This most mournful and lamentable event has called together the whole Bar of Suffolk, and all connected with the courts of law or the profession.  It has brought you, Mr. Chief Justice, and your associates of the Bench of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, into the midst of us; and you have done us the honor, out of respect to the occasion, to consent to preside over us, while we deliberate on what is due, as well to our own afflicted and smitten feelings, as to the exalted character and eminent distinction of the deceased judge.  The occasion has drawn from his retirement, also, that venerable man, whom we all so much respect and honor, (Judge Davis,) who was, for thirty years, the associate of the deceased upon the same Bench.  It has called hither another judicial personage, now in retirement, (Judge Putnam,) but long an ornament of that Bench of which you are now the head, and whose marked good fortune it is to have been the professional teacher of Mr. Justice Story, and the director of his early studies.  He also is present to whom this blow comes near; I mean, the learned judge (Judge Sprague) from whose side it has struck away a friend and a highly venerated official associate.  The members of the Law School at Cambridge, to which the deceased was so much attached, and who returned that attachment with all the ingenuousness and enthusiasm of educated and ardent youthful minds, are here also, to manifest their sense of their own severe deprivation, as well as their admiration of the bright and shining professional example which they have so loved to contemplate,—­an example, let me say to them, and let me say to all, as a solace in the midst of their sorrows, which death hath not touched and which time cannot obscure.

Mr. Chief Justice, one sentiment pervades us all.  It is that of the most profound and penetrating grief, mixed, nevertheless, with an assured conviction, that the great man whom we deplore is yet with us and in the midst of us.  He hath not wholly died.  He lives in the affections of friends and kindred, and in the high regard of the community.  He lives in our remembrance of his social virtues, his warm and steady friendships, and the vivacity and richness of his conversation.  He lives, and will live still more permanently, by his words of written wisdom, by the results of his vast researches and attainments, by his imperishable legal judgments, and by those juridical disquisitions which have stamped his name, all over the civilized world, with the character of a commanding authority.  “Vivit, enim, vivetque semper; atque etiam latius in memoria hominum et sermone versabitur, postquam ab oculis recessit.”