University gave him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Aside from his lectures, his judicial opin ions, and his volume of reports, his contribu tions to letters have been few. He made a graceful public address in memory of the late Judge Campbell, — an extract from which appeared in the " Green Bag" for last June, — and in 1889 he read before the American Bar Association at Chicago, a plain-spoken paper upon " Judicial Indepen dence," in which he dealt a blow at all that class of legislation which seeks to hamper a trial judge in his relations to the jury. It is not easy to deal with the personal character istics of a contemporary; but as the current standards of biography seem to require it, it may be said that, socially, Judge Brown is a companionable man, — somewhat formal, without being stiff; gracious, yet not exactly cordial. Whether afoot or on horseback, he is almost painfully neat in his appearance; and with his springing step and brisk man ner, there is something about him suggestive of the athlete. He has already been found to resemble Speaker Carlisle, Mr. McKinley, and Booth in " Hamlet; " and people who see a likeness between Chief-Justice Fuller and Bret Harte will, no doubt, detect Judge Brown's resemblance to any of these gentle men, or all of them together. He is a man of nerve, as was discovered some years since by a certain burglar with whom he ex changed a nocturnal fusillade; the burglar escaped from the premises, but as his depre dations thereupon ceased, and he was no more heard of, it has been supposed that the judge's aim was more correct than his own In a quiet way he has been somewhat of a "patron " of art. He was a liberal sub scriber to the erection of the handsome Art Museum in Detroit, and he has caused to be
painted, at his own expense, a superb por trait, by Ives, of old Judge McLean, which he has hung in the dark and dingy court room that for thirty years has been the tem ple of Federal justice in that city. His new and elegant private residence, which is said-* to have been the outgrowth of his wife's taste and his own, was pronounced, when it was built, to be the finest bit of architecture in the town. During Judge Brown's fifteen years of judicial life, the Circuit Court in his district was held by Swayne and Stanley Matthews of the Supreme Court, and by H. H. Em mons, John Baxter, and Howell E. Jackson, circuit judges. Emmons was in the habit of taking prompt possession of any case that came before him, and it used to be said that a trial with him was a three-cornered fight. He was a consummate lawyer, however; and those practitioners who did not like his methods mourned his loss when Baxter fol lowed him, for Baxter was an overbearing judicial tyrant, who disposed of business with dizzy speed. But he was not without much native common-sense, and the principal dan ger with him lay in the chance of his decid ing a case before he had heard it stated. Brown was altogether different. He would listen patiently, consider carefully, and when he decided, it would often be in an opinion that was rich in learning and in precedents. His district ranked next to the southern district of New York in the extent of its admiralty business; and this was in part because the proctors in other lake cities so much preferred to try their cases before him that they would forbear to serve papers until they could do so within his jurisdiction. Note. — An excellent portrait of Mr. Justice Brown was published in the May number (1889) of the " Green Bag."
