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VOL. IV.

RICHMOND, FEBRUARY, 1838.

No. II.

T. W. WHITE, Editor and Proprietor.

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How often have I wished to possess that talent for delineating the characters of eminent men which might enable me to send down to posterity the portraits of the great and good with whom it has been my happy lot to be associated in the journey of life! How should I delight to accompany them with reminiscences of their virtues and talents, of their racy wit and humor, and of the interesting scenes which they dignified by their presence or enlivened by their good fellowship! I should have a picture gallery that would attract the gaze of every amateur! And, oh! my dear, my ever lamented friend! what benignant countenance would fix the admiration of the beholder more steadfastly than thine?

FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM.

to-day;" meaning Fluvanna county, then and yet familiarly called the State of Flu. "But," said Carr, "I have no business." "Neither have I," said Wirt. "But I have not any money," said Carr. "Nor have I," said Wirt; "but by going there we shall get both. I wont be denied: you must go." They went. On the way Wirt was in "a great gale;" his spirits high, his hopes buoyant, his gaiety of heart overflowing. "Here," said he, at last, "are we two poor county court lawyers going to the State of Flu, without money and without business; but I foresee you will one day or other be Judge of the Court of Appeals; and as for me," said he, laughing, "I shall not be content with less than the Presidency." Strange vaticination!!— They went on;-they got business and money; and fortune soon smiled upon their labors and their worth. Mr. Carr shortly after married his first cousin, and soon extended his practice to Buckingham and Amherst, and afterwards to the Chancery Court at Staunton. At length, on the 26th March, 1811, he was appointed a Judge of the General Court by the Executive, but the appointment was not confirmed by the Legislature, professedly because he was not at the time of appointment a resident of the Circuit; but principally, I believe, from the very great personal popularity of another gentleman, who had for some time been a member of the Legislature, and whose position thus gave him great advantages over his opponent. Judge Carr kept aloof from the contest, and upon its unsuccessful termination prepared to return to the bar. Utrinque paratus might well have been his motto. The canvass however had brought into full view his great merits, and all became sensible of the injustice that had been done him. A desire to repair it, has always been supposed to have aided in that division of the Chancery Court at Staunton by which the Winchester and Clarksburg Chancery Districts were created. Of these Districts he was appointed Chancellor by the unanimous vote of the same Legislature which had refused to confirm his first appointment as Judge of the General Court. This was on the 29th of January, 1812. The law was passed the day before.

DABNEY CARR, the regretted subject of this notice, was born at Spring Forest, in Goochland county, in May 1772. He was but three weeks old at the death of his father, and the care of himself and his brothers and sisters devolved upon his widowed mother, the sister of Thomas Jefferson. I had the pleasure of knowing her. She was a lady of singular worth, and fulfilled with fidelity and sound judgment the duties which were demanded of her by the numerous family left her by her husband. Her son Dabney went to school to Parson Murray, and in due season was sent to Hampden Sidney College, where he was the fellow student of the present Judge Cabell, and of other interesting persons who have since played conspicuous parts on the theatre of life. On his return home, he read law at Bearcastle, in Albemarle, which had been the old family mansion of his grandfather, I think; and afterwards at Dunlora, in the same county, adjoining Pennpark, the residence of Dr. Gilmer, whose daughter Mr. Wirt had married, and with whom he lived. Here commenced that intimacy which continued unbroken till sundered by death. They were constantly associated, and cultivated together their taste for literature, with the aid of the fine libraries of Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Jefferson. Under the superintendence of the last of these gentlemen Mr. Carr's studies were conducted. About the age of twenty-one, he obtained a license to practise the law, and settled in Charlottesville, the seat of justice of Albemarle, to which county he for some time confined himself. The first occasion of his ex-devotion of those friends who formed the circle of his tending his practice to another county occurred in the following manner. I give the narration from the lips of one of his nearest connexions.

Mr. Wirt one morning rode up to his little office, and addressing him by an appellation by which he was known among his youthful friends, remarked, "Well, Chevalier, I'm come to carry you to the State

Mr. Carr accordingly removed to Winchester in the month of March succeeding his appointment. He was received with the greatest cordiality into that excellent society, with which he soon mingled in the most delightful intercourse. His fine qualities made him the object of universal esteem, and secured to him the entire

acquaintance. Never was there a more pleasant, or a more hospitable and sociable little community. Let me solace myself by running over the names of some of them. There were, Judge Holmes, Judge White, Judge Carr, General Singleton, Daniel Lee, Frank Gilmer, Mr. Heterick, Dr. Macky, Dr. Conrad, Col. Magill, Alfred H. Powell, Henry Tucker, Dr. VOL. IV.-9

Balmain, Mr. Tidball, Mr. McGuire, General John (ble-from the pathos of "Highland Mary” and the Smith, Mr. Edward Smith, and others not so well sentimental humor of "John Anderson," to the broadest known beyond the limits of the town, but not less specimens of Irish wit or Yankee notions. amiable or interesting. Among those I have mentioned, the reader will recognise many names with which he is familiar. Alas! but one of the whole number survives! Never was a society more completely swept away in a few years! And though the places of those I once knew and loved there, are filled by others both interesting and intelligent, yet my aged heart cannot warm towards them as it did to my old companions, who are now sleeping the sleep of death on the silent hills above the town, or have found their last resting | Obadiah Squaretoes, while others are to be found only place in some distant spot.

Judge Carr's tastes were eminently literary. He had formed them at an early day and upon the finest models of English literature. The writers of the reign of Queen Anne were decidedly his favorites, and the humor of Swift was exactly to his mind. He has obviously made it his model in some of his essays, while in others of a graver cast he seems to have formed himself upon the style of Addison. A specimen of his composition may be seen in the Old Bachelor, under the signature of

in the public prints, which he sometimes adorned by Judge Carr entered upon the duties of his station effusions of a humorous or literary character, though he with the zeal and assiduity for which he was always never, I believe, entered upon the arena of politics. He so remarkable. His task was a laborious one, but he preferred the calm and philosophical pleasures of litealways accomplished it faithfully and honestly. He rary pursuits to the exciting and maddening topics of never cheated himself or the public with the false notion political controversy. He was intimately acquainted that he had done much when he had done but little. with the Latin classics, in which he took great delight, He went through his business regularly, and never had but mainly, I think, in Cicero; for I heard him declare occasion to sigh forth the mortifying confession, "I but a few months before his death that he anxiously have left undone those things which I ought to have looked forward to the period when he might resign his done;" and if we may judge from the affirmances of public employments and indulge himself with a thohis decrees by the Court of Appeals, he was equally rough perusal of the works of Tully in the original. exempt from the imputation of having "done those Shakspeare he was devoted to. He knew his works things which he ought not to have done." In his west- thoroughly, and repeated with the most scrupulous ern court he met with much to put in requisition the accuracy most of the fine passages of that noble poet. steadfastness of his character; and the felicity with He was as particular as the late Mr. Randolph about which he united to a determined and unshrinking dis-exactness in quotation, and was himself never detected charge of duty, a suavity of manner that excluded the in the slightest variation from his author. possibility of personal offence, is, through all that country, to this day, the subject of remark and admiration. But though faithful to his duties, Judge Carr found ample time to devote to society, to general literature, and to occasional composition. Conspicuous for his liberal hospitality and for his love of cheerful society, he delighted in the free and intimate intercourse which he found in the society of Winchester, and entered heartily into the project of the "Frugal Fare Club," suggested by Judge Holmes, for bringing together the congenial spirits of the circle one or two evenings in every week. The members met in succession at each other's houses, and enjoyed most truly "the feast of reason and the flow of soul." Politics were excluded by universal consent as the bane of good fellowship, and the absence of sumptuousness in the entertainment was always compensated by intellectual pleasures. The conversation, sometimes grave and philosophical, and usually literary and instructive, was nevertheless often gay and amusing, and interspersed with wit, anecdote and humor; and even a favorite song would sometimes give a fillip to the spirits of the company. "Give me, nymph, my heart again," and Burns's "Tam Glenn," were my good friend's accustomed contributions to this part of the entertainment, and his soft and mellow tones seem even now breathing on my ear,

In February, 1824, Judge Carr was elected to supply the vacancy on the bench of the Court of Appeals occasioned by the death of the venerable Judge Fleming. In the volumes of our Reports from that date until his death in the winter of 1837, will be found the history of his public life-the memorial of his public services— the faithful record of his patient and untiring industry, and the enduring evidences of his powers of mind, his profound learning, and thorough acquaintance with the philosophy of his profession. Those volumes form for him an imperishable monument. Nothing but the incursion of a barbarian horde, the devastations of an Attila or the conflagrations of an Omar can destroy it. Precedents are the basis of our jurisprudence; and unless that is subverted, unless there be a bouleversement of all our institutions, these volumes must go down to posterity and transmit to generations yet unborn the able opinions of Dabney Carr. They form indeed the best chance of immortality both for bar and bench. It is some reward for their labors, that the good they do will live after them, even if their evil be not "interred with their bones." It is some solace to think that a century hence the learned will pore over the decrees of Chancellor Wythe, the expanded views of Edmund Pendleton, the vigorous opinions of Spencer Roane, and the profound investigations of Dabney Carr, as we look back to the judgments of old Hobart or the authoritative institutes of the great Sir Edward Coke. What an incentive to the faithful discharge of their Poor Singleton had but a single song in the world-important duties by judicial functionaries, to know "You are welcome to Paxton, Robin Adair"-but such that their names will be "familiar in the mouths of was its whimsicality, and such the indescribable and men as household words;" and that a faithful record unearthly tones in which he uttered it, that he rarely will pass down to the latest times, of their wisdom and failed to be encored. Holmes's stock was inexhausti- of their weakness; of their profound and well reflected

"My heart is a-breaking, dear Titty,
Some comfort then to me come len'."

judgments, and of their rash and ill considered resolutions.

career with rapid strides, without his hat, imagined he was deranged, and so reported, to the no small amusement of the good judge himself and of all his friends. When he came to Richmond, he selected, with a view. to exercise, a residence more than a mile and a half from the Capitol, so that he rarely walked less than six, and often as much as ten miles in a day. This he did through all weather, never using his carriage, how

in his attendance upon the court for any cause save sickness. In this too he was fortunate. He was rarely away from indisposition; and even after his decline was evident, his friends unavailingly urged him to absent himself. His health was greatly impaired for three months before his death, yet he so persevered that he lost but one week, and that week was the last of his life! Admirable-conscientious man!!!

On turning to the Reports, we cannot but be struck with the fact, that in most of the cases, Judge Carr delivers his own opinion at length, and all bear the stamp of the most careful preparation. It is impossible that investigations, whether of law or fact, could have been more thorough and searching than those of this indefatigable man. He took minute notes of the argu-ever tempestuous it might be, and never missing a day ments at the bar. He then sifted the records to the bran. Not a word escaped him; not a fact eluded his examination. Every particle of evidence was weighed with the most scrupulous care. And when the facts were perfectly mastered, his researches into the law were pursued with the same untiring zeal. Every authority cited in argument, and many others which his own diligence brought to light, were critically scanned, and most commonly reviewed. He was never content with turning to the dictum of the judge alone; but he studied the facts of each case, and was thus enabled to understand more justly the application and the truth of the principles decided. In short, he slurred over nothing. Painstaking exactness was conspicuous throughout all his actions, and particularly in the discharge of official duty; and lest he should fall into error, he very frequently transcribed the opinions of the court in the cases cited at considerable length. Thus it was that every new decision added new and valuable materials to the ample stores of his well informed mind; and thus it was that he saw nothing "through a glass darkly,” but that all his perceptions were clear, and all his knowledge accurate and profound.

His deportment on the bench was characterized by that modesty, and forbearance, and deference for the opinions of others, which marked his conduct through life. He rarely interrupted the counsel, and when he ventured to suggest a difficulty, he always did it in such a manner as neither to embarrass or to damp their ardor, by the apprehension that they were addressing a prejudiced hearer. He was indeed not hasty in making up his opinions, or in yielding to the first suggestions of his mind upon the argument of a case, though when his judgment was once formed, it was inflexible. It has been objected to the celebrated Pothier, that he suffered his mind to be too soon preoccupied in the trial of a cause. In the Eloge pronounced upon him in the University of Orleans by M. La Trosne, the king's advocate, we are told it was his custom to "express his opinion aloud" at the hearing of a case. "Scarcely had an advocate opened a cause before he became master of it; he anticipated all the arguments of the respective parties, and had formed a judgment within himself almost before the bar could perceive what was the matter in dispute. He had afterwards only to observe the manner in which the case was supported and defended. If it was a cause of slight importance, he allowed his mind to amuse itself with other subjects; if he exercised his attention, he could scarcely avoid intimating his concurrence or dissent by his gestures, or by a half utterance, so that his opinion was known well enough previous to going to consultation.

But such labors were too much for his strength. The faithful discharge of his judicial duties, together with the time he devoted to other mental occupations, broke in upon his hours of repose. After finishing his records, he had still to keep up with the news of the day and the passing political occurrences, which he generally took from the columns of the National Intelligencer; and after all this, I am inclined to think he rarely omitted to bestow some portion of the night upon those favorite fountains from which he had drawn the early lessons of wisdom and virtue, and imbibed the chastened principles of a correct and classical taste. The consequence was, that during the eight months' session of the courts, he allowed himself ordinarily but five hours' sleep, rarely retiring till long after midnight, and "But he allowed himself much greater liberty when he always rising at the dawn of day. Residing nearly presided. The fondness for despatch, which is confestwo miles from the market, he nevertheless regularly sedly laudable, but which ought to be kept within attended it for the sake of the exercise, and his more proper limits, carried him away, and made him forget self-indulgent neighbors who lived in its vicinity would the patience that is proper for a judge, and is due to the often meet him returning from it as they were repairing parties. The party that fails in a contest ought not to to it. Exercise indeed he found essential to him, and have the opportunity of complaining that he has not no circumstances prevented his taking it. After a se-been heard." "If the advocates wandered from the point vere attack of gravel, in Winchester, it had been urged in question, he was in haste to bring them back to it; upon him by Dr. Physic, in whose judgment he reposed but if they advanced an improper argument, or mainthe most unbounded confidence. Accordingly he regu-tained a false principle, he could not command his imlarly walked a certain number of miles every day, and when the weather was bad, he frequently resorted to the spacious quadrangle of the market-house, under cover of which he walked a stated number of times, often without his hat if the weather was warm, scoring each successive circuit at the starting place. A person who casually saw him thus coursing, and chalking down his performance, and then recommencing his

patience, and interrupted them for the purpose of fixing them to the true principles and arguments of the cause. The audience sometimes degenerated into dissertations and a kind of conference. His friends sometimes remonstrated with him upon the subject, which he approved, but he was not master of his conduct."

These were not the faults of Judge Carr. His mind was not only candid and fair in entering upon a case,

but he preserved it as free from bias during the argu-| dison and Swift, of Pope and of Akenside, and how ment, as in the nature of the thing is possible. When many strong attachments from the scenes of the immorthat was over, he set his vigorous intellect to work, and tal Shakspeare! Horace and Cicero have been dead after forming his judgment, had little difficulty in re- 2,000 years; yet still from the united perusal of these ducing it to paper: for he was a ready writer, and works, young friendships spring through the influence poured out his thoughts from a full mind. His style of that strong feeling, the sympathy of tastes. So was was pure and perspicuous, often strong and nervous, it with the friends of whom I speak. Their friendship and not unfrequently embellished by a figure, where it was cultivated through the medium of the same tastes, tended to illustrate his meaning, or to give force to his the same elevated principles, the same devoted love of expression. But otherwise, it was chaste and una- virtue and honorable distinction, and was cherished dorned, partaking of his own unpretending simplicity through life by the same influences, sustained and augand aversion to display. mented by the warm and generous feelings of their own amiable hearts.

In the relations of private life, Judge Carr never had a superior. His temper was the finest I ever knew. I shall not be guilty, I trust, of invading the sanctity His gentleness of manners, his unaffected modesty, his of the domestic circle, when I observe, that in the most perfectly respectful deportment to all, his warın and interesting of all our relations, the subject of these devoted feelings, his upright and conscientious princi- sketches was as remarkable, as in any other whatever. ples, his punctuality and exactness in all his dealings, There was something almost romantic, in his devotedhis liberal hospitality, his stainless honor, his unshrink-ness to one, who had from youth to age, travelled with ing firmness, won for him universal love, respect and him the journey of life; and who had merited by her esteem. He truly said, upon his death-bed, he left not gentle affections and unvarying solicitude for his happian enemy behind him; and oh, miracle of men! withness, all the tenderness which belongs to so endearing his moderate revenues, he left not a creditor!! And yet, with all his exactness, he had a heart of warm benevolence, and a hand open as day to melting charity! Upon the whole, his character presented the most remarkable union of the gentler and severer virtues, that I have ever met with. At the head of them stood CONSCIENTIOUSNESS, sustained and fortified by STEADFASTNESS and CONSTANCY!

The attachments of Dabney Carr were strong and abiding. He grappled his friends to him with hoops of steel, and he could boast of such friends as were worthy of his fidelity among them were William Wirt, John Coalter and William H. Cabell. They were as brothers from their early manhood, and their friendship grew while life was waning. Mr. Wirt was the earliest the dearest of the ties. They had in youth been at the bar together, and a similarity of tastes had contributed to draw them to each other, and to bind them in an indissoluble friendship. This indeed is one of the advantages of the cultivation of a taste for the classics, both ancient and modern. They bring together congenial spirits. They are a bond of union between ingenuous youth. They furnish a mirror in which we may not only see ourselves, but one another. And when we find the bosom of our young companion dilating with noble sentiments, and his eye glistening with the exquisite sense of classical beauty, we feel at once that we have met with one whose similarity of tastes must bind him to us. Idem velle atque idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est. And if this be so with boon companions in their gay pursuits, with sportsmen in the manly chase, and with soldiers marching shoulder to shoulder to the field, why should it not be so with those, who together walk with Socrates or Tully, who together hold familiar converse with the mighty dead, and in their sacred volumes read

The songs

Of Grecian bards and records writ by fame
For Grecian heroes?

How many an intimacy must have been formed over the pages of Roman and Grecian story! how many a fast friendship has grown up out of the beauties of Ad

a connexion. They were indeed most happy in each
other, and in their children also. He left two daughters,
on whom his affectionate attentions were lavished with
the peculiar tenderness which always distinguishes a
father's feeling for his daughters. They were educated
principally at home, and to his other labors was added
the interesting task of instructing them in the French
language, in which he was himself very well versed.
In short, there was no duty for the exact performance
of which he was not remarkable. He marked out for
himself a plan of life which he ever pursued with the
most scrupulous exactness. From it he indulged in no
deviation. With a gentleness of disposition and a soft-
ness of manners without a parallel in our sex, he was
withal a man of the most determined and unshaken
purpose that I have ever known. As was said of
Fabricius, "It would have been as easy to turn the
sun from his course, as him from the paths of duty and
of honor." Never was there a human being to whom
the beautiful and familiar lines of Horace more truly
applied:

Justum ac tenacem propositi virum,
Non civium ardor prava jubentium
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida.

He was constant as the northern star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.

Such was Dabney Carr! Those who knew him well, will bear testimony to the fidelity of this portrait. Their own hearts will tell them that it has not a single exaggerated feature. Those who knew him not, may rest assured of its truth. And all will feel a deep interest in the similarity of some of its traits to those of the immortal Newton, delineated in the following passage, from the eloquent lips of Doctor Chalmers. He speaks of that great man as "the throned prince of all the philosophers, in whom the gentleness and modesty of a childlike piety at once irradiated and softened the lustre of his genius, moulding him into the goodliest specimen of humanity which earth hath ever seen. Never did meekness and genius combine to realize upon the character of man so rare a union; so that while he

stands forth to a wondering species upon the loftiest summits of an intellectual elevation, he yet mingled so gently, so gracefully, in ordinary life, that he was not more honored for the surpassing lustre of his genius, than he was loved for the milder glories of his nature; and that, while raised almost above his species in the grandeur of philosophy, he yet exhibited among men the unpretending grace of a cottage patriarch."

I shall conclude this imperfect sketch of the best of men, by the following obituary, which appeared in the public prints upon the occasion of his death, together with the proceedings of the Court of Appeals in honor of his memory; though I am well aware that the sentiments expressed in them are already embodied in the preceding pages.

Departed this life, on Jan. 9, 1837, at his residence near this city, the Honorable Dabney Carr, one of the Judges of the Court of Appeals. The following hasty sketch of his life and character have been submitted at our request, by a friend, ac. companied by the expression of a hope that the portrait of the fine and noble character of the deceased, will be carefully drawn by some more able pencil.

The mind of Judge Carr was clear, vigorous and accurate; his style was pure, classical, and strong; his learning was extensive, well digested, and profound; his acquirements in every field of literature, considerable. With the ancient classics, and the best writers of our own language, he was largely and intimately acquainted; and one of his greatest enjoyments was to spend a leisure moment with his favorite Cicero, of whose works he was eminently fond. With a mind thus stored, it was not wonderful that his society was the delight of his friends, and accordingly all who were fortunate enough to enjoy it, sought it with avidity. In his private relations, indeed, his life was truly lovely; always urbane-never censorious; always benevolent-never stern; among the foremost in the liberal hospitality of a gentleman,-to his friends, warm and devoted; and as a husband, father and brother, never surpassed. In his last moments, all these gentle and auniable qualities beamed forth with conspicuous brightness. It was an affecting evidence of his tenderness, that he desired that his last look might dwell on the amiable partner, who for nearly forty years had shared his cares and his fortunes, and whose privilege it had been to enjoy, for such a length of days, a happy union with one of the noblest of men. He met death with the fortitude and resignation which might well have been expected from such a man in the evening of a well spent life. He ordered the curtains of his windows to be withdrawn only a few hours before his death, (for he retained his senses to the last,) and looking out upon the bright world that lay before him, he exclaimed, "Beautiful! beautiful! all is bright, and now I want to go up. But it is not fit that we should be impatient at leaving so beautiful a world as this. We must wait our time"-and accordingly, though his last moments became more distressing and led him to wish repeatedly that the struggle was over, his patience and calmness never for a moment deserted him.

To such a man we may point the rising generation, and say to them, in the language of his favorite poet

Respice exemplar vitæ morumque jubebo.

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At a meeting of the surviving Judges of the Court of Appeals, the Members of the Bar, and the Officers of the Court, held at the Capitol, on Monday, the 9th day of January, 1837:

On motion of Henry St. George Tucker, Esq. Francis T. Brooke, Esq. was called to the Chair. Sidney S. Baxter was appointed Secretary.

Benjamin W. Leigh, Esq. ar nounced the death of Dabney Carr, Esq., one of the Judges of the Court of Appeals, and moved the following preamble and resolutions, which were unanimously adopted:

Judge Carr was born in May 1772, about one month before the death of his father. He was brought up by his excellent mother, the sister of Mr. Jefferson, and at maturity commenced the practice of the law, in Albemarle, where he became distinguished for his sound sense and professional ability, and eminently remarkable for his diligence, punctuality and fidelity. In 1811 he was promoted to the office of Chancellor of the Winchester district, which he held until the spring of 1824, when he was elected to fill the vacancy in the Court of Appeals created by the death of the Hon. Wm. Fleming. Upon the adoption of the new Constitution, the seats of all the Judges having been vacated, and a new election taking place, he was re-elected to a seat on the bench of the newly organized Court, which he adorned for more than twelve years by his eminent virtues, his great learning, and his sound and judicious opinions. His assi. duity was without example-and the failure of his fine constitution is fairly set down to his uncommon labors. It has been his good fortune to have been rarely absent from his seat from indisposition, and even in his last illness, he has lost but one week of the term. The first that struck you on an acquaintance with Judge Carr, was his native modesty, which a commerce with the world of sixty years, had never abated. In conversation you knew not which most to admire, the soundness and purity of his opinions, or the deference-approaching even to humility-with which they were ever advanced. In argument, though cogent and earnest, he was never betrayed into a sophism, nor tempted to pass the boundaries marked out by forbearance and moderation. His gentleness of disposition and suavity of manners, were on all occasions, conspicuous. They were not confined to his family or his brethren of the Bench, with whom his intercourse was delightfully harmonious. They won for him the regard even of strangers, upon his first introduction, while the substantial good qualities of his head and heart never failed to rivet the affections which had at first been the result of his engaging demeanor. The virtues indeed seemed to cluster around his character. In all his relations he was distinguished for truth, fidelity, and constancy; for firmness, and manly for-versal respect, esteem and confidence. But to his brethren of titude; for scrupulous honor, laudable prudence, exact punctu- the bench, to the members of the bar, and to the officers of the ality, and a faithful discharge of every duty. His plan of life Court, he was not only an object of respect, esteem and confi. was systematic and steadfastly pursued, for it was formed upon dence-he was endeared to them by the gentler virtues he disupright and well reflected principles, which he adopted with played in the constant intercourse of business; by the evenness the utmost care, and adhered to with unwavering tenacity. As and suavity of his temper, the amiable simplicity of his man. a public officer, filling the highest judicial stations in the State,ners, his unaffected modesty, his unassuming dignity, and above his untiring industry, his sedulous attention, his patient inves- all, his kindness of heart, flowing in one uninterrupted current tigation, his steadfastness to principle, and his stern rebuke of for a series of years, and flowing to us all. He has not left an vice, were above all praise; and the virtues of his heart were enemy behind him; and among us, he has left those who mourn not more conspicuous, than the ability and learning which were him as a brother or a father. ever displayed in his judicial opinions. These form his monument-a monument more enduring than brass, more lasting than marble. The volumes which contain his opinions, will go down from generation to generation as the repositories of our jurisprudence, and posterity will find there an imperishable me. morial of the greatness and the goodness of this admirable man.

The surviving Judges, the Members of the Bar, and the Officers of the Court of Appeals, assembled on occasion of the death of the Hon. Dabney Carr, have to express, not only their sense of the public loss sustained in this afflicting dispensation of Providence, but deep and lasting regret peculiar to them. selves. In the judicial stations, first of Chancellor, and then of Judge of this Court, which the deceased for so many years filled and adorned, his learning and ability, his indefatigable industry, and devotion to his official duties, the entire exemp. tion from every passion that might warp the judgment; the ardent love and zeal for pure justice, and the perfect fairness of mind which he brought to the decision of every cause, as well as the integrity of his life, and the spotless purity of his morals and conduct, were known to his country, and commanded uni.

Resolved, That in testimony of respect to the memory of the deceased, the Judges, the Members of the Bar, and the Officers of the Court, will wear the usual badge of mourning for one month.

That the Chairman and Secretary be requested to communicate a copy of these proceedings to the widow and family of the

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