tch lady
--friend of Walter Scott and of so many of the English and
Scotch men of letters in her time--Mrs. Grant of Laggan.
Mrs. Grant says in a letter published in her Memoir: "My
failing memory represents my short intercourse with Mrs.
Gray as if some bright vision from a better world had come
and, vanishing, left a trail behind." In another letter she
speaks of the enchantment of Mrs. Gray's character: "Anything
so pure, so bright, so heavenly I have rarely met with."

The title, which the kindness of our countrymen has given
to Massachusetts, that of Model Commonwealth, I think has
been earned largely by the character of her Judiciary, and
never could have been acquired without it. Among the great
figures that have adorned that Bench in the past, the figure
of Justice Gray is among the most conspicuous and stately.

Judge Gray has had from the beginning a reputation for wonderful
research. Nothing ever seemed to escape his industry and
profound learning. This was shown on a few occasions when
he undertook some purely historical investigation, as in his
notes on the case of the Writs of Assistance, argued by James
Otis and reported in Quincy's Reports, and his recent admirable
address at Richmond, on Chief Justice Marshall. But while
all his opinions are full of precedent and contain all the
learning of the case, he was, I think, equally remarkable
for the wisdom, good sense, and strength of his judgments.
I do not think of any Judge of his time anywhere, either here
or in England, to whom the profession would ascribe a higher
place if he be judged only by the correctness of his opinions
in cases where there were no precedents on which to lean and
for the excellent original reasons which he had to give. I
think Judge Gray's fame, on the whole, would have been greater
as a man of original power if he had resisted, sometimes,
the temptation to marshal an array of cases, and had suffered
his judgments to stand on his statement of legal principles
without the authorities. He manifested another remarkable
quality when he was on the Bench of Massachusetts. He was
an admirable _nisi-prius_ Judge. I think we rarely have had
a better. He possessed that faculty which made the jury,
in the old days, so admirable a mechanism for performing their
part in the administration of justice. He had the rare gift,
especially rare in men whose training has been chiefly upon
the Bench, of discerning the truth of the fact