and
public spirited people." In the same discourse he pronounced the eulogy of
Dr. Mason, who had died a few days before. In the same year, Verplanck, at
Geneva College, delivered an address on the "Right Moral Influence and Use
of Liberal Studies," and the next year, at Amherst College, another on the
converse of that subject, namely, the "Influence of Moral Causes upon
Opinion, Science and Literature." In 1836, he gave a discourse on "the
Advantages and Dangers of the American Scholar." Of these addresses let me
say, that I know of no compositions of their class which I read with more
pleasure or more instruction. Enlarged views, elevated sentiments, a
hopeful and courageous spirit, a wide knowledge of men and men's recorded
experience, and a manly dignity of style, mark them all as the productions
of no common mind.

After separating from the Democratic party, Mr. Verplanck was elected by
the Whigs, in 1837, to the Senate of the State of New York, while that
body was yet a Court for the Correction of Errors,--a tribunal of the
last resort,--and in that capacity decided questions of law of the highest
magnitude and importance. Nothing in his life was more remarkable than the
new character in which he now appeared. The practiced statesman, the
elegant scholar and the writer of graceful sketches, the satirist, the
critic, the theologian, started up a profound jurist. During the four
years in which he sat in this Court, he heard the arguments in nearly
every case which came before it, and delivered seventy-one opinions--not
simply his written conclusions, but elaborate judgments founded on the
closest investigation of the questions submitted, the most careful and
exhaustive examination of authorities, and a practical, comprehensive and
familiar acquaintance with legal rules and principles, even those of the
most technical nature, which astonished those who knew that he had never
appeared for a client in Court, or sat before in a judicial tribunal. I
use in this the language of an able lawyer, Judge Daly, who has made this
part of Verplanck's labors a subject of special study.

As examples of his judicial ability, I may instance his examination of the
whole structure of our State and Federal Government in the case of
Delafield against the State of Illinois, where the question came up
whether an individual could sue a State; his survey of the whole law of
marine insurance and the principles on which it is founded, in the c