thoughts and emotions saddened by sorrowful experience. In appreciating the fragments, we think in painful regret on all that was left unwritten. The gathered stores of thought, the rich acquisitions of knowledge, the sound views on all subjects brought under his calm, far-seeing investigation, these are buried with him without a record. When with those with whom he felt the freedom of social intercourse, he would often give full expression to his opinions; and if excited by the theme, his eye would sparkle, his manner become animated, and his converse so filled with suggestive ideas, that to be a listener was as delightful as profitable. In the knowledge of history few excelled him. His accuracy and impartial judgment made him valued as a reference; and in giving the result of his own reading from various sources, he presented a view so distinctly defined and so happily arranged, that it left an impression not easily effaced. But his sensitive shrinking from expressing his deeper emotions, or the self-communings with his own spirit, left no trace save in a few passages of his journal. When his heart was oppressed, when weary or troubled in mind, even those near and dear to him would feel a delicacy in intruding upon the sacredness of sorrow, fearing that their sympathy would give more pain than alleviation, and knowing that he had a Comforter to whom all his sufferings were known ere they were breathed in prayer. CHAPTER III. ENTRANCE ON PROFESSIONAL LIFE- · IMPRESSION MADE ON HIS LEGAL ASSOCIATES. O man! thine image of thy Maker's good, The soul ascends From mighty means to more important ends; Securely, though by steps but rarely trod, Mounts from inferior beings up to God, And sees by no fallacious light or dim, Earth made for man and man himself for him.-WORDSWORTH. AFTER having spent nearly four years in studying law, Mr. Baker was admitted to the bar on the 17th of April, 1832. At the age of twenty-two he left his retired home to enter upon an untried scene, to struggle for professional success in the jostling crowd. The contrast was great, the trial severe, unfitted as he was for the encounter from his morbidly sensitive temperament, his long seclusion, and his protracted solitary studies. His purity of mind, childlike simplicity of character, and deep reverence for all that is true and just and good, must necessarily have caused him to recoil from many men and many things that passed before him, and to look wistfully back to the purer companionship of books in rural quietude. But he could not shrink back, feeling that now he must plant his foot firmly at the starting point, and patiently, resolutely trace out before him his own path of life, though as yet unconscious of the manifold snares and temptations to be met and conquered by the way. But he had the safeguard of a religious training, and the shield of noble impulses and virtuous principles. Under the superintending providence of the God of his fathers, these bore him onward and upward through every opposing obstacle. If at any time he yielded to the solicitation of his friends, by accompanying them to places of amusement that the world calls "innocent," he found them unsuited to his taste, and a violation. of his better judgment. He devoted the energies of his mind to attain a high standard in legal knowledge. From the first he refused to take any part in criminal cases, for which his sensitive nature wholly unfitted him. His timidity in appearing before the public caused him to abandon all hope of becoming a pleader, and he marked out a course for himself which would keep him comparatively retired from public notice. He cultivated the acquaintance of those who sought the wider sphere of extensive acquirements, and found no congeniality among the aspirants for professional distinction based upon oratorical display or ingenious sophistry. The emoluments of law he only anticipated as a just return for labor expended; but never were these at any period a paramount consideration, for the largest fee that could be proffered could not tempt him to sustain an unjust claim. The specious maxim that the cause of a client must be always regarded as right, brought no mists of sophistry between him and the sunlight of justice, nor overshadowed, even for a moment, his clear perception of truth. Those whose ductile consciences could be easily extended to the needed length derided him as fastidious, predicting his failure as a lawyer as a merited penalty for over-scrupulousness. But none of these things moved him, for he would never have accepted professional success if it demanded the sacrifice of a single principle. Soon after he was admitted to the bar he entered into partnership with a commercial lawyer in large practice, and plunged at once into the tide of business. This may have been the best course to conquer timidity, to benefit him professionally; but that |