as_,
which they illustrated; but he bent himself to the necessary details of
professional life--to the money-getting part of it--with a peculiar and
constantly increasing reluctance. The yoke of labor galled him, and
always more severely. An opportunity to speak and write what was most
pleasing to his taste, which set him free as a liberated prisoner of
thought, his untrammeled and wandering imagination extravagantly
interweaving scientific principles, natural forces, and elemental facts,
in some witch's dance of fancy, where he dissolved in its alchemy,
earth, air and water, and created a world of his own, or destroyed that
beneath his feet, was of more value to him, though it brought him no
gain, than a stiff cause in courts which bound him to dry details of
weary facts and legal propositions, though every hour of his time
bestowed a golden reward.

His early professional life was passed in Galveston. He was measurably
successful in it, and won many friends by his gallant and chivalrous
advocacy of the causes intrusted to him. His personal popularity
elevated him to a Probate Judgeship in Texas. This office he filled with
honor; and at the expiration of his term, he returned, after a brief
sojourn in New York, to his native state and town, where he practiced
his profession until 1850. In this year he caught the inspiration of
adventure in the new El Dorado, and sailed for California. From that
time he continued a citizen of this State. He was widely known and
universally respected. He practiced his profession with diligence; but
mind and heart were inviting him to the life and career of a man of
letters; and he was every day sacrificed to duty, as he esteemed it. He
was too conscientious to become indifferent to his clients' interests:
but he had no ambition for distinction as a jurist. He was utterly
indifferent to the profits of his labors. He cared nothing for money, or
for those who possessed it. His real life and real enjoyments were of a
far different sort; and his genius was perpetually bound to the altar,
and sacrificed by a sense of obligation, and a pride which never
permitted him to abandon the profession for which he was educated. Like
many another man of peculiar mental qualities, he distrusted himself
where he should have been most confident. The writer has often discussed
with Mr. Rhodes his professional and literary life, urged him to devote
himself to literature, and endeavored to point out to him the