342

The Green Bag

the tones of their voices, and mark the

thirty years. during which I have been

manner with which they announce their decisions; thus we acquire more or less of a personal acquaintanceship with

engaged in the serious work of collecting

each man, which leads us to inquire into

his mental characteristics, and from that time out no longer do the reports of the Supreme Court of the United States remain mere legal abstractions.

Hav

ing heard an opinion read by Chief Justice Fuller in mild tones, or by Mr.

all the portraits and many autograph letters and legal documents, illustra tive of the history of the profession on both sides of the Atlantic, and at the end of some thirty years of accumula tion, I have all the portraits, so far as they can be had, of the Chancellors, the Vice-Chancellors, the Masters of the Rolls, the Chief Barons, the puisne

Justice Harlan or Mr. Justice Brewer

Barons of the Exchequer, the Lord Chief

in deep bass, or Mr. Justice White with energy, or by Mr. Justice Holmes with the intonations of a scholar, these men no longer are mere dim figures to us.

Justices and puisne Justices of the King's

They are living legal personalities, and we attach more importance, and are

Practice Act of 1873 and their Judica ture Act, as it is called, the Lord Jus

Bench,

the

Chief

Justices of

the

Common Pleas and the Associate Jus

tices, and since the passage of their

much more inclined to weigh opinions

tices of Appeal as well as those who deal

in the scales of our own judgment based on our own knowledge of the men, than

with matters of admiralty, of probate and divorce—and in that way it be

if they were total strangers to us.

comes perfectly possible to know what

Now, of course, with regard to the great body of judges at large, that is an impossibility. With regard to those

manner of men they were.

who are dead it is an absolute impos sibility.

Their faces cannot be seen,

their voices will never sound again, and their hands will no longer take up their pens to write judgments which are to stand as expositions of great principles. The next best thing that can be done is to gather the portraits, the auto graph letters, and the documents of

The col

lection now numbers some twelve thou sand pictures, some of them superb mezzotints, line engravings, stipple or mixed illustrations, and others, finished

with the most perfect skill of the en gravers, displaying trials and scenes in

court. To them I add everything that can be found in the shape of published trials, curious books, early editions, legal documents, autograph letters, until

those men. In this way we substitute, through the engraver's art and the mul

there is in my mind a storehouse of pictures, so that if a name should hap pen to be mentioned, that man is no

tiplications of the issues of the printing

longer a mere abstraction.

press, a body of engraved or written

sents not only a definite human being, but a human being in the right place,

images which impress themselves on the mind, which will lead us thereafter to personify the judgments of a court instead of dealing with them as items

He repre

in connection with his official position.

I could readily fill this room on the one wall with portraits of Lord Mansfield,

under the headings in an encyclopedia, or digest, or dictionary. The extent to

of Lord Eldon on the other; and of John

which this can be carried is an exceed ingly interesting study- I confess that I have ridden the hobby for the past

upon this end of the room. That is merely an illustration. When it is found

Marshall, I could not place them all

that the art of engraving and the art of