balance, a perfect self-containment, — an easy but a firm rein upon intellectual and emotional faculties, — ability to resist any temptation to swerve by a hair's-breadth from the business matter in hand, capacity to avoid being turned aside by sympathy, by temptation to rhetorical display, or a show of mere learning for its own sake, — and there is the ideal judge. Not that he lacks sym pathies. His eye has been seen to moisten upon the bench, where women and children were involved, and yet his decision to come coldly forth, — the law and justice of the matter. In his opinions he seeks to be clear, con cise, and direct, without ornament, embel lishment, or rhetoric, although he possesses a lively fancy and a capacity for sentiment and rhetoric, if he chose to use it. His style is pure, logical, and strong, his diction chaste and elegant, — style well suited to judicial decisions. As a style it has a fault or two, chiefly due to the peculiarities of judicial writing, and these, in a style so nearly faultless, scarcely worth criticism. In a very busy life he has not neglected litera ture, especially study of the Shakspearian drama; but he rarely uses illustrations drawn from literature, in his opinions. Indeed, he is so sparing of figure of speech and illustra tion that these are scarcely to be found, and when found, are generally some plain, prac tical, homely illustration such as clarifies without ornamenting. A man of unfailing courage, he looks only to the law and not to the consequences in deciding causes, re garding consequences as belonging to the legislative power and not to the judicial. As a man, Judge Jackson is serious, modest, and unassuming, with a quiet, play ful humor of his own when he has time to indulge it, and a keen enjoyment of wit and humor in others. Dignified and reserved. he is not easily approachable by strangers, and yet the gentlest and kindest of men when approached. No man knows better the value of reticence; and his quiet reserve has got him charged with coldness, which is
unjust. No man is more warmly attached to his friends, or has more thoroughly attached others to him. While uniformly courteous, he is exceedingly gracious to the humble, and kind and gentle to the younger members of the bar. He presides with a quiet, kindly dignity, which is never pre sumed on, because it is apparent that the iron hand of the judge, although never or rarely seen, is there. He is not what would be called a good " mixer," — no hand-shaker for popularity, — and yet he has attracted men to him and made friends to a remarkable degree. He has been twice married; his present wife, a daughter of Gen. W. G. Harding, of Belle Mead, — a man foremost in promoting fine-horse breeding, himself a man of highest standing and most lovable and admirable character. Dwelling upon West Mead, a fertile farm of some three thousand acres, — a valleyplain of lovely meadows, sparsely shaded blue-grass pastures, finely watered, encircled upon two sides by the high ridge of the "Rim " of the lacustrine " Basin " of Middle Tennessee, covered with herds of fine stock; with a beautiful home presided over by a quiet, cultivated, refined wife, — a woman too of strong sense, capable herself in affairs, of the old-fashioned Southern-womanly type, not " strong-minded " in the cant of the day; with a small circle of lovely children; with a delightful coterie of cultivated friends, with whom to enjoy sometimes conversation, sometimes chess, and sometimes a fox-hunt; addressing himself with equal practical sense and capacity to the business of his court, the affairs of his farm, or the disposition of the products of the farm, — his has been an ideal life. Judge Jackson is an elder in the First Presbyterian church of Nashville, a man profoundly religious, not in a spasmodic or emotional way, but because of a firm and abiding faith in a Supreme Intelligence and a wise, orderly, just, and law-governed uni verse. His purity is of that kind that is and
