The International Monthly Magazine Volume V to No II

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Not the least amiable phase of the life of Judge Story, was the attention
which he gave to letters and literary pursuits. He was no _mere_ lawyer:
no stringer of professional centos. He never hid his heart with the veil
of dignity; nor smothered his fresh impulses (preserved intact from
worldly rust since boyhood) with the weight of his judicial and
professional labors. While he believed that the law was a jealous
mistress, he knew that this mistress was too stable and sensible to decree
that a gentle dalliance or seasonable flirtation with her maids of
honor--Poetry, or the Arts, or Literature, or Love--was an unloyal act. He
could turn from Grotius to Dickens, from Vattel to Thackeray. He could
digest the points of the elaborate arguments of eminent counsel, and then
turn aside to a gentle tonic from the administrating hand of Smollett or
Walter Scott. Method was his master-key to all the combinations in the
locks of labor.

Twice married he never ceased to eulogize the bliss of domesticity.
Surrounded by loving eyes, the currents of his freshened affection flowed
deeper and clearer every year. How he treasured home and home joys may be
collected in the following lines from his poem on solitude (before
referred to), written in his twenty-second year.

"Grandeur may dazzle with its transient glare
The herd of folly, and the tribe of care,
Who sport and flutter through their listless days,
Like motes that bask in Summer's noontide blaze,
With anxious steps round vacant splendor while,
Live on a look, and banquet on a smile;
But the firm race whose high endowments claim
The laurel-wreath that decks the brow of fame;
Who warmed by sympathy's electric glow,
In rapture tremble, and dissolve in woe,
Blest in _retirement_, scorn the frowns of fate,
And feel a transport power can ne'er create."

Touching the poem from which these lines are taken, we remember being
shown the only copy of the published book which was known to exist, by the
family of the Judge. The Assistant Librarian (who was born for his station
in all that regards enthusiastic love of his duties), of the Harvard
College library, showed us, with great triumph, a small sheep-bound
volume, entitled "Solitude and other Poems, by Joseph Story," printed
sometime in the commencement of this century: saying, "the Judge has
burned all the copies he can pick up, and this is only to be read here."
This poem was a sore subject to the author. He viewed it as not only a
blot upon his dignity, but an annoyance to his professional fame. Numerous
critics have laughed at it; but apart from the shorter poems, the main
theme showed much aptitude of poetic imagery, invention, and harmony of
expression. Glance at the following lines, which contain much of the
genuine spark:

"Till nature's self the Vandal torch should raise,
And the vast alcove of creation blaze."

Or this--

"Blaze the vast domes inwrought with fretted gold,
The sumptuous pavements veins or pearl unfold,
Arch piled on arch with columned pride ascend,
Grove linked to grove their mingling shadows blend."

Or this--

"Let narrow prudence boast its grovelling art
To chill the generous sympathies of heart,
Teach to subdue each thought sublimely wild,
And crush, like Herod, fancy's new-born child."

It is highly probable that the learned Justice, knowing his taste for the
poetical and fanciful, and his aptitude at the harmony of language, often
erred in his judicial writings and treatises, by avoiding beauty of
expression, in fear lest the dignity of his subject should be injured by
too much association with the creatures of fancy. We have known most
accomplished lawyers err through this same caution. Our biographer himself
(Mr. William W. Story) has certainly done himself great injustice as a
writer in his work on "Contracts," when, in the pages before us, he
presents us with so much delicacy of fancy and rhetorical finish.
Blackstone in his "Commentaries," Jones in his "Bailment" treatise,
Stephens in his essay upon "Pleading," time-honored Fearne in his
"Contingent Remainders," have shown how grateful and how suitable it is
for the legal readers to find brilliancy of rhetoric adorning the most
profound learning.

But certainly Judge Story possessed to a remarkable degree the faculty of
condensation in his poetical works. His rhyme was not reason run mad; but
reason in modest holiday attire. Where are lines at once so compact and so
searching in their wisdom as the following, penned in 1832, as matters of
advice to a young law student:

"Whene'er you speak, remember every cause
Stands not on eloquence, but stands on laws--
Pregnant in matter, in expression brief,
Let every sentence stand in bold relief;
On trifling points nor time nor talents waste,
A sad offence to learning and to taste;
Nor deal with pompous phrase; nor e'er suppose
Poetic flights belong to reasoning prose,
Loose declamation may deceive the crowd,
And seem more striking as it grows more loud;
But sober sense rejects it with disdain,
As nought but empty noise, and weak as vain.
The froth of words, the school-boy's vain parade
Of books and cases--all his stock in trade--
The pert conceits, the cunning tricks and play
Of low attorneys, strung in long array,
The unseemly jest, the petulent reply,
That chatters on, and cares not how, or why,
Studious, avoid--unworthy themes to scan,
They sink the speaker and disgrace the man.
Like the false lights, by flying shadows cast,
Scarce seen when present, and forgot when past.
Begin with dignity: expound with grace
Each ground of reasoning in its time and place;
Let order reign throughout--each topic touch,
Nor urge its power too little, or too much.
Give each strong thought its most attractive view,
In diction clear, and yet severely true,
And as the arguments in splendor grow,
Let each reflect its light on all below.
When to the close arrive make no delays
By petty flourishes, or verbal plays,
But sum the whole in one deep solemn strain,
Like a strong current hastening to the main."

If Mr. Story had never been elevated to the bench it is not likely his
name would ever have become national property. Although plunged into
politics in his earlier life, he was not fitted for the life. His devotion
to the law, and his dread of becoming that slave to party usages which all
public men must necessarily more or less fashion of themselves, would have
retained him in his native state, and made his usefulness sectional. To
the politicians of the school of General Jackson, and to the
administration of that President, he was particularly distasteful. His
tenacious conservatism drew forth from the "old hero," on one occasion,
the remark, that "he was the most dangerous man in the country." Lord
Eldon, with his doubts and pertinacious toryism was not more unpopular
among the reformers in England than was Judge Story--the last of the old
regime of federal judges--with the bank radicals of 1832.

When Chief Justice Marshall died he felt almost broken-hearted. A new race
of constitutional expounders had arisen around him. Brother justices, with
modern constructions, and more liberal notions of national law, were by
his side. In many decisions he was now a sole dissenter. His pride was
invaded; his self-love tortured; his adoration of certain legal
constructions which he had deemed immutable in their nature, was
desecrated. And, for many years previous to his decease, he had
contemplated resigning from the federal judiciary, and living alone for
his darling law school.

This school was his adopted child. He had taken it in a feeble and
helpless infancy. He had given it strength and increased vitality. He
brought it up to a vigorous and useful maturity. It was loved by only a
handful of students when he gave his name and talents to aid its life: but
when he died, a hundred and fifty pupils were its warm suitors, and
hundreds of lawyers over the whole union cherished its prosperity as a
link in their own chains of happiness.

And, although he thought not of it, his labors in the law school secure
for his memory in the present generation a more brilliant existence than
his array of judicial decisions, and his thousands of written pages, can
ever bestow. In some pine forest settlement of Maine, or in some rude
court-house in California, there are lawyers who bring before them every
day his genial smiles and his impressive lectures, looked upon and heard
by them in former times at Cambridge. Over all the Union, in almost every
village, town, and city, are his pupils. Each one of them may sometimes
reflect with rapture upon their days of college life, or remember with
pride their first professional success: but not one of these
considerations of reminiscence is so grateful to his mind as the thought
of his novitiate with Justice Story. Depend upon it he treasures up those
Cambridge text-books, those Cambridge note-books whose leaves
daguerreotype the learning of the eminent deceased, those catalogues of
students where his name is proudly found, as the most valuable portions of
his library. He will never part with them: but they will descend to his
children.

It was our privilege and pleasure also to know Mr. Justice Story at
Cambridge; to have spent days of pleasure in the hours of his society; to
have rendered to his teachings the tribute of delighted attention and
grateful recollection. We, too, have been fascinated with that
conversation, whose variety of exuberance and sometimes egotism, were its
greatest ornaments. In the sunshine of his intellect our mind has sunned
itself, and been warmed into zealous and proselyting admiration. To his
gray-haired teachings we have paid personal reverence, and we unaffectedly
hope to have caught from his society and intercourse a spark of that
professional enthusiasm which is the only true guiding-star of the
plodding lawyer.

The December blasts are hoarsely sobbing to-night through Mount Auburn,
the garden of his mortal repose--the hallowed spot which his eloquence
consecrated in its origin, and which his religious love in his lifetime
sacredly cherished. The snows of winter and the autumn-woven carpet of
fallen leaves are heaped upon his honored grave, the sodded paths to
which, in the glowing spring-time and fragrant summer, are pressed most
frequent with the tread of faithful mourners. Years have passed since that
honored grave was first closed upon him. Longer years have flown since we
were under his teachings. But we seem to view him the same as of yore.
Again the class is assembled in the hushed lecture-room as his familiar
tread is heard at the door; or as the burst of applause, where there is no
sycophantic flattery known or felt, greets his entrance to his seat. Again
we see him adjusting his genial spectacles, and looking around upon the
upturned faces with parental pride. Again we hear his mellowed, although
often impetuous accents, expounding familiar principles of law, and
descending to the consideration of "first things" with as much pride and
carefulness as the artist treats his Rubens or Titian, which for years and
years has hung before him in all lights and shades and in every
combination of position.

Again, we occupy a modest corner of the library while he is holding his
moot court; infusing into the dignity of his manner a marked suavity of
disposition which never forsook him; or he is perpetrating some
appropriate legal joke to his audience, who never played upon his ease or
good nature.

Again, we have stolen into the self-same library while he is holding an
equity term of his circuit, to listen to the words of judicial wisdom
which came from his utterance, exuberant as pearls of fancy from the mouth
of an inspired poet.

Again, we see him at the summer twilight, seated by the trellised portico
of his hospitable and happy homestead, surrounded by family or friends,
enjoying the amenities of life with unaffected pleasure, and sometimes
awakening the garden echoes with his cheerful ringing laugh; or we see him
in the same hour of the day driving under the venerable elms of the
numerous commons, gazing and bowing around with all the pleasure which the
king of the fairy book marked upon his face when the love of his subjects,
among whom he passed, came forth with the evening breeze to bless and
greet him.

And then we pass into "reverie," and live a few minutes of "dream-life,"
recalling to mind the maxims and sayings which were uttered in our
presence; and the many bright exemplars placed before his pupils, and the
kindly greetings which were showered all about--for he was no distinguisher
of persons so long as honor of feeling and uprightness of motive abounded
in his presence.

He is gone! Yet in these pages of biography before us he will always live.
From infancy to the ripened greatness of old age, his life is preserved to
posterity by the hand of his faithful and grateful son, whose duty has
been most ably and interestingly performed. The very minutiae of his life
are presented with fidelity and modesty of reference. Some may carp at
this; to these let us say with the French proverbialist, _Rien n'est
indifferent dans la vie d'un grand homme; le genie se revele dans ses
moindres actions_. The straws of every day life mark the direction of the
breezes of individual action.

To the hearts of his pupils we would send this epitaph, and ask them if
aught less tributary could be said of one who was and is to them a father.

Here sleeps the mortality of Joseph Story, who lived his days so well that
he won in a short lifetime an immortality of fame. His career as a _Man_
reflected lustre upon the lustre of an honored father's manhood, and added
to the virtues which his mother bequeathed him. As a _Politician_, he
rendered obeisance only to his conscience. As a _Lawyer_, he never
disgraced his profession by a thought, and even honored it by his
slightest acts. The colleague of Marshall, the two now shine together as
twin stars in the often contemplated firmament of _Judicial Renown_. Not
selfish of his _Learning_, it is scattered to the uttermost parts of the
earth, and is treasured wherever it has fallen. The learning which he
borrowed from continental Europe he repaid with magnificent interest. In
Westminster Hall his name is associated with Nottingham, Hale, Mansfield,
and Stowell. Counting as dross the wealth of professional eminence, he
became from the love of it an expounder of law to its tyros. He has spread
for thousands of adopted children a banquet of the treasures of legal
lore, and next to reverencing his paternal love they cherish with profound
gratitude the memory of his slightest instructions. While the Union of his
birthplace exists, her citizens will regard with unfeigned admiration his
constitutional teachings.

COLUMBUS AT THE GATES OF GENOA.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY THE AUTHOR OF "NILE NOTES OF A HOWADJI."

Christopher Columbus was born at Genoa in 1437. In 1851 the Genoese are
finishing his monument.

I am Columbus: will ye let me in?
Or Doria in his palace by the sea.
Proud Andrea Doria named il Principe,
In your Republic named il Principe,
By Charles the Fifth, the Emperor of Spain,
Monopolizes he your meed of fame
Before the awful Judgment seat of Time.
Well, and Pisani, the Venetian, he,
Venice as Doria was Genoa,--
Why, wide-mouthed Europe clanged their stunning praise,
And history with their names adorns herself,
Dazzing the eyes of pious pilgrims, who
Press flowers from Doria's garden, dreaming float
Upon Pisani's silent waters, and
Proceed, much meditating human fate.
And they had pleasures, palaces. They stood,
And sat, and went, all men admiring,
Men of a day, in its brief life they lived,
In its swift dying died. Men of a day,
Brave, generous, and noble--not enough.
Voluptuous Venice, Genoa superb,
Far fascinating meteors that flashed,
Then fell forgotten. Do I carp? Not I.
Ye love your own, I mine, mine me, amen!
O pious pilgrims and ye Genoese,
Proceed, much meditating human fate,
And meditate this well.
A wanderer driven
By every adverse gust of evil times.
Wrecked upon barren reefs of blandest smiles,
Wan victim of a solitary thought
Too masculine to die unrealized.
Tortured with tortuous diplomacy,
Beseeching monarchs still in vain besought,
Not to give kingdoms but to take a world,
Unloved of Fortune, best beloved of Hope,--
When Doria was a lisping boy at school,--
This wanderer puts forth one summer morn,
Among the other fishers of the sea,
And with a world returns.
Nay! nay! no words.
Your hemisphere was only half enough,
And Christopher Columbus globed his fame.
And now ye build my statue, Genoese,
After three silent centuries have died,
When the old fourth is failing, ye do well
With lagging stones to pile the pedestal,
And shape my sculptured seeming. Not with wrath,
Nor scorn. Good God and less with gratitude,
Be those worn features wreathed. I love ye not,
Ye are no friends of mine. I did not ask
A block of marble for my memory,
But gold to carve my hope. It was not much--
Nay, had it been your all, was it not well
To wreck your fortune on a hope sublime?
And, Merchants! The brave chance; a small outlay,
And income inconceivable! You chose.
My stately Spain was wiser. So much gold,
A little fleet,--some sailors--leaders known--
If not investment, speculation safe,
The honor of the enterprise, and chance--
Always the siren chance--Spain risked and won,
And Genoa lost a world.
Sir Advocate!
I understand your meaning; it were hard
Fame drafts upon the Future should be paid
Ere present recognition! 'Twere unjust
That hope unhazarded in act, were crowned
With the same coronal that crowns success.
The starving mariner upon your shore--
The riddle of the West unsolved--stood not
In the same light to set his worthiness,
As when an unimagined Future streamed
All over him in glory. Yet he stood
In that light lonely, as in the old dark,
Lonely, but looking to that light for life.
Spring-pinioned Hope impetuously flew,
And saw, through the deep Future shedding balm,
His fame a tree in flower.
If that were all?
If in his vision of America
He saw but Christopher made famous? Look!
Not for himself; but for that martyr, Thought,
Which struggles fainting in a foolish world,
To ope a gate to wisdom, his heart swelled
When his fixed eye beheld his soul's belief
Fulfilled in Western twilight. Thou my land!
Shalt thunder to the ages evermore
That dreams and hopes are holy. Thou shalt still
The croaking voice of souls that shake at dawn,
Loving the dimness of their own decay,--
The lone desire, entreaty and despair,
The wasting weariness that breeds disgust,
All woes but Doubt that, wasp-like, stings Hope back,
There are ye justified. And never Time
Goldening this page can slip its moral too:
And never Thought, loving this sweet success,
But still shall love its own wild dreams the more.
And still shall brighter gild all skiey peaks
Of noble daring, with this perfect day.
Regard your leisure with my monument,
My Genoese, for centuries to be
Will yet retain Its reason as to day.
There, where my hope was builded, stands my Fame,
The youngest children of the youngest race.
The wide worlds heritors, arch-heirs of Time,
Pronounce my name with reverence, and call
Your sometime outcast, Father. Be it so.
Andrea's palace claims repairs perhaps,
The sculptured letters must be cut anew,
That on the crumbling girdle of his house
Proclaim him Principe. That be your task,
And pare your miserable marble, me.

FEATHERTOP: A MORALIZED LEGEND.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

"Dickon," cried Mother Rigby, "a coal for my pipe!"

The pipe was in the old dame's mouth, when she said these words. She had
thrust it there after filling it with tobacco, but without stooping to
light it at the hearth; where, indeed, there was no appearance of a fire
having been kindled, that morning. Forthwith, however, as soon as the
order was given, there was an intense red glow out of the bowl of the
pipe, and a whiff of smoke from Mother Rigby's lips. Whence the coal came,
and how brought thither by an invisible hand, I have never been able to
discover.

"Good!" quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod of her head. "Thank ye, Dickon! And
now for making this scarecrow. Be within call, Dickon, in case I need you
again!"

The good woman had risen thus early (for as yet it was scarcely sunrise),
in order to set about making a scarecrow, which she intended to put in the
middle of her corn patch. It was now the latter week of May, and the crows
and blackbirds had already discovered the little, green, rolled-up leaf of
the Indian corn, just peeping out of the soil. She was determined,
therefore, to contrive as lifelike a scarecrow as ever was seen, and to
finish it immediately, from top to toe, so that it should begin its
sentinel's duty that very morning. Now, mother Rigby (as every body must
have heard) was one of the most cunning and potent witches in New England,
and might, with very little trouble, have made a scarecrow ugly enough to
frighten the minister himself. But, on this occasion, as she had awakened
in an uncommonly pleasant humor, and was further dulcified by her pipe of
tobacco, she resolved to produce something fine, beautiful, and splendid,
rather than hideous and horrible.

"I don't want to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn-patch, and almost at my
own doorstep," said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of smoke;
"I could do it if I pleased; but I'm tired of doing marvellous things, and
so I'll keep within the bounds of everyday business, just for variety's
sake. Besides, there is no use in scaring the little children, for a mile
roundabout, though 'tis true I'm a witch!"

It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the scarecrow should
represent a fine gentleman of the period, so far as the materials at hand
would allow. Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the chief of the
articles that went to the composition of this figure.

The most important item of all, probably, although it made so little show,
was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken many an airy
gallop at midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a spinal
column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its arms was a
disabled flail which used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby, before his
spouse worried him out of this troublesome world; the other, if I mistake
not, was composed of the pudding-stick and a broken rung of a chair, tied
loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the right was a
hoe-handle, and the left an undistinguished and miscellaneous stick from
the wood pile. Its lungs, stomach, and other affairs of that kind, were
nothing better than a meal bag, stuffed with straw. Thus, we have made out
the skeleton and entire corporcity of the scarecrow, with the exception of
its head; and this was admirably supplied by a somewhat withered and
shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a
slit for the mouth, leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle, to pass
for a nose. It was really quite a respectable face.

"I've seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate," said Mother Rigby.
"And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin head, as well as my scarecrow!"

But the clothes, in this case, were to be the making of the man. So the
good old woman took down from a peg an ancient plum-colored coat, of
London make, and with relics of embroidery on its seams, cuffs,
pocket-flabs, and button-holes, but lamentably worn and faded, patched at
the elbows, tattered at the skirts, and threadbare all over. On the left
breast was a round hole, whence either a star of nobility had been rent
away, or else the hot heart of some former wearer had scorched it through
and through. The neighbors said, that this rich garment belonged to the
Black Man's wardrobe, and that he kept it at Mother Rigby's cottage for
the convenience of slipping it on whenever he wished to make a grand
appearance at the governor's table. To match the coat, there was a velvet
waistcoat of very ample size, and formerly embroidered with foliage, that
had been as brightly golden as the maple-leaves in October, but which had
now quite vanished out of the substance of the velvet. Next came a pair of
scarlet breeches, once worn by the French governor of Louisbourg, and the
knees of which had touched the lower step of the throne of Louis le Grand.
The Frenchman had given these small-clothes to an Indian powwow, who
parted with them to the old witch for a gill of strong waters, at one of
their dances in the forest. Furthermore, Mother Rigby produced a pair of
silk stockings, and put them on the figure's legs, where they showed as
unsubstantial as a dream, with the wooden reality of the two sticks making
itself miserably apparent through the holes. Lastly, she put her dead
husband's wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and surmounted the whole
with a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest tail
feather of a rooster.

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