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patriotic, American heart never beat in an American bosom.

Mr. Du Ponceau died in 1844, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.

The various societies of which he was an officer deplored the loss they had sustained, as that of one "whose pre-eminent acquirements as a philosopher, and zeal for the promotion of useful knowledge, were equaled only by the integrity of his principles and the practical virtues of his life." The bar of Philadelphia lamented a venerable brother, whose profound learning and varied accomplishments had, for more than fifty years, distinguished him, and shed lustre on the profession.

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"Cast thine eye upon the sages of the law that have been before thee, and never shalt thou find any one that hath excelled in the knowledge of these laws, but hath drawn "from that divine knowledge gravity and integrity."-Lord Coke.

THE trite, hackneyed jokes about the dishonesty of lawyers, as a class, have been again and again refuted by the lives of some of the most eminent men in the profession. Many such burning and shining lights might be held up for the guidance and encouragement of the young man who deems the profession one which casts insurmountable obstacles in the paths of integrity and piety. Unless the highest aim of mortal existence, preparation for a future state, were attainable by the lawyer, his success would not be considered complete. Examples have already been given of men who based their morality upon deeply-fixed religious principles; we shall add to these but two others, namely, the late Chief Justice Tilghman and the late Charles Chauncey, Esq., both of Philadelphia.

The character of the chief justice was drawn by the Hon. Horace Binney. His moral qualities were of the highest order. It has been said, that the panegyrists of great men can rarely direct the eye with safety to their early years, for fear of lighting upon the traces of some irregular passion. But to Justice Tilghman may with justice be applied the praise of the Chancellor D'Aguesseau, that he was never known to take a step out of the narrow path of wisdom, and that it was sometimes remarked, if he had been young, it was for the purpose, not of palliating a defect, but of doing greater honor to his virtues. Of his early life, few of his cotemporaries remain to speak; but those few attest what the harmony of his whole character in later years would infer, that his youth gave presage, by its sobriety and exemplary rectitude, of all that we witnessed and admired in the maturity of his character.*

It is great praise to say of so excellent a judge, that there was no contrariety between his judgments and his life; that there was a perfect consent between his public and his private manners; that he was an engaging example of all he taught; and that no reproach, which, in his multifarious employment, he was compelled to utter against all the forms of injustice, public and private, so

"One of those who need not the smart of guilt to make them virtuous, nor te regret of folly to make them wise."

cial and domestic, against all violations of law, from crime down to those irregularities at which, from general infirmity, there is a general connivance, in no instance did the sting of his reproach wound his own bosom. Yet it was in his life only, and not in his pretensions, that you discerned this, his fortunate superiority to others. In his private walks he was the most unpretending of men. He bore constantly about him those characteristics of true greatness, simplicity and modesty.

The temper of the chief justice was singularly placable and benevolent. It was not in his power to remember an injury. A few days before his death he said to two of his friends, attendant upon that scene, "I am at peace with all the world. I bear no ill-will to any human being, and there is no person in existence to whom I would not do good and render a service, if it were in my power. No man can be happy who does not forgive injuries which he may have received from his fellow-creatures." How suitable was this noble conclusion to his whole life! What a grace did this spirit impart to his own supplications ! This was not a counterfeit virtue, assumed when the power to retaliate was wasted by disease. It was not the mere overflow of a kindly nature, unschooled by that divine science which teaches benevolence as a duty. In his own eulogium upon his eminent friend, Dr. Wistar, he says:" Vain is the splendor of genius without the virtues of the heart. No man who is not good deserves

the name of wise. In the language of Scripture, folly and wickedness are the same; not only because vicious habits do really corrupt and darken the understanding, but because it is no small degree of folly to be ignorant, that the chief good of man is to know the will of his Creator, and to do it."

It was under the influence of this sentiment that his fortune became a refuge to the unfortunate, far more than his unostentatious manners imported. He was gentle, compassionate, charitable in many of the senses which make charity the first of virtues; and long after his leaves and branches were all torn away, there was more than one that reposed in the shade of his venerable. trunk. His closing years finely illustrated the remark, that the heart of a good man is like a good soil which is made more fertile by the ploughshare that tears it and lays it open, or like those plants which give out their best odors when they are broken and crushed.

An interesting record which the venerable Judge Tilghman left behind him, acquaints us with many of his most private thoughts, and presents him in a relation which no man can renounce, and which, when duly observed, is the appropriate light wherein to behold an eminent judge the relation of man to his Creator.

His birth-day, the 12th of August, was habitually appropriated to the review of the past year, to self-examination, and to intercourse with God; and it will not be deemed

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