac- 
 tivity. The serenity of mind which comes 
 from the calm contemplation or indolent en- 
 joyment of nature and country life he never 
 obtained, while to Webster it was a habit- 
 ual mood. Webster had leading and fixed 
 ideas, which were inseparable from his in- 
 dividuality ; through the mind of Choate a 
 throng of ideas was constantly passing, 
 pressing and sometimes trampling on each 
 other, but on account of their number and 
 variety disturbing the process by which
 
 11UFUS CHOATE. 57 
 
 ideas settle into convictions and dominate 
 will. It is hardly fanciful to assert that the 
 permanent impression which Webster's ideas 
 and rhetoric left on the politics and litera- 
 ture of the country were, in a considerable 
 measure, due to his out-of-doors life and his 
 talks with "uncultivated," natural men. 
 
 In one particular Choate excelled Web- 
 ster that of constant high-bred courtesy 
 to meii and women of all ranks. While 
 pouring forth the treasures of his mind, he 
 always had the art of disguising his own su- 
 periority by graceful subterfuges of expres- 
 sion, indicating that he was only recalling 
 to the attention of his companion things, 
 events, and thoughts which were in the 
 memory of both. " You remember that fine 
 passage in Southey ;" " I need not remind 
 you that Burke, on this point, says;" " You 7 
 of course, recollect Cicero's statement as to 
 the problem in question ;" "You have doubt- 
 less often felt the force of De Quincey's re- 
 mark;" "You need not to be reminded of 
 that grand sentence in Hooker :" such were 
 his ordinary ways of introducing allusions 
 to authors of note, whose works were lodged 
 as securely in his brain as they were on the 
 shelves of his library ; and he always gave 
 you new information by thus amiably inti-
 
 58 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 mating that you were already in possession 
 of it. In familiar conversation he never put 
 on the airs of a " superior intelligence ;" he 
 hixd a comic dislike of the grave, portentous, 
 superserviceable Lore who approached him 
 with the notion that he was "the great Mr. 
 Choate;" and never appeared more happy 
 than when his companions of a lower intel- 
 lectual grade thought they were communi- 
 cating knowledge to him, though they were 
 in fact receiving it. Such entire absence of 
 dogmatism and pretension, such tenderness 
 for the feelings and respect for the opinions 
 of others, I never witnessed in any other man 
 of equal talents and accomplishments. Web- 
 ster was generally charming when among 
 his intimate friends, and ponderously con- 
 descending to comparative strangers, if he 
 happened to be in good health and spirits; 
 but in case he was sick or "disgruntled/' or 
 had his autumnal "hay fever," he put on a 
 boorish " God-Almightiness" which had all 
 the offensiveness of dignity without any of 
 its- majesty, and made him personally hate- 
 ful to many politicians who were willing to 
 admit the essential grandeur of his genius 
 and character. Choate, on the other hand, 
 whether in health or out of it, was always 
 courteous; and I do not believe that any
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 59 
 
 man ever met him in the street, in his 
 house, or in his office without being im- 
 pressed by the sweetness and serenity of 
 his temper, and by that graciousness of 
 manner which was the farthest possible 
 remove from the insolent affability charac- 
 teristic of the eminent "personage" who 
 condescends to treat with elaborate polite- 
 ness the humbler creature whom he admits, 
 for the moment, to be a human being. Noth- 
 ing could abate Choate's chivalric courtesy, 
 not even his horror of bores. On one occa- 
 sion I was present when a good man pro- 
 pounded to him a self-evident proposition, 
 and, to support it, proceeded to state a con- 
 siderable number of irrelevant facts, on 
 which he founded a series of inconclusive 
 arguments. The thermometer was 90 in 
 the shade; Choate was physically exhaust- 
 ed by the labors of the forenoon, and re- 
 quired some more stimulating discourse to 
 rouse him iuto attention; but he listened 
 patiently to the end, and bowed his acqui- 
 escence to the foregone conclusion arrived 
 at by an illogical process. When the bore 
 departed, thankful that he had deposited an 
 important truth which would bear fruit in 
 his listener's mind, Mr. Choate turned to me, 
 and remarked: "What an excellent person
 
 60 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 A. Y. Z. is! but don't you think ho would 
 be much better thau he is if he could tell in 
 a quarter of half a minute what lie has con- 
 sumed fifteen minutes in telling ?" That re- 
 mark was the only revenge he took for being 
 robbed of his precious time. Webster would 
 have growled the talker into silence at the 
 end of his first sentence, or have contemptu- 
 ously turned on his heel and left him to talk 
 to himself. Choate was incapable of offend- 
 iug the self-love of a benevolent egotist by 
 any disrespect, even the disrespect of inat- 
 tention to his tedious discourse. It is dif- 
 ficult to determine how many influential 
 enemies Webster made by his surliness, es- 
 pecially when he had one of his attacks of the 
 " hay fever." I remember one occasion when 
 he came down from Boston to deliver a lec- 
 ture 011 the frainers of the Constitution to a 
 
 city in County, the leading personages 
 
 of which were disposed to think of them- 
 selves as among the elect, the elite, perhaps 
 the effete, of the earth. In the anteroom of 
 the hall the mayor was busy in introducing 
 the distinguished citizens of the place to the 
 great man, who had an ominous thunder- 
 cloud on his brow, and shook hands with each 
 prominent citizen as he came forward with a 
 savage expression in his countenance, indi-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. C>1 
 
 eating that ho would rather use his hands to 
 inflict mortal injury 011 each of the persons 
 who came forward than to clasp theirs in a 
 spirit of amity and brotherhood. The cloud 
 on his brow grew blacker and blacker, and 
 the bolt flashed out just as a political oppo- 
 nent, of the reptile race of local politicians, 
 came cringing and smiling toward him to 
 say, " I am glad to see you, Mr. Webster." 
 Webster contemptuously turned on his heel, 
 and, with his back to the purring, crawl- 
 ing, poisonous sycophant, gruffly exclaimed, 
 " Enough of this, Mr. Mayor ; let us go in to 
 the hall." Those who witnessed the rebuif 
 can never forget the instant change in the 
 face of the man who was thus disappointed 
 in having the honor to shake hands with the 
 "Defender of the Constitution," the "god- 
 like Dan." Mortification and rage were 
 blended in the tones with which he whis- 
 pered to another political opponent of Mr. 
 Webster by his side : " Damn him ! I always 
 said, you know, that he was an enemy to his 
 country !" Choate could never, under any 
 circumstances, have been provoked into such 
 an incivility. It may be added that Web- 
 ster further expressed his sense of intoler- 
 able boredom by saying to the gentleman 
 who was to follow his speech with the reci-
 
 62 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 tafion of an original poem, "Are you famil- 
 iar with this city? In my opinion 'tis the 
 dullest place on God's earth." It is plain 
 that this is not the way by which a promi- 
 nent statesman can acquire friends or con- 
 ciliate enemies. Webster himself could 
 never have been guilty of such manners to 
 a farmer, or fisherman, or body-servant ; but 
 in his ugly moods he was capable of heaping 
 any insult on a politician. 
 
 Mr. Choate, as the great Whig orator of 
 Boston, -was always called upon to address 
 the monster meetings of the Boston Whigs 
 when an important election was pending. 
 Unless inflamed with the passion of the 
 time, unless the question up for settlement 
 was one which spontaneously inspired him, 
 he considered this demand on the little lei- 
 sure which his professional engagements al- 
 lowed him as an intolerable bore. On ous 
 occasion, when he was suffering from one of 
 his attacks of bilious headache, he was al- 
 most dragged out of his bed and practically 
 forced to go down to Faneuil Hall and make 
 a speech. I was among the crowd, and no- 
 ticed, as he pressed through the seething, 
 sweltering mass of citizens which obstruct- 
 ed his way to his allotted position on the 
 platform, that his face looked weary and
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 63 
 
 Laggard, and that a strong odor of camphor 
 followed him in his progress; but I also no- 
 ticed, as he passed, that there was a humor- 
 ously wicked look in his eyes, which indi- 
 cated that he intended mischief to the 
 chairman of the meeting, who had invaded 
 the privacy of his chamber and insisted on 
 his making a speech though he was palpa- 
 bly suffering from physical pain. My an- 
 ticipation proved true. Nothing could be 
 moro splendid aud inspiring than the ora- 
 tion as a whole; but he* took every oppor- 
 tunity, in the pauses of his declamatory ar- 
 gument, to give a sly thrust at the chairman. 
 The first sentence apprised all who were fa- 
 miliar with Choate's moods that mischief 
 was brewing. " You, Mr. Chairman," he be- 
 gan, " called upon me last Thursday, and de- 
 manded that I should address the Whigs of 
 Boston to-night. I respectfully informed 
 you that, owing to ill health and the press- 
 ure of my professional engagements, it was 
 utterly impossible for me to be present on 
 this occasion, and accordingly here I am" 
 This delicious tion sequitiir elicited roars of 
 laughter and applause from three or four 
 thousand people, and prepared them for 
 what was to follow. Choate was deter- 
 mined to punish the chairman one of the
 
 64 GOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 ablest men of "business that Boston cvor 
 produced, but who knew as little of Latin 
 as of Cherokee for forcing him into his 
 irksome position. With this end in view, 
 he took a malicious delight in hurling ev- 
 ery now and then at the chairman long 
 resounding sentences from Cicero, always 
 prefacing them with an inimitable mock def- 
 erence to the good merchant in the chair, as 
 though, in familiarity with Latin learning, 
 the able business man was infinitely supe- 
 rior to such a poor scholar as himself. The 
 chairman had to smile blandly and nod his 
 head in approval as every quotation from 
 Cicero was shot at him in the most pene- 
 trating tones of the orator's magnetic voice. 
 The mass of the audience did not at tirst 
 take the joke. Indeed, the most ignorant 
 people like to hear Latin, as the father of 
 Charles^iu Fletcher's play of The Elder Broth- 
 er, liked to hear Greek, for, he said, " It comes 
 so thundering as 'twould waken devils." 
 The mere noise of the unintelligible lan- 
 guage has an effect on the ear, though it 
 conveys no sense to the mind ; and Choate's 
 citations from Cicero passed muster for 
 about fifteen minutes before his pushing, 
 swaying, clamorous, and delighted mob of 
 auditors became aware of the exquisite
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 65 
 
 pleasantry of prefacing every rolling, re- 
 sounding Latin sentence with such remarks 
 as these : " As you, Mr. Chairman, will re- 
 member ;" "As you, Mr. Chairman, can not 
 forget ;" " As you, Mr. Chairman, must have 
 often recalled to your memory in the pres- 
 ent strife of irreconcilable factious in this 
 terrible crisis of our country;" but at last 
 the full malicious fun of the orator they 
 were applauding became evident to their 
 sense of humor. They knew that the chair- 
 man was as ignorant of the language of 
 Cicero as they were, and they delighted in 
 seeing him helplessly bending under the 
 pitiless peltings of this linguistic storm. 
 The shouts and acclamations with which 
 they welcomed every point which Mr. Choate 
 made in the English tongue were redoubled 
 on every occasion when he solemnly turn- 
 ed to the chairman and capped his climax 
 in magnificent Ciceronian Latin. The fun 
 waxed more and more fast and furious, and 
 when Mr. Choate, utterly exhausted, sat 
 down, it seemed as if Faneuil Hall would 
 rock to its foundations with the clappings 
 of hands and the stampings of feet. The 
 orator who had raised all this uproarious 
 hubbub, declining all compliments, proceed- 
 ed quietly to do what he always did after 
 D' E
 
 66 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 making a great effort that is, to invest his 
 throat and lungs with voluminous wrap- 
 pings, in order to protect them against tlie 
 night air and then stalked out at a rapid 
 pace to the peaceful chamber from which ho 
 had been unwarrantably drawn to serve a 
 transient purpose of his party. The chair- 
 man of the meeting doubtless never after- 
 ward compelled Mr.Choate to make a speech 
 against his will, unless he had previously 
 devoted days and nights to the study of 
 Cicero in Cicero's native tongue. 
 
 Perhaps the most notable of his popular 
 addresses was one delivered before the Dem- 
 ocrats of Lowell, Massachusetts, in the sum- 
 mer of 1856, after he had concluded to come 
 out for Mr. Buchanan, the Democratic can- 
 didate for the Presidency. There were four 
 or five thousand persons present eager to 
 applaud the great Whig orator, who had 
 been constrained to accept their candidate 
 because he thought the Democratic party 
 then stood, more emphatically than the par- 
 ty he left, for "the Union." The floor of 
 the immense hall began to sink before the 
 orator began to speak. It sank more and 
 more as he proceeded in his discourse, and 
 at the end of half an hour a sound was heard 
 calculated to frighten the audience into a
 
 KUFUS CHOATE. 67 
 
 stampede for the doors a course which 
 would have resulted in their destruction. 
 Mr. B. F. Butler, who presided, told the au- 
 dience to remain perfectly quiet while he 
 went to discover if there were any cause for 
 alarm. He discovered that the condition of 
 the supports of the floor was such that the 
 slightest demonstration of applause would 
 be likely to bring the floor, the roof, and the 
 Avails of the building itself, to the ground, 
 and bury the audience in the ruins. He 
 calmly returned to the platform and, as he 
 passed Choate, whispered hoarsely in his 
 
 ear, " We shall all be in in five minutes." 
 
 Then, with admirable aplomb, he told tho 
 crowd before him that there was no imme- 
 diate danger if they slowly dispersed, but 
 he considered it judicious to adjourn the 
 meeting to another locality to hear the con- 
 clusion of Mr. Choate's speech. The post 
 of danger, he added, was just under the 
 platform, and that he and those with him 
 on the platform would be the lagt to go out. 
 As Choate slowly walked by the side of But- 
 ler in the rear of the procession, expecting 
 every moment that a dreadful catastrophe 
 might occur, he still could not resist the 
 temptation to indulge iii a bit of humorous 
 mischief at the expense of the politician and
 
 68 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 lawyer be had fought for so many years, and 
 whispered to him : " Brother Butler, when 
 you told me we should all be in five minutes 
 iu that locality unmentionable to ears po- 
 lite, did you have the slightest idea of insin- 
 uating that both of us would go to the same 
 place ?" It may, however, be added that 
 Mr. Butler probably saved, by his admirable 
 cooh:ess in that hour of peril, as many men 
 as he was afterward the instrument of kill- 
 ing in his office of Major-General. 
 
 Many illustrations might be cited of Mr. 
 Choate's insidious power over a jury, secret 
 even to the twelve who were to render the 
 verdict. One of these was furnished by. a 
 hard-headed, strong-hearted, well-educated 
 farmer, who was one of a jury that gave five 
 verdicts in succession for Choate's clients. 
 The way he expressed his admiration of the 
 great advocate was peculiar. It was in 
 these words: "I understand, Sir, that you 
 are a relative of Mr. Choate. I must tell 
 you that I did not think much of his flights 
 of fancy ; but I considered him a very lucky 
 lawyer, for there was not one of those five 
 cases that came before us where he wasn't 
 on the right side." This was said with the 
 utmost simplicity, and without the remotest 
 notVm that an imaginative mind could ex-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 69 
 
 ercise a subtle effect on a mind entirely un- 
 imaginative through that grand function of 
 the imagination by which the person who 
 has it enters into the interior recesses of 
 natures which differ fundamentally from 
 his own, and, identifying himself for the 
 moment with their individualities, extorts 
 from them their well-considered " Yes." 
 
 But perhaps a stronger instance of 
 Choate's method of concealing his power at 
 the time he was exercising it with the most 
 potent effect occurred in an important case 
 where the evidence was so conflicting and 
 the points of law so intricate that dispas- 
 sionate minds might have long paused be- 
 fore deciding the question in dispute. One 
 resolute juryman said to another, as ho en- 
 tered the " box," " Now, mind you, there is 
 one man in this crowd who will not give a 
 verdict for the client of that man Choate. 
 Why, Sir, he is the great corrupter of juries. 
 I know all his arts. He is engaged by fel- 
 lows who wish to subvert justice between 
 man and man. I hate him with my whole 
 heart and soul." When the verdict was giv- 
 en for Choate's client, with hardly a discus- 
 sion in the jury-room, the wonder was ex- 
 pressed that this obstinate member of the 
 conclave agreed so readily with the rest.
 
 70 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 "Ob," be said, "the case was a plain one; 
 Cboate was right tbis time : and you know 
 it would bave been scandalous for me to vio- 
 late justice because I bad a prejudice against 
 tbe person wbo supported it. Let him ap- 
 pear before us in a case where be is palpa- 
 bly wrong, as in tbe Tirrell trial or tbe Dai- 
 ton trial, and I will show you that I'm all 
 right. He never can humbug me !" 
 
 His power of lifting, of idealizing bis cli- 
 ents, of making them tbe heroes or heroines 
 of a domestic or sensational novel, was nev- 
 er more brilliantly illustrated than in the 
 celebrated Tirrell trial, to which I have be- 
 fore alluded. Here were murder and arson, 
 committed in a low brothel, as the subject 
 of the picture or story; but a great artist 
 a sort of Yankee Spagnaletto or Victor Hugo 
 was suddenly improvised to paint or nar- 
 rate the scene and incidents. The whole 
 event was elevated into the domain of high 
 tragedy. Those who listened to Mr. Choate's 
 argument can never forget tbe s'trange kind 
 of interest with which he invested the 
 wild and "fast" young man and his stupid, 
 drunken harlot. It was as if Albert Tirrell 
 and Maria Bickford were on a par with 
 OMiello and Desdemona. Indeed, the advo- 
 cate might have been supposed to hold a
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 71 
 
 brief from Othello against a charge of mur- 
 dering his wife. There are certain almost 
 miraculous effects produced by the mere 
 tone of voice with which a great advocate 
 pronounces the simplest words. Thus when 
 Choate said, "Albert loved Maria," the au- 
 ditors felt the same kind of pity which they 
 might have felt had Garrick or Keau utter- 
 ed the words, "Othello loved Desdemona.' 7 
 It is considered a great merit in an actor's 
 or orator's voice if, in pathetic passages, he 
 has " tears in his tones ;" but Choate, in this 
 instance, had in his tones something Avhich 
 suggested the whole sad, horrible incidents 
 of guilt and misery which it was his task to 
 recount, and which resulted from the fatal 
 attachment of " Albert" to " Maria." There 
 is no accurate report of his argument in this 
 trial ; and indeed if every word he spoke 
 had been faithfully taken down, still his 
 voice, his tones, the meaning he put into 
 his utterance of some plain words, could not 
 have been reported. 
 
 One incident of this trial afforded Mr. 
 Choate an excellent opportunity of exert- 
 ing his incomparable power of ridiculing 
 what he might find it difficult to dispose of 
 by reasoning. Roxbury is but four miles 
 from Boston, and is now, indeed, incorpo-
 
 72 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 rated with the city proper. After to .3 evi- 
 dence for the defense was all in, and the 
 arguments were to begin, the prosecuting 
 Attorney brought forward a resident of Rox- 
 bm-y to give additional evidence against 
 Tirrell. Choate's method of demolishing 
 the effect of what this witness had to say 
 is among the cherished traditions of the 
 Suffolk bar. J* Where was this tardy and 
 belated witness, that he comes here to tell 
 us all he knows, and all he doesn't know, 
 forty-eight hours after the evidence for the 
 defense is closed? Ts tije. case so obscure 
 that he never heard of iLK Was he ill, or in 
 custody? Was he in Europe, Asia, or Af- 
 rica ? Was he on the Red Sea, or the Yel- 
 low Sea, or the Black Sea, or the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea? No, gentlemen, he was at 
 
 none of these places (comparatively easy of 
 access), but and I would call your atten- 
 tion, Mr. Foreman, to the fact, and urge it 
 upon your attention he was at that more 
 remote, more inaccessible region, whence so 
 few travellers return Roxbury." 
 
 One of the greatest of Websters argu- 
 ments was that on the trial of the Knapps 
 for the murder of Mr. White, of Salem. It 
 is now generally conceded that as the law 
 of Massachusetts stood at the time Jolm
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 73 
 
 Frauds Kuapp was illegally convicted. As 
 far as the technical law was concerned, he 
 was as innocent as any peaceful citizen who 
 walked the streets of Salem. His guilt was 
 plain, hut he \v3 not legally guilty ; and it 
 was only hy Wehster's overmastering hold 
 on the minds and consciences of the jury 
 that they rendered a verdict equitahly just 
 but legally wrong. At the time of the 
 trial Mr. Choate was a young lawyer, en- 
 gaged in doing some minor services to the 
 leading counsel who appeared for the pros- 
 ecution. Had he been then the man who 
 saved Tirrell from being illegally hanged, 
 and had been counsel for John Francis 
 Kuapp, there can be little doubt that, with 
 the law on his side, he would have been 
 more than a match for Webster. It is cu- 
 rious that what is called " Lyuch law" is 
 sometimes conducted under all the solemn 
 forms of regulated courts of justice. That 
 it was not exercised in the Tirrell case was 
 owing to Rufus Choate. 
 
 The effect of Choate's oratory was aid- 
 ed by the strength of expression he could 
 throw into his face. " Why," said an old 
 farmer, listening to an argument directed 
 against his own interests " why, that fel- 
 low can cant his countenance so as to draw
 
 74 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 tlie tears out of your eye;,/' He also hail :i 
 singular power of so changing the tone of 
 his voice that, in conversing gravely with 
 one person, he could throw in an " aside 1 ' 
 to another which was audihle to the latter 
 alone. On one occasion two members of a 
 legal firm called upon him in order to sug- 
 gest the naming of a day for consultation 
 on an important case in which he was en- 
 gaged as leading counsel. He happened at 
 the time to be overwhelmed with business, 
 and hastily remarked that the only hours 
 he had to spare within a week were after 
 live o'clock in the afternoon of the ensuing 
 day. That day was Sunday. The senior 
 member of the firm, with a slight Pharisaic- 
 al sniff meant to indicate a superior scrupu- 
 losity in the matter of ceremonial piety, 
 solemnly replied : "Mr. Choate, I have been 
 for thirty years a member of the bar, but 
 my conscience has forbidden rne ever to 
 transact any worldly business on the Sab- 
 bath.'' Choate himself was in religious 
 matters a Calviuist of the austerest type. 
 He gave one glance at the reprover of his 
 sacreligious proposal a glance which pen- 
 etrated to the inmost depths of the little 
 pettifogging soul that wriggled plainly to 
 his eye under its mere crust of religious
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 75 
 
 formality, and gravely remarked: "You 
 
 know, Mr. A , this cause is peculiarly 
 
 one which falls under that class of cases 
 somewhere, I think, mentioned in Scripture, 
 which concerns the doing of good on the 
 Lord's Day ; but I honor your scruples so 
 much that I would not for the world ask 
 you to do violence to them. 1 ' The conclu- 
 sion of this address was accompanied with 
 a wave of his hand which brought it for a 
 few moments before his mouth ; and the 
 junior partner caught these words: "He's 
 an infernal fool ; you come." How this 
 swift, significant command entered his ears 
 without getting into those of his senior, 
 the young man could never understand, 
 as the three were only a few feet apart 
 during the short conference. Meanwhile 
 the oracular teacher of the proprieties of 
 religion moved pompously out of the office, 
 fully impressed with the idea that he had 
 risen amazingly in the estimation of the 
 great Mr. Choate by his conscientious re- 
 fusal to perform a duty of justice and 
 mercy 011 what Iia erroneously called the 
 " Sabbath." The only departure from lit- 
 eral fact in the narration of this anecdote 
 is in substituting the milder adjective cf 
 " infernal" for the stronger one impatiently
 
 76 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 used by Mi\ Ciioatc in qualifying the noun 
 "fool." 
 
 In alluding to Mr. Choate's imaginative 
 power of transforming himself into the per- 
 sonalities of his clients, of surveying acts 
 and incidents from their point of view, I 
 have expressed my wonder that he could 
 so quickly relieve himself of the burden he 
 carried when the cause was decided against 
 him. Byron, for instance, is an example of 
 intense genius, with sensibility so blended 
 with imagination that the type of human 
 nature he adopted as the tit vehicle for 
 the expression of his ideas on human life 
 dominated at last his own individuality. 
 The type he adopted was the misanthrop- 
 ical type of our immensely various human- 
 ity. He dashed into it; but the trouble 
 witli him was that when his genius got in 
 to this form of individual character, it 
 could not get out. Honce the monotony 
 of his splendid poetry. Shakespeare, in his 
 drama of Timon of Athens, went deeper into 
 the spiritual sources of misanthropy than 
 even Byron did, and expressed the imagina- 
 tive experience he gained by it in passages 
 of more dreadful scorn and hatred of or- 
 dinary men and women than Byron ever 
 dreamed of uttering ; but, unlike Byron, he
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 77 
 
 found no difficulty in escaping from the 
 mental mood Avhich engrossed him for the 
 time, and passed on to enter into and repro- 
 duce other forms of character representing 
 more healthy and joyous perceptions of hu- 
 man life. Now Choate, with much of By- 
 ron's intensity, had more of Shakespeare's 
 comprehensiveness. The self-abandonment 
 by which he seemingly became a person en- 
 tirely different from himself, in identifying 
 himself with his client, was accompanied by 
 an admirable power of self-direction, which 
 enabled him easily to escape from his tran- 
 sient metamorphosis. He could not only 
 go itt, but get out of, every individuality 
 he assumed for the time. And this flexi- 
 bility of mind was not necessarily a viola- 
 tion of intellectual conscientiousness. It 
 simply shed light on the case in dispute by 
 bringing in individual character as a factor 
 in settling a complicated case of right or 
 wrong. But, at all events, Mr. Choate clear- 
 ed his mind of all the vexatious of a jury 
 trial after the decision had been made. " I 
 sometimes feel," he remarked to a legal 
 friend, " when a case has gone against me, 
 like the Baptist minister who was baptiz- 
 ing in winter a crowd of converts through 
 a lartre hole made in the ice. One brother
 
 78 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 Jones, I think disappeared after immer- 
 sion, and did not re-appear; probably drift- 
 ed ten or fifteen feet from the hole, and was 
 vainly gasping under ice as many inches 
 thick. After pausing a few minutes, the 
 minister said, 'Brother Jones has evidently 
 gone to kingdom come : bring on the next.' 
 Now I am not unfeeling; but after all has 
 been done for a client that I could do and 
 I never spared myself in advocating his 
 legal rights the only thing left for me is 
 to dismiss the case from my mind, and to 
 say, with my Baptist brother, ' Bring on the 
 next.' " 
 
 That this habit of mind was entirely dis- 
 connected from any languid abandonment 
 of the cause of his client while there was 
 the slightest hope of saving him is humor- 
 ously shown in a letter which Professor 
 Brown publishes in his biography, relating 
 to a cause decided against his clients by 
 the Supreme Court at Washington. "The 
 court," he wrote to the Washington lawyer 
 engaged with him in the cause, "has lost 
 its little wits. Please let me have 1, our 
 brief (for the law) ; 2, the defendant's brief 
 (for the sophistry); 3, the opinion (for the 
 foolishness) ; and never say die." The au- 
 gust Supreme Court of the United States,
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 79 
 
 which Choato was accustomed publicly to 
 celebrate a^ the perfection of wisdom and 
 equity, was never so disrespectfully treated 
 as in this deliciously impudent private let- 
 ter. The humor of it could hardly have 
 been exceeded by Swift, Sterne, or Sydney 
 Smith. 
 
 Of the extravagance of this humor let me 
 
 give some instances. Thus, Mr. C was 
 
 distinguished among all the able leaders of 
 the Suffolk bar for his strict attention to 
 the interests of his clients, for his attend- 
 ance at a consultation at the exact minute 
 appointed, for the gravity of his behavior 
 and life in every respect, and especially for 
 his rigorous observance of office hours. In 
 fact, he was the very incarnation of Boston 
 respectability. On one occasion, when he 
 was solemnly conferring with the directors 
 of a great corporation on a pending suit, 
 Mr. Choate darted into the room, exclaim- 
 ing : " Well, Mr. C , I am glad to find yon 
 
 in your office for once. Do you know that 
 for the past forty-eight hours I have hunted 
 for yon day and night through every the- 
 atre, bar-room, and dancing hall in Boston, 
 without getting a sight of you ? I desire a 
 
 consultation in the case of and ; 
 
 and now I have at last discovered you, aft-
 
 80 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 er my long search, I shall insist on an in- 
 terview." The delicious incongruity of the 
 charge with Mr. C 's character, he be- 
 ing known as the most punctual, punctil- 
 ious, and decorous of Boston mankind, 
 raised a roar of laughter from the business 
 men present; and tradition obscurely hints 
 though this is of doubtful authenticity 
 
 that even Mr. C smiled. 
 
 On the morning after Charles Simmer's 
 Fourth-of-July oration on " The True Grand- 
 eur of Nations," there naturally gathered at 
 his office in Court Street a crowd of ap- 
 provers and disapproves of his extreme 
 views of the policy and duty of peace. Pro- 
 i'"ssor Lieber, among others, was there, and 
 1 remember the earnestness with which he 
 assailed Simmer on the ground that his ab- 
 stract principles degraded from their in- 
 trinsic dignity all the great battle-fields of 
 freedom. Sunnier was evidently annoyed, 
 but could only get in here and there a palli- 
 ating word in the rush of Lieber's indignant 
 eloquence. "Do you tell me, my dear Su in- 
 ner," he shouted, "that I must give up 
 Thermopylae and Marathon and Sempach ?" 
 Then Choate, whose office was on the same 
 floor,- suddenly dashed into the room, add- 
 ing : ' And Waterloo ! Come, Lieber, to my
 
 'RUFUS CHOATE. 81 
 
 den ; don't bother Sumner any more. I have 
 something to discuss with you; and we'll 
 light it out, yard-arm to yard-arm, to your 
 heart's content. Our dear Charles will be 
 sufficiently puuished for his heresies on mil- 
 itary glory by less redoubtable antagonists 
 than you. Come along, I say." And he 
 half coaxed, half dragged, the impassioned 
 Lieber from Sumner's office into his own, 
 though the great publicist had only begun 
 the harangue he intended to address to his 
 friend. I never witnessed a more comical 
 scene. Even Sumner, irritated and harass- 
 ed as he was^ joined in the general laughter 
 at the success of Choate's flank movement 
 to protect him from the disastrous effects 
 of Lieber's direct assault. 
 
 There are so many traditions of Choate's 
 Avit and humor that the task of selection is 
 difficult. Thus, on his first election to the 
 national House of Representatives he was 
 once asked by a lady why Mrs. Choate did 
 not accompany him to Washington. " I as- 
 eure you, madam," he replied, " that I have 
 spared no pains to induce her to come. I 
 have even offered to pay half her expenses." 
 Then there is his remark on John Quiucy 
 Adams's releutlessuess as a debater. " He 
 had," said Choate, " an instinct for the jugu- 
 E F
 
 82 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 lar ami the carotid artery as unerring as 
 that of any carnivorous animal." Of a law- 
 yer who was known to be as contentious as 
 he was dull-witted lie said, "He's a bull- 
 dog with confused ideas." While arguing 
 a case he assumed a position which appear- 
 ed to be equitable ; but the court demanded 
 that he should find a precedent for it. "I 
 will look, your honor, and endeavor to find a 
 precedent, if you require it, though it should 
 seem to be a pity that the court should lose 
 the honor of being the first to establish so 
 just a rule." Of an ugly artist who had 
 painted a portrait of himself he declared, 
 as though he were paying a compliment to 
 the skill of the painter, that " it was a fla- 
 grant likeness." When he met the Rev. Mr. 
 W. I?. Alger, shortly after the latter had sent 
 him r. copy of his Poetry of the East, he re- 
 marked, with a felicitous combination of 
 wit and wisdom : " The Orientals seem to be 
 amply competent to metaphysics, wonder- 
 fully competent to poetry, scarcely compe- 
 tent to virtue, utterly incompetent to lib- 
 erty." He was once engaged as leading 
 counsel in an important mercantile case. 
 The jury was composed mostly of farmers 
 and drovers drawn from the western part 
 of Massachusetts, and it was feared that
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 83 
 
 they would hardly be capable of doing jus- 
 tice to the merits of a complicated commer- 
 cial transaction, the very phrases and fig- 
 ures of which they were necessarily incom- 
 petent to comprehend. His anxious client, 
 just before the trial began, asked him what 
 he thought would be the verdict. "Oh," 
 he replied, " the law on our side is as strong 
 as thunder, but" with a slight shrug of his 
 shoulders "what those bovine and bucol- 
 ical gentlemen from Berkshire may say, God 
 only knows!" It is my impression, however, 
 that, in spite of the difficulties he encoun- 
 tered, he won the verdict. 
 
 Much has been written of Mr. Choate's 
 handwriting. It was always the favorite 
 jest of the Suffolk bar. A genius akin to 
 that of Young or Champolliou would be re- 
 quired to decipher his briefs. Yet, with 
 his eye on his brief, Mr. Choate never hesi- 
 tated for a word in making a statement 
 in which every word used was significant 
 and important. Every body who has at- 
 tended a jury trial knows that the best 
 advocates often pause in their exposition 
 of their case and indulge in that hateful 
 sound which may be expressed in letters 
 in this way: "err, err, err." That sound 
 tends to kill the effect of all eloquence. TO
 
 84 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 be sure, we are told that " to err is human ;" 
 but when an orator indulges in that inter- 
 ruption of the stream of his talk, we feel, in 
 closing the quotation, that it is indeed " di- 
 vine" to "forgive." The short-hand which 
 Mr. Choate used, though undecipherable by 
 any other human intelligence, never left 
 him at a loss for the exact word, even in le- 
 gal arguments before an assembly of jurists ; 
 and he never " err-err-erred." 
 
 Mr. George Ticknor, the historian of Span- 
 ish literature, was once called as a witness 
 in a case in which Mr. Choate was engaged. 
 After his examination he sat by the side of 
 the eminent counsellor within the bar. He 
 was attracted by the notes which Mr. Choate 
 had made of the evidence, and remarked to 
 him that the handwriting reminded him of 
 two autograph letters in his possession, one 
 of Manuel the Great of Portugal (dated 1512), 
 and another of Gonsalvo de Cordova, the 
 great captain, written a few years earlier. 
 Nobody who has looked over such collec- 
 tions as those of Mr. Ticknor or Mr. Prescott 
 can refrain from feeling a sensation of won- 
 der that any sense can be elicited from such 
 seemingly unintelligible scrawls. "These 
 letters," said Mr. Tickuor to Mr. Choate, 
 " were written three hundred aiid fifty years
 
 HUFUS CIIOATE. 85 
 
 ago, and they strongly resemble yonr notes 
 of tlie present trial." Choate, with that 
 droll, quizzical expression which lent such 
 humor to his face, instantly replied: "Ke- 
 ,'markable men, no doubt ; they seem to have 
 been much in advance of their time." How 
 delicious this is ! the quiet assumption that 
 the infallible sign of advance in chirography 
 is to make handwriting more undeciphera- 
 ble than Egyptian hieroglyphics! It may 
 here be stated that one of the most charm- 
 ing addresses he ever prepared for lyceums 
 was a lecture on the "Romance of Sea." 
 Those who heard it forty years ago now 
 speak of it as a masterpiece of eloquence ; 
 it enjoyed a popularity similar to that of 
 Wendell Phillips's lecture on " The Lost 
 Arts :" all who listened to it were clamorous 
 to see it in print. The manuscript, how- 
 ever, was stolen by some literary rogue, 
 who probably conceived he might make a 
 modest yearly income by delivering it in 
 remote country towns to which its repu- 
 tation had not extended. One can im- 
 agine his consternation when he found that 
 he could not decipher a word of the man- 
 uscript; that he had wickedly come into 
 possession of a treasure belonging to that 
 description of lost property which is coin-
 
 86 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 moiily advertised, as of no value except to 
 its owner. 
 
 It is sad, in reviewing a career like that 
 of Mr. CLoate, to see on how frail a founda- 
 tion rests the reputation of a great lawyer 
 and advocate, unless he becomes connected 
 here and there with causes that assume his- 
 toric importance. Erskiuc, a man whose 
 natural powers were much below Choate's, 
 owes his eminent position to his advocacy 
 of certain persons who were in danger of 
 being convicted of high treason at that mis- 
 erable period in English history, the last 
 six years of the eighteenth century, when 
 the administration of the younger Pitt, 
 commanding an immense majority in the 
 House of Commons and the House of Lords, 
 seemed bent on depriving the English peo- 
 ple of the right of free speech, and of the 
 right of associating to protest against abuses 
 in government, and to petition for their ro- 
 moval. The greatness of Erskine is due to 
 his success in making a jury of twelve men, 
 as in his defense of Hardy, in 1794, overturn 
 the tyrannical projects of King, Lords, and 
 Commons. The men marked out by tho 
 ministry to be hanged, drawn, and quarter- 
 ed for high treason were saved by his skill 
 and eloquence, and the liberal principles of
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 87 
 
 the English Constitution vindicated against 
 every department of the English govern- 
 ment, including the judicial. There is no 
 other example in history where one man 
 has so influenced twelve other men as to 
 make them nullify the laws of a constitu- 
 tional government, of which every depart- 
 ment was against both him and them. So 
 unmistakably was the popular spirit indi- 
 cated by juries directed by Erskine, that 
 the government found itself in the dilemma 
 of being compelled to abolish trial by jury 
 altogether, or to abandon its doctrine of con- 
 structive treason. Erskine thus comes into 
 an important period of English history as 
 an eminent force, fully equal to the great 
 Mr. Pitt, inasmuch as he prevented the exe- 
 cution of the worst measures of the govern- 
 ment. Still, as a debater in the House of 
 Commons, Erskine made no figure at all ; 
 and the great majority of his arguments 
 at the bar, however successful in private 
 causes, are forgotten. 
 
 Now Choate never had a similar oppor- 
 tunity to become historical by successfully 
 vindicating before the courts a precious 
 principle of liberty which the courts were 
 inclined to repudiate. The causes in which 
 he was engaged were private, not public
 
 88 SOME ]iKrMi.i.r.<Ti<>N> or 
 
 causes, and the great powers lie exhibited 
 in conducting them have left no rcc.nl in 
 history or literature. In his private diary 
 he frequently mentions the uusatisfactori- 
 ness of all the fleeting reputation gained by 
 his political speeches and legal arguments. 
 At one time he conceived the idea of writ- 
 ing a series of essays, in which he could set 
 down the results of his wide extra-profes- 
 sional reading and thinking. The volume 
 was to be called The Lawyers Vacations. 
 He even went so far as to tell his friend 
 Judge Warren that he intended to write 
 such a book. " How far have you got in 
 it ? v asked the judge. "Well," Choate re- 
 plied, "I've got as far as the title-page and 
 a motto. The title is The Lawyer's Vacations ; 
 the motto I've forgotten. But I shall show 
 that the lawyer's vacation is the space be- 
 tween the question put to a witness and his 
 answer." And, in fact, such was hardly an 
 exaggerated representation of the vacation 
 that Choate allowed himself. 
 
 But suppose that some kind genius at the 
 time when Choate had arrived at the age of 
 forty had showered upon him an independ- 
 ent fortune. He was then in the possession 
 of robust health, and his mind was in the 
 fullness of its strength and fertility. Re-
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 89 
 
 tiriug from the practice of the law, his in- 
 satiable intellectual activity would have 
 eonght some subject or subjects on which it 
 might be profitably exercised. My impres- 
 sion is that he would have selected a great 
 historical epoch in the Old World, or per- 
 haps fastened his attention on the annals 
 of New England. All his knowledge of 
 law, all his experience at the bar, all his ac- 
 quired skill in analyzing evidence, would 
 have been devoted to his theme. His mas- 
 terly reasoning power, his capacity for large 
 generalizations, would have been employed 
 on a vast multitude of disconnected facts, 
 which he would have investigated with the 
 zeal of an antiquary, and assimilated, dis- 
 posed, arid combined with the skill of an 
 artist and the sagacity of a thinker. Every 
 philosophy of history, from Vico's to Hegel's, 
 he would have read and digested. Being 
 free from all calls upon his time preferred 
 by importunate suitors, his mind would 
 have soon gained a grand repose, without 
 losing any of its healthy vigor. When he 
 had obtained all the materials necessary for 
 the foundation of his history, there can be 
 no doubt that his narrative would have 
 possessed an interest and fascination which 
 would charm alike the scholar and the or- 
 E*
 
 90 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 clinary reader; for the whole representa- 
 tion would be alive. The individuals and 
 events of past ages would have been made 
 as real as the friends we daily accost in the 
 streets, or the incidents which actually pass 
 before our eyes. His imagination would 
 have brooded over his generalized facts, 
 vitalizing all it touched ; not a character 
 would have been allowed to appear on his 
 page as a mere name ; and then what wit, 
 what humor, what bright fancy, what in- 
 genious phrases, what happy epithets, would 
 have aided to give variety to the generally 
 sustained march of the style ! He would, I 
 think, have excelled Prescott, Irving, Ban- 
 croft, Palfrey, and Motley, for, without any 
 disrespect to those eminent historians, he 
 was intrinsically more richly gifted than 
 any of them. But it was not allowed to 
 Mr. Choate to exhibit his rare faculties ex- 
 cept under the spur of continually succeed- 
 ing occasions. As far as the literature of 
 the country is concerned, he has left on it 
 no appreciable mark of his literary powers, 
 though in Professor Brown's two volumes 
 there will be found some splendid speci- 
 mens of his logic and rhetoric, of his learn- 
 ing and his command of the resources of 
 the English language, which would do
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 91 
 
 credit to our best prose writers. It is the 
 old irony of fate. Nature liberally bestowed 
 on this man some of the finest and noblest 
 qualities, which she is generally so niggard- 
 ly in intrusting to her children vivid im- 
 agination ; vigorous intelligence ; quickness 
 of perception ; capacity for uninterrupted, 
 self-rewarding toil ; wit ; humor ; a genial 
 disposition ; an intense love for the beauti- 
 ful and good ; an instinctive attraction for 
 the higher thiugs of the mind ; a heroic sen- 
 timent which recognized the slightest mani- 
 festation of heroism in the humblest of man- 
 kind and womankind, and which kindled 
 into rapture when it contemplated and com- 
 muned with the grand heroic spirits which il- 
 luminate history ; a practical sagacity which 
 prevented enthusiasm from obscuring the 
 teachings of sober judgment; a heart over- 
 flowing with beneficence and good-will to 
 all human beings ; a brain teeming with facts, 
 ideas, and images, incapable of pausing in its 
 creative activity, and finding its repose only 
 in a variation of the objects to which its ac- 
 tivity was directed. And we can conceive of 
 the old grand dame muttering, as she accom- 
 plished her work : " Well, you fools have long 
 been waiting for a man of genius to offset the 
 commonplace creatures I ordinarily fashion
 
 92 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 to do their work in this miserable world: 
 here he is !" Then we may couceive of Cir- 
 cumstance, the god of this lower world, 
 stepping in and declaring that this favor- 
 ite of Nature shall not be a great poet, or a 
 great historian, or a great political philos- 
 opher, but shall exercise his genius on per- 
 ishable topics, and be defrauded of his right 
 to attain the permanent fame which men 
 less endowed easily accomplish. He shall 
 scatter his native gifts in a thousand ways ; 
 delight every body he meets in a chance 
 conversation with the abundant wealth of 
 his intellect and wit ; thrill popular assem- 
 blies by occasional orations which leave no 
 record beyond the hour ; captivate senates 
 with an eloquence which is connected with 
 no measure he has himself originated ; be al- 
 lowed some few hours in a week to commune 
 with Greek and Latin poets, historians, and 
 philosophers, whom he aches to emulate, but 
 whom he shall have hardly the leisure to 
 translate ; and shall be compelled to toil for 
 his daily bread in courts of law, where his 
 magnificent abilities shall be acknowledged 
 and rewarded, but the results of which shall 
 have no place on the memory of mankind. 
 Such was Choate's fate. Circumstance con- 
 trolled Nature. Every body who knew him,
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 93 
 
 every body who listened to him, whether 
 young men of letters or grave judges, felt 
 that a strange, original genius had somehow 
 dropped down into our somewhat prosaic 
 New England, had done his life-work in a 
 wonderfully meteoric way, and had vanish- 
 ed from us suddenly, without leaving on our 
 politics or literature the abiding impression 
 which his genius seemed so capable of im- 
 pressing on both. That he was one of the 
 most remarkable men our country has pro- 
 duced is beyond doubt ; but it is difficult for 
 those who knew him to convey to a younger 
 generation, which never passed "under the 
 wand of the magician," the effect he pro- 
 duced on their own minds and hearts. 
 
 Mr. Choate, in his published writings, 
 suffers much from the necessary divorce 
 between his style and the inflections of his 
 voice. His Dartmouth oration on Webster 
 , is among the manuscripts in the Boston 
 Public Library, and it appears to the eyo 
 a mere chaos of indecipherable words, 
 sprinkled with semicolons and colons, re- 
 lieved here and there by fierce dashes of 
 the pen, indicating a pause between the 
 comma and the semicolon. It contains 
 also the longest sentence ever written by 
 man since Cadmus invented letters. His
 
 94 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 penmanship was so bad that, when he 
 wrote aii important note to Daniel Webster, 
 touching the refusal of the Boston city 
 government to grant Faneuil Hall for a 
 meeting of the supporters of the 7th of 
 March speech, Mr. Webster could not make 
 out the meaning of a single word. "Tell 
 Choate," said Webster to Mr. Harvey, " that 
 his handwriting is barbarous, that he should 
 go to a writing-school and take a quarter's 
 lessons. He gives me advice as to what it 
 is proper for me to do, and I can not under- 
 stand one of his infernal hieroglyphics." 
 
 The peculiarity of Choate's written style 
 was this, that it required the inflections 
 of his voice to make it as clear and flowing 
 as it caine from his own mind. I would 
 venture to undertake the reading of the 
 most formidable sentence in his eulogy on 
 Webster, and by merely imitating his tones 
 prove that the style was as lucid and ex- 
 act as it was kindling and expansive. In 
 view of the number of his adjectives as con- 
 trasted with the meagreness of his nouns, it 
 was said of him that he " drove a substan- 
 tive and six." Yet he put meaning into ev- 
 ery one of his adjectives, and was really the 
 least verbose of impassioned orators. His 
 epithets always stood for things, each ad-
 
 11UFUS CHOATE. 95 
 
 jective describing, qualifying, modifying, or 
 emphasizing the main idea he desired to 
 convey. In Fletcher's "Two Noble Kins- 
 men," Arcite says : 
 
 " We felt our fiery horses 
 Like proud seas under us." 
 
 In driving his perilous team of "a substan- 
 tive and six," Mr. Choate partook in this 
 grand elation of conscious genius, gloried 
 in urging on his fiery steeds in headlong 
 haste to their appointed goal, and came in 
 at the end of the race flushed, it may be, 
 and breathless, but still victorious over all 
 competitors. He never met at the bar any 
 body who could match him in fearlessly 
 driving that "substantive and six" in the 
 legal " Olympian games." In his case Pin- 
 dar directed the chariot as well as sung the 
 triumphs of the race. 
 
 It is to be remarked that Choate's real 
 emphasis was in the lower note of his flexi- 
 ble voice. His substantive came in quietly 
 after an ascending scale of adjectives, the 
 last uttered in the loudest tone he could 
 command. Thus, in the well-known cari- 
 cature of his method in a supposed legal 
 controversy as to whether the second-hand 
 harness of his client was worth a sixpence, 
 he is reported as saying: "To be sure, gen-
 
 96 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 tlemen of the jury, this was not a iiaruess 
 distinguishable by the meretricious gloss 
 and glitter calculated to catch the eye of 
 the vulgar crowd; but I will put it to you 
 as citizens and as men whether it wasn't 
 a safe, SOUND, SUBSTANTIAL, SECOND- 
 HAND harness." The substantive "har- 
 ness" in this connection was, as it were, 
 dropped in as a seemingly unimportant 
 word; but as he pronounced it, without any 
 physical emphasis, it became all the more 
 mentally emphatic. This peculiarity per- 
 vaded all his spoken eloquence ; the high, 
 the almost screaming, tone with which he 
 uttered his last smiting adjective subsided 
 in a second to the deep, intense, quiet ut- 
 terance of the noun. 
 
 I am strongly tempted, in conclusion, to 
 imitate one of his long sentences in sum- 
 ming up my impression of his intellectual 
 character. Suppose I put it in this way : 
 "He was endowed by nature with a will 
 singularly vigorous and a mind eminently 
 plastic ; and this combination of force and 
 fluency, this combination by which self-di- 
 rection is never lost in all the fervors of 
 seeming self-abandonment, the flexible in- 
 tellect flowing into all the multitudinous 
 moulds which the various exigencies of the
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 9~ 
 
 case may demand ; now this, now that ; 
 homely, if need be, clad in the ' russet gray' 
 of the peasant, and anon doffing the impe- 
 rial robes and putting on the regal crown; 
 every where and in every situation equal 
 just equal to the claims of the occasion ; 
 never faltering in any of the Protean shapes 
 it pleased him to assume, but always strong, 
 always earnest, always determined to carry 
 to its ultimate the uppermost conception 
 glowing in his ever-fertile brain ; now jest- 
 ing, now reasoning, but, whether jesting or 
 reasoning, never losing sight of his purpose 
 to persuade, to convince, to overpower, the 
 persons he was to influence ; contracting or 
 expanding his mind with equal ease, so that 
 it resembled the fabled tent of the Oriental 
 prince, which might be so condensed as to 
 become a mere toy for a lady's finger, and 
 then again so spread out that armies might 
 repose under its grateful shade : gifted with 
 \yit, humor, fancy, imagination, passion, un- 
 derstanding ; immensely acquisitive as well 
 as inquisitive of knowledge ; tireless in in- 
 dustry, so that it could be said of him, as 
 Coke said of Raleigh, that he could 'toil 
 terribly ;' facing the most abstruse problems 
 of law with an intrepidity of intellect which 
 no difficulties could daunt and no obscurity 
 G
 
 98 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 perplex; fearless in grappling with opposi- 
 tion, whether the opposition came in tho 
 substance of a man or in the spectre of an 
 idea ; so imperturbably serene at the cen- 
 tre of his being that in the very tempest 
 and whirlwind of his eloquence he never 
 lost the admirable poise of his nature, nor 
 the fine discretion which makes eloquence 
 efficient for its intended purpose : this man 
 stands before us a wonderful example of tho 
 impulses and capacities of genius of genius 
 ever attended by that reason which looks 
 before and after, by that learning without 
 which reasoning is but an idle exercise, an 
 abundant agitation of wit on matter so slight 
 as to do no justice to the powers it so sparse.- 
 ly feeds with facts facts without which the 
 logic of Aristotle himself would be but an 
 ingenious delusion and a pleasing snare, 
 something that the poet has indicated in 
 that fine line, 
 
 ' Ne subtler web Aracbne can not spin ;' 
 
 and, yet more, with Reason and Learning 
 having for their constant companion Imag- 
 ination, with l his garland and singing robes 
 about him/ decorating, enlivening, pene- 
 trating, vitalizing, the argument and tho 
 facts so that the logic becomes as beautiful
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 99 
 
 as l a goklen exhalation of the dawn,' and 
 we watch its processes as we would that of 
 an army marching to assured victory with 
 all its hanners flaming in the consenting and 
 joyous air; with all these powers working 
 in glad harmony together, each assisting the 
 other, each knowing its place, each instinct- 
 ively conscious when it should be master or 
 servant, and each seemingly unfettered in 
 its own spontaneous movement ; to all these 
 powers and accomplishments, I say, he add- 
 ed the great tidal wave of passion, impel- 
 ling, hurrying, every thing onward that it 
 caught in its tyrannous sweep, and leaving 
 hut wrecks on the opposing shore, where it 
 broke in iridescent spray and foam." 
 
 This is, of course, little better than a car- 
 icature of the way in which Mr. Choate 
 grappled with the difficulties of the long 
 sentence the sentence of Hooker, Milton, 
 Clarendon, and De Quiucey ; but still, if it 
 were read by any body who could imitate 
 the inflections of Mr. Choate's voice, and 
 thus indicate the natural way in which ev- 
 ery stated thought or fact suggests some- 
 thing which modifies or enforces it, and the 
 accumulating process goes on to the point 
 where it rhythmically closes, I think my 
 feeble imitation would present little to puz-
 
 100 RECOLLECTIONS OF HUFFS CHOATE. 
 
 zlc the grammarian or perplex the minds 
 of ordinary men. The fact that juries and 
 popular audiences had no trouble in getting 
 at his meaning proves that his long sen- 
 tences were lucid, however obscure they 
 may appear to the eye as read in the man- 
 gled reproductions of reporters. Oh, if the 
 inflections of his voice could be printed ! 
 Then it would be shown that the soul of 
 , the man threaded every intricacy of the 
 complicated sentence, delicately noting each 
 variation of the dominant thought, and vi- 
 talizing the whole with its kindling inspi- 
 ration. I have listened to some of the 
 arguments and addresses in which he ex- 
 hibited this mastery of the resources of 
 the English language, making words his 
 ''servile instruments/' and forcing every 
 thing to bend to his will syntax, it may 
 be said, among the rest when he inevita- 
 bly brought to my mind the glorious image 
 in which Charles Lamb celebrates the ris- 
 ing of the sun : 
 
 "To see the sun to bed, and to arise, 
 Like some hot amorist, with glowing eyes, 
 Bursting the lazy bonds of sleep that bound him, 
 With all his fires and travelling glories round him."
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 
 
 BORN the 1st of October, 1799; graduated 
 at Dartmouth, 1819; matriculated in the Law 
 School at Cambridge ; and, having gone to Wash- 
 ington, entered the law office of William Wirt, 
 Attorney-General of the United States, in 1821 ; 
 admitted to the Massachusetts Court of Common 
 Pleas in 1823 ; removed to Danvers and Salem, 
 Mass., and in 1830, having been nominated by 
 the National Republicans, elected to Congress ; 
 re-elected in 1833 ; resigned his place in Con- 
 gress and moved to Boston in 1835 ; upon Daniel 
 Webster accepting the office of Secretary of 
 State, elected Senator to fill Webster's place, in 
 1841 ; he followed for the next eighteen years a 
 life given to law cases of importance and the 
 preparation of political speeches and literary ad- 
 dresses, all interrupted by a summer vacation in 
 Europe; failing health caused him to sail a 
 second time for England, but he disembarked at 
 Halifax, where he died on the 10th of July, 
 1859.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 Page 18, L 7. TIRRELL TRIAL. See page 70. 
 
 Page 24, 7. 2. A CAMPAIGN APPEAL. In 1844, 
 in this political contest, the annexation of Texas 
 was the leading issue. James K. Polk, of Ten- 
 nessee, was favorable to the measure, and won 
 the nomination over Van Buren. Henry Clay 
 was the candidate of the Whigs. 
 
 Page 25, 1. 8. SDMNER'S FIRST ELECTION TO THE 
 SENATE. Webster entered the Cabinet as Secre- 
 rctary of State in 1850. Charles Sumner was nom- 
 inated to fill the vacancy by a coalition of Free- 
 soilers and Democrats. He gained the election 
 after a protracted struggle which attracted much 
 attention, and the successful issue of which was 
 celebrated by the anti-slavery party. 
 
 Page 31, L 4. " WHO OPPOSED His OPINIONS." 
 See speech by Choate on "American National- 
 ity," delivered in Boston, before the Democratic 
 Club, the 5th of July, 1858. 
 
 Page 37, /. 5. IMMORTALIZED BY SCOTT. In 
 Redgauntlet. 
 
 Page 46, 1. 5. WHAT COULD BE DONE IN EVAD- 
 ING. Choate answered : " I insist upon my right 
 to explain what I did say in my own words." 
 
 Page 50, 1. 10. Choate appeared for the heirs,
 
 NOTES. 103 
 
 "Webster for the executors. In 1847 Oliver Smith, 
 a bachelor, died, and left an estate inventoried 
 at $370,000, which he disposed of to a number 
 of charities. 
 
 Page 51, 1. 19. SPEECH ON THE 7in OF MARCH, 
 in which Webster justified the fugitive slave law. 
 Through this speech he lost his chances of the 
 Presidential nomination, to which he was look- 
 ing, as well as the popular favor of New Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Page 70, 1. 18. SPACNOLETTO. A common name 
 for Jose Ribera (1588-1656), of the school of 
 Oaravaggio. His style is marked by great force 
 and predominating shadow?. He delighted in 
 subjects of horror. 
 
 Page 80, I. 15. PROFESSOR LIEBER. Francis 
 Lieber (1800-1872) served under Marshal Blii- 
 cher at Waterloo. He took part in the struggle 
 for the independence of Greece, and afterwards 
 served as tutor in the family of Niebuhr, who 
 was Prussian ambassador at Rome. Upon his 
 return to Berlin he was arrested on trumped-up 
 charges of enmity to the Government. He finally 
 came to the United States and was naturalized. 
 He lived in Boston and New York, engaged in 
 literary work, and finally went to South Caro- 
 lina College, where he wrote his Manual of Polit- 
 ical Ethics, Legal and Political Hermeneutics^ and 
 Civil Liberty and Self Government. 
 
 Page 83, "l. 18. YOUNG or CHAMPOLLION. Dis- 
 tinguished Egyptologists who interpreted the Ro- 
 setta stone.
 
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