what he saw and experienced at a most impressionable age.  He put his young life into it; he was not thinking of literature when he wrote it, and thus the book takes rank with those books which are bits of life rather than products of art.  Afterward he was immersed in his law practice, and he was a prodigious worker.  He saw with great clearness the points in the cases he took up, and he was untiring in his industry to cover the whole case.  He did all the work himself; he did not lay the details on others, and avail himself of their diligence.  His time, moreover, as we have shown, was very much at the disposal of those who could pay him little or nothing for his services, and he gave months of labor to the unremunerative defence of the fugitive slave.  Moreover, his deep religious conviction and his high sense of legal honor often stood in the way of his profit.  So it was that his life was one of hard work and little more than support of his family.  There was scant time for any wandering into fields of literature.

Yet he left behind him some other writings which show well that the hand which penned the ``Two Years’’ never lost its cunning.  He made an interesting visit to Europe, and, later in life, in 1859-60, made a journey round the world.  The record which he kept on these journeys has been drawn upon largely in the biography[2] prepared by Charles Francis Adams, who was in his early days a student in Dana’s office, and there one finds page after page of delightfully animated description and narrative.  He wrote for his own pleasure and for that of his family, and his writing was like brilliant talk, the outflow of a generous mind not easily saved for more common use.  He published notes to Wheaton’s ``International Law,’’ several of which are quoted in all new works on the subject to this day.

The journey which he took round the world was for the purpose of restoring his health, which had been greatly impaired.  He came back in improved condition, and entered upon the excited period of the war, when he held the office of United States District Attorney.  During this time he argued the famous prize causes before the United States Supreme Court, and his argument was the one that turned the Court, which was democratic in its politics, to take the unanimous view that the United States Government had a right to establish blockade and take prizes of foreign vessels that were breaking this blockade.  Had it not been for this decision, so largely influenced, as the Court itself generously states, by Mr. Dana’s argument, the Civil War would have been greatly prolonged, with possibly another, or at least a doubtful issue.  He afterward served in the Massachusetts legislature, and there made several noted speeches, among others his argument on the repeal of the usury laws, a bill for which was unexpectedly carried in that body as the result of this speech which has been reprinted for use before legislatures of other states.