man of your standing at the bar should have assumed a place upon the bench where your emoluments will be so much less, and your labor so much more." " My dear sir," said he, " I never designed to continue at the bar all my days. ... I do not like to be at the bar. I do not desire to be compelled to make an endeavor to make the worse appear the better cause. I wish to pursue the better reason." Judge Ames possessed the attainments and qualities which go to make the great judge. He was widely read in case law, and had reliable recollection of the facts of the cases and of the exact points decided. " I do not recollect," says Chief-Justice Greene, "any judge in the course of my own knowl edge who was superior or perhaps equal to Chief-Justice Ames, except Judge Story; and in this respect these two gentlemen very much resembled each other." He was also deeply verseu in the law as a science. He was not content with a knowledge of the principles of the law, but he looked to the reasons upon which those principles rested. He had a clear and comprehensive view of the principles and science of law considered as a system intended for the administration of justice in the community. He also pos sessed the power of ready and accurate an alysis, and of applying the law to the facts in the case. Hon. Samuel Curry relates a conversation which he overheard in Washington, when a coterie of Southern gentlemen were compar ing Northern and Southern men. The South erners criticised their Northern brethren as being cold and phlegmatic, and wanting in the spirit, vivacity, and eloquence of the South. Governor McDowell, of Virginia, sitting by, said, " No, gentlemen, I have been listening for the last two or three days to a young man from Rhode Island. He knows more law than all the judges of the Supreme Court; he knows all the law from Doomsday book to the present time, and has it all by heart, and he can talk like a Virginian." He combined with these intellectual gifts and
attainments corresponding moral qualities, patient and untiring industry, the sternest integrity, uprightness, and fearlessness of popular clamor. " Upright, learned, fearless, just, sincere," are the words inscribed upon his monument, and they are a truthful epi tome of his character. His contributions to the Rhode Island reports are exceeded by those of the present Chief-Justice alone, who says, in speaking of these opinions, that they do not "duly represent the brimming exuber ance and facility of his intellect. No Rhode Island lawyer ever exhibited so full and so supple a mastery of the complex and enor mous system of English jurisprudence." The opinion in Taylor v. Place, already re ferred to, is a good example of his powers as a writer. His able and fearless exposition of the law in this case is an enduring monu ment to his fearlessness and ability as a judge. Charles S. Bradley. In February, 1866, Charles Smith Bradley was elected by the General Assembly ChiefJustice of Rhode Island. His career at the bar had hitherto been one of brilliant suc cess. For two years only he held this office, and then resigned to resume the practice of his profession, to him a more congenial occupation than the performance of judicial duties. Chief-Justice Bradley was born in 1819. He graduated at Brown University in 1838, the foremost scholar of a class distinguished for its men of learning and ability. Mr. Charles S. Congdon, in his " Reminiscences of a Journalist," says: " In the class of 1838 was Mr. Justice Bradley, of Rhode Island, the first scholar, I think, of his year, of whom we did predict great things. ... So we all talked of Bradley. When he was to speak in the chapel after evening prayers, how irreverently eager we were for the devo tions to be over, that we might listen to our favorite! . . . He handled all topics, philo sophical, political, and literary, with such force and ease that we held the matter
