prepared himself for the practice of law, but was seduced from it by the soft impeachment of art; he devoted himself to painting, but died in 1834 at the age of thirty, before accomplishing his high aspirations.

Judge Mellen calmly and serenely yielded up his life on the last day of the year 1840, in the midst of his own winter, having passed through seventy-six years of a busy, well spent life; firm in the conviction of an approval by the great Judge of quick and dead.

The Cumberland bar erected a solid and durable marble monument to his memory, with suitable inscriptions, in the cemetery in Portland, over his remains.

I believe that the remark he made in his last sickness, to be perfectly true, "that he had always endeavored to do what he believed to be right." He was a religious man, a devoted attendant upon public worship, conscientious in the performance of duty and faithful in all the relations of life. His natural temperament was cheerful and gay; full of wit and anecdote, fond of society, which he enjoyed to the last, and in which his cheerful and benevolent countenance was always acceptable.

He was a man of warm imagination and fine literary taste. He early inclined to cultivate a familiarity with the muses, and like his cotemporary Judge Story, made poetry the sport of his idle hours from his earliest to his latest age.

The cultivation of poetry is not inconsistent with the severe pursuits of the legal science. Even my Lord Coke, who in the mind of the professional student is the personification of dryness, often quoted from the poets, and observes, "It standeth well with the gravity of our lawyers to cite verses." Every body too, remembers Pope's praise of Mansfield, "How sweet an Ovid was in Murray lost." And

our own days have witnessed in the eminent English lawyer Sir Thomas Noon Talford, the most elaborate and polished of legal poets. The following poetical jeu d'esprit on the law of pauper settlement, from an old poet, may be quoted in this connection as a true legal maxim in verse:—

A woman having a settlement
Married a man with none :

The question was, he being dead,
If that she had was gone.

Quoth Sir John Pratt, "the settlement,

Suspended doth remain,

Living the husband, but him dead

It doth revive again.

Chorus of puisne Judges.

Living the husband, but him dead
It doth revive again."

The calmness and patience with which our lamented friend bore his last sickness, gave ample testimony of the sincerity of his faith and the firmness of his religious principles. At this trying period, he frequently uttered expressions of his entire submission to the divine will: impatient to be relieved from the burden of the flesh, yet perfectly resigned to wait. At one time he said, "I seem to be suspended between heaven and earth: the body clings to its native element, while the spirit struggles to be free." At another time he said, "I can't let go, the thread of life is too strong.' It broke at length, and the spirit ascended to its congenial home.

And now in the language of Fuller's "Holy State" "we leave our good judge to receive a just reward of his integrity from the Judge of judges, at the great assize of the world."

I now come to speak of our respected friend, Stephen Longfellow, the wise counsellor, the able advocate, the honest man. Born March 23, 1776, in Gorham, to which place his father and grandfather had fled on the destruction o

Falmouth, by the British, in the previous October. His early days were spent in that town, on the farm of his father, and in studies necessary to prepare him for his future occupation. Sometimes in his addresses to the jury, he adroitly drew illustrations from his farmer's apprenticeship, to point his argument or secure their favorable attention. I once had great fear of losing a case by one of these apt allusions. in speaking of his carrying butter to market in Portland.

He was descended in the fourth degree from William Long fellow, the first of the name who came to this country and settled in the Byefield Parish, in the old town of Newbury, and who married there in 1678, Anne Sewall; his father, grandfather and great grandfather were all named Stephen. His grandfather the first immigrant to Maine, graduated at Harvard College, in 1742 and came to Port land, then Falmouth, as the Grammar School Master in 1745. He filled many offices of honor and trust, and exercised an important influence in the affairs of the town and county. He was fifteen years Grammar School Master; twenty-three years Parish Clerk; twenty-two years Town Clerk, and fifteen years Register of Probate and Clerk of the Judicial Courts; several of which offices he held at the same time. His son Stephen held the office of Judge of the Court of Common Pleas from 1797 to 1811, and died much respected in 1824 at the age of seventy-four.

His son, the subject of our notice, entered Harvard College in 1794, at the age of eighteen, and at once took an honorable position with the government and his College companions, by the frankness of his manners, and his uniformely correct deportment. I have the privelege of offering the satisfactory testimony of his associates concerning this period of his life. His classmate, Humphrey Devereux,

now living at Salem, in a letter, says of him, "On entering College, Longfellow was in advance in years of many of us, and his mind and judgment of course more matured. He had a well balanced mind, no part so prominent as to overshadow the rest. It was not rapid in its movements, nor brilliant in its course, but its conclusions were sound and correct. He was inclined to think, compare and weigh closely; he did not soar into the regions of fancy and abstraction, but kept on the terra firma of practical common sense. In his habits, he was studious and exemplary, free from every contaminating influence. In a class which had its full share of talent and scholarship, he held a very rep utable rank among its high divisions, and shared its honors in the assignment of the College government, and in the estimation of his classmates. In his temperament he was bright and cheerful, and engaged freely in the social pleasures of friendly meetings and literary associations. His manners then, as in later life, were courteous, polished and simple; springing from a native politeness or a generous, manly feeling. He was born a gentleman, and was a general favorite of his class."

The venerable Daniel Appleton White, of Salem, two years his senior in College, and now enjoying a serene and dignified old age, writes, "Mr. Longfellow was a general favorite with his classmates: the Rev. Dr. Channing used to speak in high terms of his excellent classmate: he said to me in one of his eulogiums, that he possessed great energy of character." He again says, "I never knew a man more free from everything offensive to good taste or good feeling; even to his dress and personal appearance, all about him was attractive. In his deportment and manners, he was uniformly courteous and, amiable. He was evidently a well

bred gentleman when he left the paternal mansion for the University. He seemed to breathe an atmosphere of purity, as his natural element, while his bright intelligence, buoyant spirits and social warmth, diffused a sunshine of joy, that made his presence always gladsome."

These high tributes to the youthful character of Mr. Longfellow, were fully sustained in his riper years. He graduated in 1798 in the class with Dr. Channing, Judge Story, Professor Sidney Willard, Dr. Tuckerman, and other distinguished scholars, of whom but seven or eight in a class of forty-eight, now remain.

On leaving College he immediately entered on the study of law with Salmon Chase, of Portland, who was then engaged in the most extensive practice of any lawyer at the Cumberland Bar: and was admitted to practice in 1801. He established himself at Portland, where the field was already occupied by seven lawyers in a population of thirtyeight hundred. These prior occupants of this field, were John Frothingham, who commenced practice there in 1778, and was for a while the only lawyer in the County. Daniel Davis, a polished gentleman and popular advocate, William Symmes, a good scholar and lawyer, but of very formal manners; Isaac Parker, afterwards Chief Justice of Massachu setts; all these were from the old Bay State; Salmon Chase and George E. Vaughan, from New Hampsire, and James D. Hopkins, a native of England, but whose parents immigrated to Portland soon after the peace of 1783. There were but two other members belonging to the Cumberland Bar at that time, who were Ezekiel Whitman, then practicing at New Gloucester, and Peter O. Alden, at Brunswick. Of these not one survives, but the venerable Judge Whitman, who was born in the same month and year with Mr. Long