Mr. Mason, while yet in New Hampshire, found himself engaged in causes in which that illustrious man, Samuel Dexter, also appeared.  The late Mr. Justice Story was still more frequently at the bar of that State; and, at a period somewhat earlier, your great and distinguished predecessor, Chief Justice Parsons, occasionally presented himself before the courts at Portsmouth or Exeter, and he is known to have entertained a very high regard, personal and professional, as well for Mr. Mason as for the late Chief Justice Smith.

Among those still living, with whom Mr. Mason was on terms of intimacy, and with whom he associated at the bar, were Messrs. Plumer, Arthur Livermore, Samuel Bell, and Charles H. Atherton.  If these respected men could be here to-day, every one of them would unite with us in our tribute of love and veneration to his memory.

But, Sir, political eminence and professional fame fade away and die with all things earthly.  Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth.  These remain.  Whatever of excellence is wrought into the soul itself belongs to both worlds.  Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life; it points to another world.  Political or professional reputation cannot last for ever; but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessary and indispensable element in any great human character.  There is no living without it.  Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne.  If that tie be all sundered, all broken, he floats away, a worthless atom in the universe; its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation, and death.  A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe, in such terse but terrific language, as living “without God in the world.”  Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away, from the purposes of his creation.

A mind like Mr. Mason’s, active, thoughtful, penetrating, sedate, could not but meditate deeply on the condition of man below, and feel its responsibilities.  He could not look on this mighty system,

    “This universal frame, thus wondrous fair,”

without feeling that it was created and upheld by an Intelligence, to which all other intelligences must be responsible.  I am bound to say, that in the course of my life I never met with an individual, in any profession or condition of life, who always spoke, and always thought, with such awful reverence of the power and presence of God.  No irreverence, no lightness, even no too familiar allusion to God and his attributes, ever escaped his lips.  The very notion of a Supreme Being was, with him, made up of awe and solemnity.  It filled the whole of his great mind with the strongest emotions.  A