d; through his season of stormy politics with its
"estuations of joys and fears;" through the crush and crowd of labors
and solicitudes which beset him as minister of finance in the tensions
and perils of war; through all this steep ascent to the serene height of
supreme jurisprudence, this life, but a span in years, was enough for
the permanent service of his country, and for the assurance of his fame.
"_Etenim, Quirites, exiguum nobis vitae curriculum natura circumscripsit,
immensum gloriae._"

If I should attempt to compare Mr. Chase, either in resemblance or
contrast, with the great names in our public life, of our own times, and
in our previous history, I should be inclined to class him, in the
solidity of his faculties, the firmness of his will, and in the
moderation of his temper, and in the quality of his public services,
with that remarkable school of statesmen, who, through the Revolutionary
War, wrought out the independence of their country, which they had
declared, and framed the Constitution, by which the new liberties were
consolidated and their perpetuity insured. Should I point more
distinctly at individual characters, whose traits he most recalls,
Ellsworth as a lawyer and judge, and Madison as a statesman, would seem
not only the most like, but very like, Mr. Chase. In the groups of his
cotemporaries in public affairs, Mr. Chase is always named with the most
eminent. In every triumvirate of conspicuous activity he would be
naturally associated. Thus, in the preliminary agitations which prepared
the triumphant politics, it is Chase and Sumner and Hale; in the
competition for the presidency when the party expected to carry it, it
is Seward and Lincoln and Chase; in administration, it is Stanton and
Seward and Chase; in the Senate, it is Chase and Seward and Sumner. All
these are newly dead, and we accord them a common homage of admiration
and of gratitude, not yet to be adjusted or weighed out to each.

Just a quarter of a century before Mr. Chase left these halls of
learning, the college sent out another scholar of her discipline, with
the same general traits of birth, and condition, and attendant
influences, which we have noted as the basis of the power and influence
of this later son of Dartmouth. He played a famous part in his time as
lawyer, senator, and minister of state, in all the greatest affairs, and
in all the highest spheres of public action; and to his eloquence his
countrymen paid the sing