sponded to that of the giants of that bench. We replied that Mr. Justice Blatchford was not a giant, and that Justices Brown and Brewer are men of mod erate size, and that while such a consideration would be pertinent in the choice of a drum-major, it seemed hardly serious in the selection of a magistrate. In that address, Mr. Hornblower, enlarging on the "Duties of the Lawyer as a Citizen," although light in avoirdupois, "sat down" pretty heavily on certain persons and certain notions. It seems to us a mis take to believe that great intellects are necessarily wrapped up in large parcels. There have been a good many small great men in the world's historyIn fact, we are inclined to believe that there have been comparatively few great great men. David was an abler man than Saul. The famous soldiers have generally been moderate in physical bulk. Cssar, although tall, was slight. Alexander the Great was a small man, it is said : so were Frederick the Great and William the Third; and certainly, the greatest soldier and man of modern times was so small that he was familiarly called the " Little Corporal." We laugh at Gilray's caricature of Brobdingnag George the Third holding Napoleon Gulliver in the hollow of his hand. A still later great soldier was a smallish man — Grant. McClellan, whom some considered a great soldier, was small of frame. So were von Moltke and Sheridan. The orator Cicero was thin and meagre; the poet Horace was a little fellow, and so were Pope, Goldsmith, Tom Moore and Campbell, and so were De Quincey and Jeffrey. The wonder ful histrionic geniuses, Garrick and Kean, were re markably undersized. One of the greatest geniuses of this country was small of stature, and yet he was big enough to be one of the principal founders of this Republic — Alexander Hamilton. The very able but bad man who killed him was a pigmy. Erskine was a small man, but a giant of advocacy. There have been a few eminent giants, or at least big men, in our history, such as Washington, Scott, Lincoln and Webster, and Choate was a rather large man. Nearly all the members of one of the most brilliant races have always been distinguished for low stature — the Jews — and the soldiers who overran nearly all Europe under Napoleon were smaller than their adversaries. In short, the wit of a little Lamb would have fully furnished forth a Falstaff. And with Falstaff we say: "Care I for the limbs, the thews, the stature, bulk and big assemblance of a man? Give me the spirit."
Judicial English . — The editor of the " New York Law Journal," who has the light literary touch rarely found in legal writers, offers some interesting obser vations in a recent article entitled " Some Recent Judicial English." Spsaking of Webster he very
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justly says, he "quite frequently dropped into rhetorical display, pedantic quotation and histrionic artifice, which nowadays would not be employed even by an orator of the second rank." The "Ameri can Law Review " has recently said, of the famous peroration of his argument in the Dartmouth College case, that it was "claptrap," and if delivered nowa days would not disturb the judges in their letterwriting and proof-reading. The "Journal" draws a valuable contrast between the style of Everett and that of Lincoln, as illustrated in their Gettvsburgh orations. What human being will ever read Ever ett's long, artificial production? School boys to the latest time will read Lincoln's, and sages will par allel it with Pericles' funeral oration. The "Journal" need be in no doubt that Mr. Howells advocates the use of "don't" and "isn't," etc., in serious com position. He distinctly avows it over his own signa ture. Not that it is of any earthly importance, for nobody will read a word of Howells twenty-five years hence. But he probably thinks this sort of slipshod English the more "social." After anim adverting very severely but very justly on some recent abominable examples of judicial composition in this country — one of which excited the astonishment of a London legal periodical — the "Journal" con cludes : — "The literary style of John Stuart Mill is a sounder model for the judicial writer of to-day than that of Macaulay, which so many eminent judges and lawyers of the generation now passing off the stage adopted as their ideal. To take an actual and almost contemporary illus tration from our own State, the style of the late Judge Rapallo, always displaying great linguistic resources in conveying shades of meaning and scientific accuracy of expression, is a better judicial model than that of the late Judge Folger, entertaining as the latter always was, because of his quaint archaisms, studied oddity and almost Macaulayan splendor of rhetoric." We quite agree that Judge Folger's style was affectedly archaic and odd, but not that it was "Macaulayan." Nothing could be more unlike Macaulay's concise, nervous, brilliant style than the intricate, involved and frequently strange periods of Folger. The nearest parallel to Macaulay in this country is Professor McMaster, in his " History of the American People." Judge Rapallo was doubtless the greatest of the lawyers who sat on the bench of his court in his time, but his style, we should say, was not so felicitous as Judge Allen's. Mr. Justice Bradley, in our judgment, wrote the best on law, and Judge Finch, of the New York Court of Appeals, writes the best on facts, of any of our recent judges. These last two had the happy literary touch of which we have spoken. When it comes to wit, of the sort that illuminates the subject, Chief Justice Bleckley is easily chief.
