Harry Bingham. passageways of her catacombs, and to have stood upon the Seven Hills and viewed all the wonders and the glories of the eternal city, lie seemed to have visited the castles of the Rhine, and to have walked the corridors of the libraries of ancient Alexandria. He was familiar alike with the architecture of ancient ferusalem, and of modern Paris, and with the mountains of Italy and of Alaska. The source, the navigability, the color and the shade of the waters of the rivers of the world were in his mind and eye. The softness of the Italian sky, and the wonderful sunsets resplendently reflected by the ice-covered mountains of Switzerland, seemed a reality to him. The scenes enacted upon the great bat tlefields of the world were familiar to him, whether upon the ancient fields of Cannae, or of Thermopylae, or upon the fields of Borodino or of Waterloo, or of Saratoga or Gettysburg; or whether the savage battle grounds of the Indian, were those of the ancient far east, or those of our own country in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, on the plains, or on the confines of our East, our South, or our West. Mr. Bingham was a jurist by nature, and would have adorned the highest judicial seat in our land. Rut although judicial position was several times within his reach, he de clined it. He made no secret of saying that the reason for turning proffered judicial posi tion aside lay in his ambition for labor in the Senate of the United States. All agree that he was admirably equipped for usefulness in the deliberations of that great body, but his destiny in that respect was involved in the non-success of the Democratic party with which he early cast his lot, for the people of New Hampshire ordained that no one who was a Democrat, during the period covered by his life of activity, however eminent, how ever well equipped, should represent them in that body. All, however, agree that if his destiny had happened to be cast with that of the dominant party, whichever that should be, the people of New Hampshire would have early and quickly ordained that the place be
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longed to him during his natural life. Once there, all believe that his work would have reflected credit and honor upon the State and nation; that his courage, his industry, his per sistence, his statelv and dignified bearing, his well-stored brain, his rare philosophical and literary attainments, his deliberative mind, his gravity and power of speech — in a word, his statesmanlike qualities — would have made him prominent among the most promi nent Senators of his day, and that he would have achieved a name as national as that of Sherman or Hoar, of Edmunds or Thurman. Though a bachelor, he respected woman, and believed that the function woman exer cises — her influence and her power in the home — is as important and useful as the function of man in the broad and open field of life, for the reason, as he believed, that great and powerful nations are impossible without great men, and that great men are possible only where great and good mothers preside over the childhood and the home. His philosophy was such that to him the rose and the rock, the trickling brook and the broad ocean, the sunshine and the ominous darkness that precedes the storm and the lightning, the tiny blade of grass and the giant oak, the grain of sand and the towering mountain, the fitful flight of the humming bird and the unaltered and unalterable revo lutions of the planetary system were alike a joy and things of beauty, because they are a part of nature, and a part of the eternal plan of the Almighty. And his philosophy was such, that to him, purpose, industry, and principle in man, were qualities to be ad mired, because they are qualities which most surely lead men to honorable success, and because wise and successful men raise the standard of civilization and of nations, and thereby advance the design of the Creator. He believed profoundly in the genius of our institutions, and thought the men who assembled to lay the foundations of our gov ernment were as great as any set of men who ever assembled for such a purpose since the world began.
