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The Green Bag.
City of New York, and issued a volume of Chancery Reports giving his decisions as Vice-Chancellor. He was a man of elegant scholarship, and a great authority in equity and ecclesiastical law. Joseph S. Bosworth served as police com missioner after coming from the bench. Some notices of him may be found in 27 Albany Law Journal, 462, and 30 id. 121. Me edited ten volumes of the reports of his courts. He was at one time Chief-Justice. At a bar meeting on his death, William Allen Butler said : — "In Chief-Justice Oakley we admired his mas sive intellect and native judicial instinct; in ChiefJustice Duer, his ardent, impulsive love of justice, his large and various learning, his discursive but well-trained faculties; while in Chief-Justice Bos worth, what we specially admired, if I mistake not, was his acute, clear, and discriminating mind, aided by the natural vigor of his intellect, which gave him, if not a larger grasp of all the principles of the law, a firmer grasp of those which were required for constant application to the subjects of his special inquiry, than belonged to other men. With him the judicial faculty was like a true, welltempered blade, remarkable not so much for its polish as for the keenness of its edge and the sharpness of its point, — never wielded for mere dis play, never turned aside in irrelevant contests, and always fairly and fearlessly used in the interest and service of justice. As a member of the junior bar, when Judge Bosworth came on the bench in 1851, and during his term of twelve years' service, I was often before him; and it was to me always most interesting and instructive to try causes in his court. He possessed qualities which, while per haps not indispensable for a proper exercise of judicial authority, greatly enhance the pleasure and satisfaction of the practitioner. His imperturbabil ity, his patience, his great sagacity, his quickness and dexterity, if I may so call it, in detecting and defeating technical, insufficient, or unwor thy causes of action or defences, the ease with
which he disposed of difficult questions of law, the clearness with which he presented questions of fact to the jury, the quiet humor which he was fond of exhibiting without in the least detracting from the dignity of his office, the absolute impar tiality with which he held the scales of justice, — all these are traits which many of us can recall with special satisfaction. The calm serenity and even temper which distinguished him then were conspicuous in all his life, the later years of which were full of respect and honor; but it is to his judicial career that I chiefly recur, and to his judicial record, as made up in the volumes of Sandford and Duer, and the ten volumes of his own reports. It is a record of faithful, unwearied, and fruitful labor in the high and responsible office which he filled." The picture of the court, given as a fron tispiece to this number, is taken from a photograph kindly lent us by Messrs. Baker, Voorhis, & Co., the law-book publishers, of 66 Nassau St., New York. The original is the rarest member of their extensive and highly interesting legal portrait-gal lery. It is evident that it was no " compo sition " picture, but that the judges all sat together for it, in their Sunday clothes. Another copy hangs in the State Law Library at Albany, and is the most attrac tive picture in it. Groups of visitors stop before it every day; and their remarks, as overheard by the writer, are often very amusing. Brides giggle, and big men hawhaw at it. A pretty good judgment was passed on it by a man, evidently from the wild West, who said, " Rum old duffers for looks, but I 'll bet they knew a heap." Judge Bosworth, however, was an eminently handsome man. They are all, we believe, beyond the criticisms of this world; and it is probable that their court will soon follow them, for there is a strong effort making to abolish it.