But Professor Brown’s biography is satisfactory in all respects, even in the delineations of the professional character of Mr. Choate, where, if anywhere, we should have looked for imperfect comprehension.  The members of the bar may rest assured that justice has been done to the legal claims and merits of one of whom they were so justly proud; and the public may be assured that the traits of Mr. Choate’s character, the qualities of his mind,—­his great and conspicuous powers, as well as his lighter graces and finer gifts,—­have been set down with taste, feeling, judgment, and discrimination.  This seems but measured language, and yet we mean it for generous praise; bearing always in mind the difficulties of the subject, and, as Professor Brown has happily said in his preface, that “the traits of Mr. Choate’s character were so peculiar, its lights and shades so delicate, various, and evanescent.”  We confess that we sat down to read the biography not without a little uneasiness, not without a flutter of apprehension.  But all feeling of this kind was soon dissipated as we went on, and there came in its place a grateful sense of the grace, skill, and taste which Professor Brown had shown in his delineation, and the faithful portrait he had produced.  And one secret of this success is to be found in the fact that he had no other object or purpose than to do justice to his subject.  He is entirely free from self-reference.  There is not in the remotest corner of his mind a wish to magnify his office and draw attention from the theme of the biography to the biographer himself.  He permits himself no digressions, he obtrudes no needless reflections, enters into no profitless discussions:  he is content to unfold the panorama of Mr. Choate’s life, and do little more than point out the scenes and passages as they pass before the spectator’s eye.

It was not an eventful life; it was, indeed, the reverse.  It was a life passed in the constant and assiduous practice of the law.  We do not forget his brief term of service in the House of Representatives, and his longer period in the Senate; but these were but episodes.  They were trusts reluctantly assumed and gladly laid aside; for he was one of those exceptional Americans who have no love of political distinction or public office.  A lawyer’s life leaves little to be recorded; the triumphs of the bar are proverbially ephemeral, and lawyers themselves are willing to forget the cases they have tried and the verdicts they have won.  Had Mr. Choate been merely and exclusively a lawyer, the story of his life could have been told in half a dozen pages; but though he was a great lawyer and advocate, he was something more:  he was an orator, a scholar, and a patriot.  He had no taste for public life, as we have just said; but he had the deepest interest in public subjects, loved his country with a fervid love, had read much and thought much upon questions of politics and government Busy as he always was in his profession, his mind,