ment, to his three or four arbitrations or audits, and finally, in the evening close his toils, by delivering a discourse for hours before some college class, or literary, or political association. Thus passes his life. It is nearly closed-and it may be truly said, that there have been few lives of greater labor, or greater pleasure. No man has ever seen him angry or discontented. In prosperity and adversity he is unchanged, apparently unaffected, and the elements are so mixed in him, that he seems to take with equal favor, fortune's buffets or rewards.

A lawyer's life, it may be said, without intending any play upon words, is emphatically a life of trials. He has scarcely any domestic existence; and the more extensive his business, the more applicable is the remark. He neither rises nor falls with political dynasties, shuns legislative honors, and disdains official dignities; he moves and breathes, and has his being almost solely amidst the crowds and clamors of diversified litigation. There he often encounters abilities of the first order, and sometimes perhaps of the worst order. There his temper and his talents are both daily and hourly tested. His triumphs and defeats are so interwoven, or the one follows the other so closely, that they almost lose their distinctive identity, and blend the pleasures and pains of life so together, as to render it difficult to determine which is the more prominent and prevalent. One day is like another in this

that all are busy-all are anxious-all are made up of hopes and fears, clouds and sunshine; and so continuous and unvaried is this truth, that this uninterrupted variety actually becomes monotony, still running as it were, in a circle, travelling over the same ground, and knowing no end.

INTRODUCTION.

THE reason why there are supposed to be so many new things in the world, notwithstanding the doctrine of Solomon, that "there is nothing new under the sun," is, that so much that is old is lost sight of or forgotten. When we are told that every thing that existed in the beginning is, perhaps under new phases, in existence still, and that though the affinities of matter be destroyed, the elements remain, and no atom has been lost in the various mutations of the universe; what natural philosophy thus teaches, we implicitly believe. But when any thing in the form of a novelty presents itself, in moral, social or intellectual life, we are prone to think that the countless years that have passed, never furnished its precedent or parallel. Weak and vain man! Those very novelties existed in years "long since numbered with those

beyond the flood," and were forgotten, renewed— renewed and again forgotten; and such will continue to be the course of events until time shall be no more.

In order, therefore, that men while living for the present and future, may be permanently instructed in the lessons and experience of those who have gone before them, and inherit the benefit of their example, it is certainly commendable, that the old in passing to their heirs or successors their well earned fame or fortune, should transmit to them also, that knowledge of the nature and character of men and things, without which fame and fortune can neither be appreciated nor secured.

As, without the recollections of its youth, age would be debarred of its greatest pleasures and enjoymentsso, without the precepts and examples of age, youth would be deprived of its chief knowledge and protection of the salutary guidance which the hard earned experience of others may have supplied. The memorials, therefore, of men who, after a life of labor and deserved honor, have in the fulness of time, "like the sun, showing their greatest countenance in their lowest estate," sunk into the grave, are appropriate and instructive lessons to those who are about entering upon the busy and thronging scenes of a tumultuous and precarious world.

Every man forms for himself his own horizon, and he sees nothing but that which is above it—but if that

which is seen or known by those of one age, were transferred to those of succeeding ages, the scope of man's mental vision would be incalculably enlarged, and thus by avoiding the errors and faults, or emulating the wisdom and virtues of the past; the present, instead of being an age of experiment, would be an age of comparative certainty and security.

The knowledge of life that forty years supply, even with the wisest and keenest observer, is comparatively nothing-still, when connected with antecedent and subsequent history, it may impart valuable lights and shadows to the picture, which the hand of time impresses upon life's canvass. Nothing that relates to man, in his temporal or eternal conditions, should be indifferent to man. The experience of others furnishes our cheapest instruction, and to despise or disregard it, often condemns us to the heaviest penalties.

There are few subjects more gratifying than family traditions. Ancestry and heraldry derive all their interest from the noble emotions, impulses and actions with which, while we perpetuate ourselves, we inspire our descendants. But how much more instructive and beneficial must be the record of a large professional family, consisting of the choice and master spirits of the era in which they lived, when honestly handed down to their descendants. How emulous must the son be, not only of sharing, but proving the glory of his father.

rivalling or even imHow careful should