Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase | Page 2

responsive plaudits from his
countrymen. His career shows no step backward, the places he filled
were all of the highest, the services he rendered were the most difficult
as well as the most eminent. If, as the preacher proclaims, "time and
chance happeneth to all," the times in which Mr. Chase lived permitted
the widest scope to great abilities and the noblest forms of public
service; and the fortunes of his life show the felicity of the occasions
which befell him to draw out these abilities, and to receive these
services. Not less complete was the round of public honors which
crowned his public labors, and we have no occasion, here, to lament
any shortcomings of prosperity or favor, or repeat the authentic
judgment which the voices of his countrymen have pronounced upon
his fame.
The simple office, then, which seems to me marked out for one who
assumes this deputed service in the name of the college and for the
friends of good learning, is, in so far as the just limits of time and
circumstance will permit, to expose the main features of this celebrated
life, "to decipher the man and his nature," to connect the true elements
of his character and the moulding force of his education with the work
he did, with the influence he wielded in life, with the power of the
example which lives after him, and always to have in view, as the most
fruitful uses of the hour, his relations to the men and events of his times,
and, not less, his true place in history among the lawyers, orators,
statesmen, magistrates of the land. Vera non verba is our maxim to-day;
truth, not words, must mark the tribute the college pays to the sober
dignity and solid worth of its distinguished son.
Born of a lineage, which on the father's side dates its American descent

from the Puritan emigration of 1640, and on the mother's, finds her the
first of that stock native to this country, the son of these parents took no
contrariety of traits from the union of the blood of the English Puritans
and the Scotch Covenanters, but rather harmonious corroboration of the
characteristics of both. These, sturdy enough in either, combined in this
descendant to produce as independent and resolute a nature for the
conflicts and labors of his day, as any experience of trial or triumph, of
proscription or persecution suffered or resisted, had required or
supplied in the long history of the contests of these two congenial races
with priests and potentates, with principalities and powers. Nothing
could be less consonant with a just estimate of the strong traits of this
lineage, than which neither Hebrew, nor Grecian, nor Roman nurture
has wrought for its heroes either a firmer fibre or a nobler virtue, than
to ascribe its chief power to enthusiasm or fanaticism. Plain, sober,
practical men and women as they were, there was no hard detail of
every-day life that they were not equal to, no patient and cheerless
sacrifice they could not endure, no vicissitude of adverse or prosperous
fortune which they could not meet with unchecked serenity. If it be
enthusiasm that in them the fear of God had cast out the fear of man, or
fanaticism that they placed "things that are spiritually discerned" above
the vain shows of the world of sense, in so far they were enthusiasts
and fanatics. In every stern conflict, in every vast labor, in every
intellectual and moral development of which this country has been the
scene, without fainting or weariness they have borne their part, and in
the conclusive triumph of the principles of the Puritans and their
policies over all discordant, all opposing elements, which enter into the
wide comprehension of American nationality, theirs be the praise
which belongs to such well-doing.
The son of a farmer--a man of substance, and of credit with his
neighbors, and not less with the people of his State--young Chase drew
from his boyhood the vigor of body and of mind which rural life and
labors are well calculated to nourish. Several of his father's brothers
were graduates of this college, and reached high positions in Church
and State. An unpropitious turn of the commercial affairs of the country
nipped, with its frost, the growing prosperity of his father, whose death,
soon following, left him, in tender years, and as one of a numerous

family, to the sole care of his mother. With most scanty means, her
thrift and energy sufficed to save her children from ignorance or
declining manners; maintained their self-respect and independence; set
them forth in the world well disciplined, stocked with good principles,
and inspired with proud and honorable purposes. To the praise of this
excellent woman, wherever the name of her great son