Among all the men who ever lived Wash ington was his ideal. He thought — all things considered — what he accomplished against the difficulties under which he labor ed, his inherent civic and military strength, the way in which he yielded power, and the way in which he surrendered it, the ruggedness and simplicity of his character, the peacefulness and serenity of his mind and of his private life, constituted him the greatest and most worthy type of manhood of ancient or modern times. Of men of letters and dazzling genius, Shakespeare stood first, and was his greatest delight; yet he held in adoration Gray's Elegy and Milton's Paradise Lost as mas terpieces of stately and inspiring verse, and was charmed by the sweet songs of Long fellow and Whittier. With him the Bible, with which he was familiar, was the greatest of all books; and many of us recall the impressive manner in which he recited the twenty-third psalm as his peroration in the Whitman will case. While he did not agree, at the time, to all that was written and said in the period pre ceding the Civil War against the institution of human slavery as established in our gov ernment, he believed that Harriet Beecher Stowe through her LTncle Tom's Cabin" did more to prepare public sentiment for its final overthrow than any other one person. He believed that the time has come when our nation should take its stand among the great nations of the world, and become a leader upon the great international ques tions necessarily presented by new and changed conditions. He believed that ex pansion in all life, and under all conditions, is a logical and necessary incident of growth and power. In this line I remember hearing him say, in connection with Washington's non-intervention policy: "Washington was a great man; he was great enough to com prehend the situation which confronted him in his day, and the whole of it. He could not have foreseen the conditions that con front us in our day. Steam and electricity
have made countries which were remote from each other in his day, near neighbors in our day, but he was so great that, if here, 1 have no doubt whatever, he would comprehend the condition that confronts us and the whole of it, and, comprehending, that he would do his duty." In religion Judge Bingham was not a bigot. He was tolerant of the religion of Confucius, the ancient Chinese law-giver, who taught, that one should not do unto others, what he would not have others do unto him; and he accepted the teachings of our Saviour, that one should do unto others, as he woukl have others do unto him. This is not the time for an extended sketch of the life of Judge Bingham as a law yer. Upon a proper occasion some suitable person will delineate his great qualities as a lawyer, and his prominent career at the bar. I will only say that his name and his briefs appearing in the New Hampshire reports since Ranlett v. Moore, decided in 1850, re ported in Vol. 21, down through and in cluding Vol. 59, constitute a permanent monument to his memory as a lawyer. Though gone from earth and having en tered "The undiscovered country from whose bourne No traveler returns," in memory we see him still, with the wellrounded and commanding head, poised upon broad, square-set shoulders, the sturdy oaklike pose, as if the feet were deeply and firmly rooted in mother earth, the erect figure, firm and steadfast, as if mysteriously bolted to New Hampshire granite and buttressed by her everlasting hills, the dignified and stately carriage, the large, brown, wide-open, oxlike, honest, listening eyes, a prominent fea ture of that grave and impressive face. And to complete the picture which hangs in our memory, we may well borrow a description of Donatello's famous statue of St. George, and say: "He stands there sturdily, with his legs somewhat striding apart, resting on both with equal weight, as
