most unaccountable. At a great epoch of history, not less momentous than that of the French Revolution or that of the Reformation, when civilization was fighting a last battle with slavery, England gave her influence, her material resources, to the wicked cause, and flung a sword into the scale with slavery."

Upon his return to the United States although seventy-three years old, he resumed the practice of his profession with all the earnestness and fire of his youth.

His popularity in England was very great. When first there to make an argument for claimants, as previously referred to, his reception was all for which any private citizen of the Republic might hope. In the fourteen years that had since elapsed, he had not been forgotten. He had left a reputation behind him which time could not efface, nor the remembrance of his brilliant talents fade away. Among the numerous honors showered upon him abroad was his election as Vice-President of the International Association for the Revision and Codifications of the Law of Nations.

This great man died under somewhat distressing circumstances in the town of his nativity, and, as stated, only a stone's throw from the spot where he was born. The Governor of the State, on the 11th of February, 1876, had invited a number of friend to meet the distinguished lawyer at the mansion, and shortly after dinner was concluded, Mr. Johnson was found dead by a servant, in the grounds of the Executive mansion.

His

Mr. Johnson was an impressive looking man. form compact, and stoutly built, shoulders broad, a round head and face. Beauty in the ordinary sense, he lacked but his face was lighted with unmistakable intelligence, and an impress of charity, love and manhood shining through his features with a glorious splendor.

JOHN EDWARD KENNA.

JOHN E. KENNA was born in Kanawha county, Vir

ginia, now West Virginia, on the 10th of April, 1848. His father, Edward Kenna, having lost both father and mother, came to this country from Ireland at fourteen years of age. Engaged with the mercantile firm of La Coste & Company at Natchez, Mississippi, when that town was destroyed by the tornado of 1840, Edward Kenna, who was numbered among the survivors, made his way to Cincinnati, Ohio. There he found employment in a manufacturing establishment, and was thus engaged when he formed the acquaintance of Charles Fox, of the Cincinnati Bar. Mr. Fox tendered him the use of his library and advised him to study law. The offer was accepted and the young attorney began his professional career cotemporaneously with George H. Pendleton, George Hoadley, William S. Groesbeck and others who survived him, and have often borne testimony to his character and worth.

In 1847 Mr. Kenna married Margery, the only daughter of John Lewis, of Kanawha county, Virginia, a descendent of General Andrew Lewis, and soon afterward settled in that county. Here for eight years he successfully practiced his profession, and engaged actively in the politics of that period and was a prominent factor in the nomination of Henry A. Wise for Governor, in the famous Staunton Convention of 1855, when he made a speech, reviewing the political situation,

which attracted universal attention. timely death in the following year.

He met an un

Edward Kenna was a self-made man. He is remembered for his kindness of heart, his indomitable will, extraordinary energy, brilliant mind and public spirit. This much is here said of him because it is known that his own struggles, single handed, for advancement and usefulness, had inspired him with the hope, often expressed, that he might live to see his only boy armed and equipped by his aid and encouragement for a successful career. Providence denied his aid; but his son, the subject of this sketch, left fatherless at eight years, with two little sisters aged respectively eight and six years, encountered adversity in youth with a courage which his father's example inspired, and braved the trials of early manhood with a never-failing reliance on the logic of labor and upright purpose. In 1858 Mrs. Kenna, with her three children, removed to Lexington, Missouri, where her brother resided, and where she remained until the breaking out of the war. She employed a governess for a time, under whose tutelage her children were instructed, but the failure of her husband's estate, which consisted chiefly of lands, to realize funds, took away this advantage and her son began active work on the farm. Mr. Kenna refers with pride to the fact that he redeemed one of the finest plantations in Missouri from its natural state with a prairie plow and four yoke of steers, the summers he was twelve and thirteen years of age, and that at fifteen he broke as much hemp and did it as well as any man in the field. It was at this period of his life that he spent a winter digging coal, with a man named Conrad, in Carroll county, Missouri.

He was full of vital energy and fond of the open air His work was out of doors and so were his sports. His disposition was cheerful and adaptable. The transition from labor to pastime was a joy to his heart, but when