JAMES KENT. NEW EW YORK has the honor of giving to the country one of the most eminent jurists of the early generations of our Nationality. James Kent, LL. D., was descended from an ancestry noted for its legal ability, his father having been a distinguished lawyer and Surrogate of Rensselaer county in the Empire State. Judge Kent was born in Fredericks, New York, on the 31st of July, 1763, and died in the City of New York, on the 12th of December, 1847. He was a remarkably studious boy, and until he became a famous judge, when his official duties demanded a large portion of his hours, he continued the same studious habits that had characterized his youth. He was graduated by Yale College when only eighteen years of age, an evidence of his remarkable talents. Having read Blackstone for mere amusement two years previous to the close of his college course, when he left his alma mater he decided upon the law as a profession. While at Yale he assisted in founding the Society of Phi Betta Kappa. He read law in the office of Egbert Benson, was admitted to the Bar in 1785 as an attorney, and two years later as a counselor. He at once settled at Poughkeepsie in his native State where he commenced the practice. Now began that severe mental discipline of study coincident with his business life, which he continued for thirteen consecutive years, at the end of which period he was elevated to the Bench. His plan for prosecuting the studies he had determined upon at the time his education was finished, so far as other teachers than books were concerned, is worthy the emulation of all legal students. His methods provided for two hours to Latin, and the same time to Greek before he partook of his breakfast, consequently he must have been an early riser. When the duties of his office were concluded for the day, and supper disposed of, he read French for two hours, devoting the remainder of the evening to standard English authors. This latter disposition of the day was sometimes materially deranged by the demands society made upon him; the visits of friends, their return on his part, and other little conventionalities which could not be neglected without manifest discourtesy by a young gentleman of his social position. In the morning hours he brooked no interference, they were rigidly devoted to the occupations assigned to them. Five years after the date of his settlement in Poughkeepsie, in 1790, Judge Kent was elected to the Legislature. Upon the expiration of his term of two years, he was re-elected, serving a second term with honor to the State and great personal distinction. He was then nominated for the Lower House of Congress on the Federal ticket, but was defeated. This was in the year 1793; his reputation as a lawyer and a man of ripe classical scholarship was already established. When the canvass for Congress had ended, and he had suffered defeat, he removed to New York City, was appointed Professor of Law in Columbia College, which he held for five years, resigning it only to accept judicial honors. He became a warm friend of Alexander Hamilton, with whom he had been closely associated during the struggle in his native State over the adoption of the Federal Constitution. By that eminent statesman his attention was directed to the authoritative writings on the subject of civil law in Europe, the careful study of which he immediately began. He was particularly interested in the works of the great French jurists Pothier and Emerigon, prepared a course of lectures in November, 1794, the introductory to which was published under the auspices of Columbia College. In 1796, two years before he severed his connection with the College, he was appointed by Governor Jay, whose friendship he had secured while a member of the Legislature from the Poughkeepsie District, a Master in Chancery, of which there were but two in the State. In the fall he was again elected to the Legislature, this time representing the City of New York. The same year he was called upon to deliver the annual address before the State Society for the Promotion of Agricultural, Arts and Manufactures. In his efforts on this occasion he displayed his versatile talents in the domain of the subjects under consideration by eloquent, expressive language, and a most comprehensive knowledge of the material needs and probable resources of the whole country. In 1797, Judge Kent was appointed Recorder of the City of New York. He held the responsible position one year only, having been appointed by Governor Jay in 1798 to the office of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the State. Upon his acceptance of this Judgeship he returned to his former home, Poughkeepsie, though almost immediately removed to Albany, the capital, where he continued to reside while he remained upon the Bench, a period of twenty-five years. By a remarkably ridiculous provision of the Constitution of the State of New York, Judge Kent was compelled to retire from a position which he had so graced by his brilliant talents, because of his age, beyond which period that Instrument declared a man was ineligible to serve. To this palpably absurd provision in its application to the case of Judge Kent, Allibone thus humorously refers: "Having at this date attained his sixtieth year, though in the very prime of intellectual, and in his case physical life, he was obliged, by the most absurd provision of the Constitution of his State, to relinquish his office, and yield to some successor who, if he had the disadvantage of less wisdom and learning, had the redeeming merits of fewer years. We all remember Mr. Pitt's or rather Dr. Johnson's admission of the 'atrocious crime of being a young man.' Chancellor Kent was obliged to plead guilty to the imputed criminality of having attained middle age? But finding Nature stronger than Legislative enactments, and his euthanasia not hastened by the edict of Senators, he added to his turpitude by living twenty-four years of mental and physical vigor, professional activity, and composing four volumes of immortal Commentaries. About twenty years after the burial service of the New York StatuteBook had been read over the late Chancellor, he writes to Daniel Webster: 'I am indeed in my eightieth year, but, thank God, I am wonderfully well and active, and my ardor for reading, and my susceptibilities are, I think, as alive as ever to the charms of Nature, of literature and society. My reading is regu lar and constant; all the reports of law decisions as fast as I can procure them, all the periodicals, foreign and domestic, and old literature and new books, are steadily turning over. This ridiculous statute, which deprived the great State of New York of such a great Judge as James Kent, was afterward wisely repealed. In the year, 1804, Judge Kent became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, in which position he served for ten years. On the 25th of February, 1814, he was appointed Chancellor of the |