His period of activity and usefulness is likely to survive many of his professional brethren who are wasting away with rust and mildew.

JAMES T. BRADY.

It was not the design of the writer of these sketches to exhaust either his readers or his subjects; but from time to time, as the occasion served, to present little pictures of those striking characters that appear most luminous in the firmament of the legal profession.

- we

The subject of the present notice escaped from the incubative state of his non-age with something of meteoric suddenness and brilliancy. Possessing one of those minds that ripen early he stepped upon the stage of action with the air of a man who had something to do, and was going directly about it. The world mean the metropolitan world-was pleased with his manliness, and soon learned to respect his good sense, as well as to admire his humorous eccentricities. There was something bold and striking in the outlines of his head, a breadth and fullness of development that might have done for a Jupiter. Here was the promise of intellectual strength and manly force. Beneath his bold brow were not the fierce eyes of a Webster or a Calhoun, shot through with pride and passion, but a pair of eyes strong, gentle, inviting friendship and confidence. As your eye traveled down along the lines that give the fullest expression to the social traits, it observed a waviness of outline suggestive of an humorous inclina

tion. Here was the epitome of the man intellectually strong, gentle and humorous.

His rapid rise at the bar fulfilled the promise of his intellectual gifts. At an age when young men are generally borne down by the prestige of the accomplished reputations that surround them, he was admitted with scarcely the formality of an introduction to divide. the honors of professional championship with the achievements which had cost years of labor and study.

Mr. Brady neither desired nor stood in need of the extrinsic aids of influence or patronage. His independent and self-reliant individualism bore him erect, spurning the aids and props to which the weak and dependent nervously cling. He displayed traits that commended him to that discriminating aristocracythe public-and the public adopted him. This proneness of the public to adopt the children of promise is a striking trait in our national character. It has its periodical ebullition of hero-worship, and is at times fickle and indiscriminating; but to its praise it may be said, that it is spontaneous and in the main unselfish. It has dragged unpedigreed genius from the garret, and has crowned it again and again. It does not ask for the indorsement of my lord this, or the right honorable sir that, but delights in seeing with its own eyes, and rewarding with its own hands.

The success that early rewarded the exertions of our subject were not wholly due to the gifts with which nature endowed him. He was from the first diligent as a student, and laborious as a man of business. compressed into the first early years of his professional

He

career the labor that many reserve for a later period of life. With a mind quick and suggestive, he applied himself diligently to the learning of the law. His studies were characteristic of the qualities of his intellect.

He does not belong to that class of minds that exhibit the power of analytic reasoning in creating a substratum of philosophical opinion. The normal condition of such minds is the absence of an intuitive faculty of discriminating intellectual ideas. They owe all they attain to acquisition, little to intuition. Observation supplies them with certain axiomatic truths that are laid, as the great foundation timbers, upon the bare surface of their unsuggestive natures. Upon these they build with induction and analysis, until the structure, rising high and imposing, is baptized with the name of philosophy.

Mr. Brady, by an intuitive faculty of discriminating the true from the false, rapidly appropriates the ideas that assimilate to his native perceptions of truth. His method of acquisition is direct and assimilative, rather than methodical and scientific. The tendency of such a mind is to desultory reading. Possessing unity in its own system of thought, and independent of the external helps that a habit of logical analysis furnishes to minds less liberally endowed, it avoids the tedious path of the progressive ratiocination, and walks freely hither and thither, culling the fruits of thought or flowers of fancy, as it happened to be attracted. From this order of mind, the great geniuses have arisen.

But mountains sometimes rise higher than eagles fly, and the patient builders often outstrip by their industry their more gifted but indolent competitors in the same way that the turtle outran the hare in the race. Those who acquire readily are strongly tempted to seek for little more than that which serves their present necessities. For them a stirring, sleepless ambition is the only salvation.

Mr. Brady possesses too much ambition to be content with inferiority to those about him, and too little to exert himself after he has fairly passed his competitors. He would rather be a palace among cottages, than a pyramid in the desert. All that he needs to develop his mental powers, still vigorous with youth, to their fullest capacity of exercise, is to fight by the side of some rugged old chief like our lamented Webster, whose blows crush like an avalanche.

As an orator Mr. Brady possesses the faculty of pleasing his audience while he addresses their convictions and their sympathies. A rich fund of humor enlivens his speeches and establishes a hold upon his au diences, enabling him to give the fullest expression to his opinions, however distasteful they may be to those he addresses. Had he more of the artistic feeling that clothes its images in the elegant grace of refined wit, he would be a more finished orator. But as an

effective speaker few excel him. Clear and vigorous in his reasonings, copious in apt illustration, and zealous rather to establish his cause than to display his rich endowments, there bursts through the warmth of the advocate the genial kindliness of a generous nature.

Mr. Brady possesses the respect of the entire bar. His social qualities attract to his friendship all who are brought into contact with him. His conversation is enlivened by the gayest humor, and is without reserve or ostentation. That may be said of him which is true of but few, that neither hatred nor jealousy grow in his pathway to distinction.

SAMUEL JONES.

There is no nobler spectacle, or more impressive lesson, than a bright and vigorous intellect, invigorating the wasting energies of a life yielding to the inexorable doom of mortality. When we are reminded that the temple of the spirit is perishable, we know that that mysterious essence, the "genius of the place," is immortal.

Such reflections are awakened in those who observe Chief Justice Jones contending daily at the bar with the zeal and the power of an advocate in the prime of life, though bearing the weight of more than four score years. He has outlived his generation, and is the only living representative of the learning and ability that characterized the New York bar, at the close of the last century.

His infancy was cotemporaneous with the infancy of the legal system of our state. These two have grown up together; but the one has grown strong and healthful, with the promise of centuries upon its brow, while the other is bowed, though unbroken, and counts the days to that rest which shall be forever,. Chief Justice