American jurist, was a native of Massachusetts, and was educated at Harvard College. In 1805 he was elected to the State legislature, and in 1811 was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a post he filled for thirty-four years. Story became law professor at Harvard in 1829. He is chiefly remembered as a writer of legal treatises which are considered of the highest authority. Among them the most important are his “Commentary on the Constitution of the United States” (1833), “Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws” (1837), “Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence” (1836), “On the Law of Agency” (1839), and “On the Law of Bills of Sale” (1843).

Personal

  Judge Story’s power of conversation among the hills and monuments and deep shady graves of Mount Auburn was incomparable. He lead Ma by the arm all the way, and he was eloquence, and poetry, and pathos, and feeling and tenderness, and anecdote, and boundless benignity, all personified in his identical person. I believe he is the most accomplished and ardent and enlightened intellect extant.

  At Cambridge, three miles off, we have Judge Story, of the Supreme Court, eloquent, deeply learned, garrulous, lively, amiable, excellent in all and every way that a mortal can be. He is, decidedly, the gem of this western world.

  A newspaper from America, directed by Charles Sumner, which I joyfully opened; to be struck down with anguish in reading at the head of a column “Funeral of Mr. Justice Story.” That great and good man—that dear and revered and inestimable friend—is taken from us! God’s will be done! But how the cords that bind us to life are rapidly loosening—one is here snapped! Wrote to Charles Sumner on dear Judge Story’s death—Vale! Amice dilecte et reverende—vale! vale!

  His countenance, familiar in this presence, was always so beaming with goodness and kindness that its withdrawal seems to lessen sensibly the brightness of the scene. We are assembled near the seat of his favorite pursuits, among the neighbors intimate with his private virtues, close by the home hallowed by his domestic altar. These paths he often trod; and all that our eyes here look upon seems to reflect his genial smile. His twofold official relations with the University, his high judicial station, his higher character as Jurist, invest his name with a peculiar interest, while the unconscious kindness which he showed to all, especially the young, touches the heart, making us rise up and call him blessed. How fondly would the youth nurtured in jurisprudence at his feet—were such an offering, Alcestis-like, within the allotments of Providence—have prolonged their beloved master’s days at the expense of their own!

  In his religious tenets, he was a Unitarian. He thought more of a good life than creed, and judged of a man’s faith by the fruits it bore. He was wholly free from sectarianism, bigotry, and proselytism. He never sought to shake the belief of any man in his own dogmas, believing them to be the mere metaphysics, not the realities of religion. He was desirous that Christians of all denominations should be represented in the University at Cambridge, and that the question as to their appointment should be in respect to their qualifications, not to their creed. He believed in the inspiration and the doctrines of Christ, in the immortality of the soul, in the unity of God, and he often intimated a design to write a work, in which the rules of legal evidence should be applied to the facts of the Gospel narration, and the question of its authenticity argued as before a court of justice. His religious faith was not a dry and barren belief, but an ever-living principle, animating every act and thought. In his bereavements, he found in it consolation and support. In his happiness, it was never out of sight. He lived a truly religious life. He died in the full faith of a renewed and purified existence beyond the grave.

  In reviewing his life we are not so much struck with his genius as with his simplicity, unselfishness, and laboriousness. He worked not for himself, but for posterity. What he acquired he used not for his own advancement, but freely bestowed it on the world. Free from vanity, arrogance, and self-seeking, he passed his life in seeking the greatest good of mankind. As few men have bestowed so much, so few have labored so hard to acquire. Order, method, and punctuality marked his whole career…. Story’s fame is the result, not of genius, but of that labor which conquers all things.

  My acquaintance with this distinguished man began when, as an undergraduate, I dined with him in Salem, during a visit to that town. As a boy I was fascinated by the brilliancy of his conversation, and now that I was at the base of the profession which he adorned I regarded him with peculiar reverence. I remember my father’s graphic account of the rage of the Federalists when “Joe Story, that country pettifogger, aged thirty-two,” was made a judge of our highest court. He was a bitter Democrat in those days, and had written a Fourth of July oration which was as a red rag to the Federal bull. It was understood that years and responsibilities had greatly modified his opinions.

  His charges were perfect in point of explicitness, comprehensiveness, and adaptation to the non-legal mind; never deep, though the manifest result of deep thought; never technical, though on subjects that seemed to crave technical treatment; never dry or dull, though in cases that seemed wholly void of interest. I think that it could always be seen in what direction his own opinion turned; but he never failed to do full justice to both sides of the case in hand. His charges might have been too prolix for the eye, but not for the ear.

General

  The work [“Constitutional Law”] properly used, with a diligent and faithful resort to the authorities cited, amounts to a digested course of reading on constitutional law; and the student, well possessed of its contents, would need nothing farther in this great department, than that which the active and discriminating mind must elaborate itself, in order to make any study profitable. It is a question that unavoidably presents itself, now we have the book, How we did without it?—It is evidently such a course on constitutional law, as is indispensable to the enlightened politician, to the accomplished lawyer, to the student of our history, and even the well informed American citizen…. Mr. Justice Story relates the history of the formation of the Constitution. A chapter on the objections to it follows. To this succeeds a discussion of the nature of the Constitution,—whether it be a compact. This is one of the most able, luminous, and valuable chapters of the work. The whole artillery of constitutional law, on this great topic of present interest, is brought out with masterly skill and power; and the politician, who knows nothing of his calling, but how to inflame popular feeling on topics of local interest, may read this chapter and learn how mean his occupation is. And here begins the great business of this work, not indeed, that the previous chapters are not of close connexion with its main subject, and some of them, in fact, not inferior in present interest and seasonableness. But in this discussion of the question, whether the Constitution is a compact or a government, we enter the great temple of constitutional law.

  Every page and ordinary topic is replete with a copious and accurate display of principles, clothed in a powerful and eloquent style, and illustrated and recommended by striking analogies, and profuse and brilliant illustrations. You handle the topic of the mechanical arts, and the science on which they are founded, enlarged, adorned, and applied, with a mastery, skill, and eloquence, that is unequalled. And as for jurisprudence, you have again and again, and on all occasions, laid bare its foundations, traced its histories, eulogized its noblest masters, and pressed its inestimable importance, with a gravity, zeal, pathos, and beauty, that is altogether irresistible.

  In regarding the deceased as an author, jurisprudence mourns one of her greatest sons,—one of the greatest not only among those of his own age, but in the long succession of ages, whose fame has become a familiar word in all lands where the law is taught as a science, whose works have been translated and commented on in several of the classical languages of the European Continent, and have been received as authorities throughout the civilized world. It was his lot, while yet alive, to receive as from a distant posterity, the tribute of foreign nations to his exalted merit as a jurist.

  The first of these, Contracts, Agency, Bailments, Bills of Exchange, Promissory Notes and Partnership, are made the subjects of as many distinct elementary treatises by that indefatigable, learned and experienced jurist Mr. Justice Story. We have been for some time familiar with them, and can confidently recommend them to the student as better adapted for his purpose, and indeed for those of practitioners, than any others which we are aware of being extant.

  His legal reputation in America rests, perhaps, upon a work little known in this country,—his Commentaries upon the Constitution of the United States. This was followed, within a few months, by his Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, and preceded by his admirable work on Bailments. These works, followed between 1833 and his death by treatises on the law of Principal and Agent, Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes, Equity Jurisprudence and Equity Pleading, have, from their fulness, their research, their candor, and the comprehensiveness which characterizes them, placed the name of Professor Story in the very first rank of the legal authors of the age.

  The style of Story, both in his Commentaries and in his Miscellanies, is that of the scholar and man of general reading, as well as the thoroughly practised lawyer. It is full, inclined to the rhetorical, but displays everywhere the results of laborious investigation and calm reflection. His law books have fairly brought what in the old volumes was considered a crabbed science to the appreciation and sympathy of the unprofessional reader.

  As an author, Judge Story began his career early in life, by publishing an excellent edition of Abbott on the “Law of Shipping.” Soon after his appointment to the Dane Professorship, he published his “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,” in three volumes, octavo. These were followed by a succession of treatises on different branches of the law, the extent and excellence of which, with the vast amount of legal learning displayed in them, leave it a matter of astonishment that they could be prepared, within the short space of twelve years, by a man who was all the while discharging, with great assiduity, the onerous duties of a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, and a Professor in the Law School of the University. But in his devotion to the science of the law, he did not forget the claims of literature and general scholarship; and his addresses on public occasions, his contributions to the “North American Review,” and the other miscellaneous writings, show a mind imbued with sound and varied learning.

  The style of Judge Story is clear, flowing, and often elegant. His legal knowledge was undoubtedly great, but his opinions are somewhat diffuse, and lack the point that characterizes some less known authors.

  Judge Story’s name is among the first that impress themselves upon the attention of the young American student of law, and ranks in importance second only to that of Chancellor Kent…. By the breadth of research and the liberality of spirit manifested in these works, especially in the “Treatise on the Conflict of Laws,” the author earned for himself a lasting reputation not only among his countrymen but also among the jurists of France, Germany, and England. Judge Story’s works, however, all suffer from one defect. They are too diffuse. The materials which they contain are very ample, but they are not sufficiently worked up by the author. The young student especially is bewildered oftentimes in a labyrinth of seemingly contradictory decisions and arguments, and feels the want of a few skilful, trenchant words from the compiler.

  Like a good many other men who have turned out to be nothing but lawyers, Story early imagined that he was a poet. Not content with an occasional flirtation with the muse, he committed himself to a serious declaration by a volume of verse…. So Story, possessing a dangerous facility for rhyming, wrote some unobjectionable didactic sentiments in correct heroic verse, after the manner, but not after the matter, of Pope. No valid cause could be why his verse should not be suppressed; it might just as well have been prose. His maturer judgment told him he was not a poet, and he assiduously endeavored to buy up and suppress the volume, with such success that it has become very scarce. His son has given copious extracts from the “Power of Solitude,” which one finds it difficult to read.