hands of the common council, the profits are very much below what they would have been, were the same property managed by private persons, and that a considerable portion of the real estate of the city has been a positive bill of expense.

We have stated these well known facts, i. e., the munificent endowment of the city under the old charters, the gradual waste and loss of a great part of its inheritance, and the profuse and injurious manner in which the remainder thereof has been administered, for the purpose of raising the question, whether a body like the common council is the proper custodian of the private property of the city? Whether its functions should not be municipal and political, rather than fiduciary? Whether the control of such immense pecuniary interests, private in their character and disconnected from the ordinary and legitimate duties of government, does not place the common council in the position of an irresponsible board of directors? And lastly, whether it would not be proper to separate the political powers of the common council from its responsibilities as the custodian of the private resources of the city?

CHARLES O'CONOR.

Mr. O'Conor may be considered at the head of the New York bar a distinction not easily attained, and one that may well satisfy the proudest aspirations for professional advancement. As an orator, he has many superiors; and indeed his delivery, never fluent, is

sometimes faulty. But Mr. O'Conor never speaks to an indifferent, or uninterested audience; — bench, bar and jury are equally attentive to every utterance that falls from his lips.

In person, he has little to excite enthusiasm or inspire zeal. His triumphs are achieved by the force of intellect alone. No one is more conscious than himself that he is incapable of investing a prejudged or unpopular cause with a self-created atmosphere of sympathy. He seldom attempts to stem the tide of popular disfavor, unless the intrinsic excellence of his cause will recommend it to favor when its facts and reasonings are fully understood. But he never declines a cause through fear, and would at any time prefer to lead the forlorn hope in a just cause than to triumph in a bad one. But when he recommends a client to apply to other counsel, it is from an intellectual conviction that an advocate is needed of a different mental constitution from his own.

If it be observed that Mr. O'Conor is generally found upon the side of a question upon which popular favor arrays itself, the credit is due rather to his sagacity in discovering the elements of success, than to his genius for creating them. But his position once taken, and his advocacy engaged, no obstacle can daunt his determined energy. He will take a storm of popular fury as indifferently as he would an April shower, and glory in a strife, the fierceness of which would appall the heart of others less circumspect than himself.

It is as a reasoner in the higher walks of legal sci

ence that Mr. O'Conor is most distinguished. His studies are of the most minute and careful character. No jurist of the day has a more thorough and intimate knowledge of the adjudications in England and his own country, although he does not possess the happy. but equivocal talent of some in always having at his tongue's end a case supposed to have decided the exact point in controversy. Yet his citations of adjudicated cases are sound and veracious, and are always listened to with respect and confidence.

The

He is in the truest sense a thorough-bred lawyer, and has devoted himself with unremitting zeal to the matters of the profession of which he is an ornament. loose and empirical studies of the present day will hardly supply his place at the bar.

His person is as remarkable in its endowments as his mind. Erect and slender full of nervous energy, but cold as steel he strikes the imagination as a frozen embodiment of his own intellect. His eye is brilliant and piercing; but as cold as the phosphorescent gleam of a winter ocean.

This coldness is not absence of native kindness, but the product of an intellect overbalancing the passional and sensitive traits. As a friend, he will be kind, but not sympathetic. He admires the beautiful, not from an inspiration of its beauty, but from an intelligent appreciation of its fitness and perfectness. If he is ever won from bachelorhood to taste the quick sympathies of love, it will be when the demands of his discriminating intellect are met by a perfect object, or when he finds the fitness and necessity of sympathy.

GREENE C. BRONSON.

Chief Justice Bronson belongs to a class whose merits and demerits usually excite a great variety of conflicting opinions. Such men never head a party nor follow a party, and thus lose the doubtful advantage of securing the partizan regard that detests or admires as fear or favor dictates. They must be regarded as individuals. They are a class only as they fall under the common head of exceptions, not as possessing common peculiarities by which the description of one is made the description of all.

Judge Bronson has a marked and vigorous stamp of character such as can not escape notice or fail to excite respect. His mental peculiarities single him out to figure as a conspicuous object in whatever he engages, and leave him no opportunity to mingle unobserved with the unrecognized many. Whether this is an advantage or a misfortune, opinions seem to differ. Fortunately, the claim of our present subject upon our consideration is not dependent upon the settlement of this mooted point.

The withdrawal of Judge Bronson from the bench of the court of appeals to resume the active duties of the bar illustrates a peculiarity of our countrymen alike creditable to the individual and advantageous to the interests of society. It may seem strange to those who surround the idea of public station with a sort of unapproachable dignity from which one is expected to retire only to higher dignity or oblivion, that one who

has enjoyed the distinction of filling the highest judicial position, should voluntarily relinquish its honors and privileges to mingle again in the turmoils of business. But those who have seen an ex-president of the United States reënter the arena of political life as a representative of congress, and cabinet officers guiding. the affairs of a nation to-day, and advocating the cause of a client to-morrow — exchanging the helm of state for a well paid brief — will understand the active elements of character that bring about such transitions. Instances of this kind unless the result of an unwise parsimony denying to public officers suitable compensation are creditable to the spirit of our people.

The late chief justice is possessed of a mind at once acute and discerning, but prone to flow in the peculiar channels marked out by his mental idiosyncracies. He scorns the well-defined and thoroughly beaten highways on which others delight to travel in security and ease. He seldom fails to find a by-path-though sometimes so overgrown through disuse as to be almost hidden from the common eye-on which he travels with long and powerful strides, albeit, sometimes at the cost of some straining and a few scratches.

His opinions are always strong, though that strength is derived rather from the force of his own intellect than from the common approbation and consent of others. Such a mind fortifies its intrinsic strength, often at the sacrifice of that solidity of judgment which springs from the combined action of mind with mind. Its conclusions are more valuable than any aggregate of