from the pathos and grandeur and parental love of his farewell address; than the Leader of Israel could have done it as he stood at the last hour on Pisga and surveyed in vision the widespread tents of the kindred tribes rejoicing together in the peace and in the light of thtir nation's God. Oh for one hour of such a life and all are not yet lost." This extract from one of his speeches gives us an example of Mr. Choate's oratory, his admira tion for Mr. Webster and his views on slavery. I shall never forget the impression made upon me more than forty years ago when Mr. Everett delivered his eulogy upon Rufus Choate. It was in part as follows: "There was no one who united to the same extent profound legal learning with a bound less range of reading, reasoning powers of the highest order, and an imagination which rose on a bold and easy wing to the highest heavens of invention. With such gifts and such attainments he placed himself as a mat ter of course, not merely at the head of jur ists and advocates, but of the public speak ers of the country. After hearing him at the Bar, in the Senate, or on the academic or ipopular platform, you felt that you had heard the best that could be said in either place." Mr. Everett also said that Choate's eulogy on Daniel Webster at Dartmouth
College had never been equalled by any per formance of that kind in this country. He might have added with truth, "or in anyother country." Mr. Everett continued: "It is only on fitting occasions, when great prin ciples are to be vindicated and solemn truths told; when some moral or political Waterloo or Solferino is to be fought, that he puts on the entire panoply of his gorgeous rhetoric. It is then that his majestic sentences swell to the dimensions of his thought; that you hear afar off the awful roar of his rifled ord nance; and when he has stormed the heights and broken the centre, and trampled the squares, and turned the staggering wings of the adversary, that he sounds his imperial clarion along the whole line of battle and moves forward with all his hosts in one over whelming charge." It is difficult to determine whether Mr. Choate was more attached to his home life and his books or to his profession. At any rate, he passed the greater part of his life in the practice of the law and lost his life in its service. His death was due to his con tinuous and exhausting labors. Although Rufus Choate, when he died, as I have said, was not an old man, he lived a long life when measured by the number of hours out of. the twenty-four that he devoted to his books and to his profession.
