and cases were then tried upon their merits and upon the facts. He seemed to know instinctively what ought to be the law, and he had a memory which never lost a fact or overlooked a principle. There was little need to cite adju dicated cases, and there were less of them to cite than now. The whole weight of a trial, therefore, fell upon the jury and the facts. To this field and to this duty he brought extraordinary gifts and equipments.

If I were to characterize these in a single sentence, I should say that he had large observation and intuitive knowledge of human nature; a judgment that made few mistakes; remarkable coolness and self-possession; courage, quick decision, and great firmness of will; natural logic in handling facts; and an easy, graceful, and most persuasive eloquence, assisted and set off by an unusually rich and sonorous voice, and a commanding dignity of carriage and gesture.

If it be said that this language describes a great advocate, I reply that he was one. I have seen, I suppose, all the great lawyers and advocates of our State who are entitled to compare with Col. Stuart-seen them in the trial of causes and at their best—and while I would not be unjust or seem invidious, or disparage in any way the great abilities of men like Howard, and Lothrop, and Van Arman, and Hughes, I must still say that though each one of these able advocates might have excelled him in some single particular, yet, take him all in all, Charles E. Stuart was the greatest jury lawyer we have ever had in Michigan. He had no weak points. He was a wise manager, an able examiner of witnesses, and a powerful speaker and reasoner before the jury. Courteous and suave in manner, he repelled nobody; his wonderful observation and knowledge of practical things enabled him to see the bearings of evidence and to handle witnesses with skill, while his dignified fairness and candor gave him great influence with judge and jury alike. He always seemed to me to fill exactly that view of an advocate who from the lowest to the highest tribunal is able, at every stage, to place the canse of his client in the most favorable light, and persuade his judges to a decision in his favor.

I cannot here go into particulars and describe the way in which all these gifts and advantages were brought to bear in the trial of a case. Those who have seen him at his best before a jury will not think my language extravagant, and have still in their memories the delight with which they witnessed as near a picture of perfect advocacy as we are ever privileged to see in our courts.

Your Honors, I am fully aware that in thus outlining the qualities of this eminent member of our profession, I have indicated his possession of mental powers of a high order. But I know-and your Honors, who have all had large experience on the circuit, know-that it takes great intellectual gifts to make a great advocate. No man wins such a height at the Bar without struggle and without intellectual power. Here no deception is possible, as in other cases. Not like the clergyman, with his undemonstrable, ex parte case behind his pulpit; not like the physician, with his prescription in the dark ;---the lawyer's work is done in the broad light of the open day, confronted at every step by able opposition and argument, and with the whole public looking on. To meet such a test requires the greatest and the keenest powers. That vulgar notion of advocacy which sees nothing higher in it than an effort to "befog the jury" is a great mistake. Rather is it often the business of the true advocate to clear and dispel, by the electric heat and lightning of his genius, the fog-bank which has already settled there. I know the great change which has come since the time when the people used to flock to that early arena where this man first won his fame, but I still contend that it was an intellectual arena, and that the view is not a proper one which practically holds the law to be a mere trade, the exercise of mere technical, mechanical skill,-nor that which the sensational press suggests by its irreverent, leveling headlines of "Law Shop" and "Law Factory"-law at wholesale here, at retail on the circuit!

I believe the court house should still be an intellectual arena, where the intellectual gladiators of the law should contend for the prizes of victory and justice. I cannot hold

that change to be for the better where the people cease to take interest in their trial courts, and cease to crowd the court houses to listen to their advocates. In that brilliant picture which Macaulay has painted of ancient Athens at the height of her glory, it was the contests of the intellectual athletes which evoked the loudest shouts from that cultivated and wonderful people. Small credit to us, I think, with our boast of intellectual advancement, if it be true that after nearly twenty-five hundred years the people desert our court houses and flock to the rink, the minstrel show, and the ball ground. No, let us at least have the manliness to acknowl edge this decline-temporary, we trust-from a great past. We still need our advocates and orators and statesmen. We need them for the just administration of the law, for our intellectual life, for the glory of art and letters, and, beyond all these, for the preservation of our free institutions.

May it please your Honors, I must be brief in what I shall say of Col. Stuart as a politician and statesman. Happily, we are now so far removed from the questions which agitated the country during his public life that no injustice need be done to his memory through partisan bigotry or prejudice. In politics always a democrat, his early popularity as an advocate, as times then were, naturally led to his political elevation. After serving two terms in the house of representatives with credit and distinction, he was in January, 1853, elected to a full term in the United States Senate, against formidable rivals, without leaving his duties at Washington, and without the expenditure of a dollar, as he himself has told me. In this body he found Cass, and Douglas, and Seward, and Sumner, and Chase, and other distinguished men; but with these able competitors he soon took high rank as a committeeman and debater, and won exceptional distinction as a parliamentarian. It was said of him that no man in that body ever excelled him as a presiding officer. When the Kansas-Nebraska bill, repealing the Missouri compromise, was proposed, his native judgment and sagacity told him that it was not only wrong in principle but a great party mistake; and he has told me more than once of his remon

strances with Gen. Cass over the measure, and of a special visit of protest to President Pierce in which he told that official head of the Democracy plainly to his face that the North would be against him, and that his own state of New Hampshire would lead in the work of repudiation—a prophecy of coming party disaster which was soon strikingly fulfilled. Very reluctantly-and very unfortunately, I think -he yielded to the counsels of his distinguished colleague, and to the party sentiment and discipline, and thus lost the great opportunity of his life. Had he followed his own patriotic impulses and good judgment, opposed the bill and placed himself in accord with the rising sentiment of the North, there was no political distinction or promotion which he might not have attained. When the ill-starred measure bore its legitimate fruit in civil war in Kansas, and the infamous Lecompton Constitution, he did stand up manfully with Douglas and Broderick in the Senate and denounce the policy of Buchanan and his administration; and when his illustrious friend, Douglas, was opposed by the whole power of that administration, and by the ultra pro-slavery South at Charleston in 1860, it was Charles E. Stuart who gallantly and ably led the forces of the "little giant" on the floor of that historic convention. Then came his retirement from public life and the election of Lincoln, soon to be followed by the great rebellion, in which Col. Stuart showed himself a true patriot, raising our gallant 13th regiment, which won for itself imperishable renown on many bloody fields.

Returning now to the Bar, while still in the prime of life, Col. Stuart spent nearly ten years in the practice, showing all his old-time power as an advocate, and retiring at last about 1870, from ill health rather than old age, and spending the rest of his days in the seclusion of his home. He never went into court again, and only issued from his retirement on a few public occasions. While all the time a confirmed invalid and unfit for the duties of professional or public life, he was still able for the most part to be up and about, and especially to receive and converse with his many callers and old-time friends, to whom he was ever hospitable and genial.

His mind was always clear and bright, and he retained his interest in all passing, and especially in all public, events. He was a man of very marked conversational powers, and frequently the old grace and eloquence would appear in the animated dialogue or earnest private discussion. Always an original, independent thinker, his views of men and affairs were very interesting as well as instructive to the little audiences of friends and admirers who so often gathered to listen to his words. Though a man of great natural dignity, with much of the courtliness of manner of a gentleman of the old school, he had a keen sense of the humorous or ridiculous, and no man ever enjoyed an amusing experience or anecdote more, or told one better than he did. He was a public-spirited citizen, a man of high sense of personal and professional honor. In his private habits he was simple, economical, and temperate a wise and prudent counselor and manager, a provident, kind, and affectionate husband and father.

Your Honors, it was my great privilege and happiness for twenty years to enjoy the friendship of this man, and I count the many hours which I have spent with him in the friendly converse of his own fireside as among the pleasantest that I have ever enjoyed, or expect to enjoy in this world. Never shall I forget those hours, or the sage but genial presence of him whom I counted my model and master at the Bar, as, like another Socrates, he delighted and instructed me by his wise discourse on great themes,-on men, on politics, on religion.

But that rare picture and experience could not always be. To him the summons at last came, as it will come to each one of us in our turn. Happy for us if we can meet it with his resignation and philosophy, and his trust in the justice and mercy of God. It is a consolation to his friends to know that the bright and gifted intellect was neverc louded, but, through weakness and sickness and the failing body, shone on to the very last.

May it please the Court, it is only our greatest who should receive these high marks of our honor at the hands of