know of no language which so aptly describes him as that which he applied to Mr. Edward Tilghman, the friend of his youth: "He was an advocate of great power; a master of every question in his causes; a wary tactician in the management of them; highly accomplished in language; a faultless logician; a man of the purest integrity and the brightest honor; fluent without the least volubility; concise to a degree that left every one's patience and attention unimpaired, and perspicuous to almost the lowest order of understanding, while he was dealing with almost the highest topics."

He had great advantages, none of which were neglected. Besides the opportunities his collegiate course afforded him, and which he improved to the uttermost, besides the art and habit of study he early acquired, he had examples of excellence before him which it was not in his nature to disregard. He was trained to be a legal tactician by his constant attendance in the courts before he was called to assume the management of causes. He thought logically and spoke and wrote the purest of English before he came to the bar. He had a fine commanding person, an uncommonly handsome face, a dignified and graceful manner of address, and a most melodious voice, perfectly under his control, and modulated with unusual skill. He was constitutionally an earnest man, yet while earnest, he had a calm self-possession, the fruit of consciousness that he fully understood his subject, and of confidence that he could make

others understand it, and he entered upon the trial of his causes with a sure conviction, confirmed by his previous study, that he was advocating the right. No unjust or dishonest case would he willingly undertake, and he was able to say after his career at the bar had closed, that "he had never knowingly committed an injustice toward a client, or the opposite party, or prosecuted a cause that he thought a dishonest one, and that he had washed his hands of more than one that he had discovered to be such after he had undertaken it, as well as declined many which he perceived to be such when first presented to him." Add to this the power of a mind equal to the comprehension of any legal subject; a mode of presentation the best possible; a rhetoric that was faultless; an aptness of illustration that illuminated the most abstruse matters; a personal character without a visible flaw, and it is easy to see he must have been, as he was, a most persuasive and convincing advocate.

He won the confidence of courts and juries by his entire freedom from trick, or any of the low arts of cunning. He disdained to practice any stratagem or artifice for the purpose of obtaining an advantage over an adversary. His nature was true, and his life was truth unfolded. He was always candid, giving full consideration to whatever made against him. He appealed to no prejudices, but rather boldly met, and endeavored to dissipate them. He was ever courteous in his demeanor towards the court, and towards his op

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ponents. Thus every element of power, in mind, in culture, in habit, in physical endowment, in taste, in demeanor, and in character, was his. All united in giving to his forensic efforts an efficiency, and a success inferior to those of no other. Our brethren that remain, who saw him at the bar, speak of him as ever maintaining a dignified decorum, and a manner not reserved or cold (though perhaps apparently such at times), but genial and good humored toward his professional brethren, and respectful to the bench. They speak of him as above the suspicion of rhetorical arts, or partisan strategy. They say his appeals were to the judgment rather than to the passions; that his action was graceful; that he never sought to make a display of oratory though he was always eloquent in thought, and winning in diction. He was never heard without instruction, never without pleasure.

He had some other characteristics that deserve special mention. In everything he undertook he was thorough to the highest degree. Thoroughness was a habit of his life. He brought it to all his investigations, and he regarded it as a duty never to be slighted. In his view it was criminal to neglect the fullest possible preparation for the trial of every cause committed to his care, or for any opinion he was called upon to give. One of his maxims, often commended to others, and always acted upon by himself was "Work up to power." Whatever came from him was, therefore, the best he could produce, and those who

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followed him rarely found any thing that had escaped his notice, or his thought. What he did not make use of was, in his judgment, of no importance, and therefore entitled to no consideration. It was not unnoticed because unknown. And it was never safe to treat as of little worth any position he took. His mind at once seized all the facts and the principles applicable to them, and discarded all that, after careful thought, he deemed immaterial, or inapposite. He was never surprised by any thing against which the extremest vigilance could guard. Hence nothing immature, nothing unfinished ever came from him in argument, or in essay. Nor was he thorough only in his profession. He carried the habit into his general reading, both literary and scientific. Whatever he knew, he knew throughout. No chamber of it, however remote, escaped his exploration. He gathered from every book he read all the thoughts worthy of being preserved, and made them subjects for his own reflection, recurring to them from time to time for renewed consideration.

His reading was so extensive that he made constant use of helps to return to passages which had most interested him. He was therefore a great admirer of a good index. I say index, not digest. His estimate of such an index was expressed in a letter to a friend, written when he had passed his eighty-sixth year, wherein he said: "I must say in reference to indexes generally, that I have come to regard a good book as curtailed of

half its value, if it has not a pretty full index. It is almost impossible without such a guide, to reproduce on demand the most striking thoughts or facts the book may contain, whether for citation, or further consideration. If I had my own way in the modification of the copyright law, I think I would make the duration of the privilege depend materially on its having such a directory. One may recollect generally that certain thoughts or facts are to be found in a certain book; but without a good index such recollection may be hardly more available than that of the cabin boy, who knew where the ship's tea kettle was, because he saw it fall overboard. In truth a very large part of every man's good reading falls overboard, and unless he has good indexes, he will never find it. I have three books," said he, “in my library which I value more than any other three, except the very books of which they are a verbal index; Cruden's Concordance of the Bible, Mrs. Cowden Clark's Concordance of Shakespeare, and Prendergast's Concordance of Milton." The estimate of good indexes thus expressed illustrates how earnest was his search for truth and knowledge, and how reluctantly he let go any of his acquisitions.

Mr. Binney's thoroughness was accompanied by strictly methodical habits. He had a place for every thing and everything had its place. The arrangement of his briefs, of his papers and books, and equally of his stores of knowledge and thought was perfectly systematic. It was this that enabled him ever to pro

PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XVI. 97. F