Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 1, Chapter 14: first weeks in <a target="_blank" onclick="openPopupWindow(this); return false" href="entityvote?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0001&auth=tgn,7011781&n=1&type=place">London</a>.—June and July, 1838.

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To Judge Story.

Alfred Club, June 27, 1838.

my dear Judge,—I cannot recount (time and paper would both fail) the civilities and kindness which I have received in London. You know I have learned by your example and by some humble experience to husband time; and yet, with all my exertions, I can hardly find a moment of quiet in which to write a letter or read a book. But I cannot speak of myself: my mind is full of the things I hear of you from all quarters. There is no company of lawyers or judges, where your name is not spoken with the greatest admiration. Mr. Justice Vaughan feels toward you almost as a brother. He has treated me with distinguished kindness; invited me to his country seat, and to go the circuit with him in his own carriage; he placed me on the bench in Westminster Hall,—the bench of Tindal, Eldon, and Coke,—while Sergeants Wilde and Talfourd, Atcherley¹ and Andrews argued before me. He has expressed the greatest admiration of your character. At dinner at his house I met Lord Abinger, the ViceChancellor, Mr. Justice Patteson, &c. With the Vice-Chancellor I had a long conversation about you and your works; he said that a few days ago your ‘Conflict of Laws’ was cited, and he was obliged to take it home, and to study it a long evening, and that he decided a case on the authority of it. Shadwell is a pleasant,—I would almost say,—jolly fellow. With Mr. Justice Patteson I had a longer conversation, and discussed several points of comparative jurisprudence; he is a very enlightened judge, the most so, I am inclined to think, after Baron Parke, who appears to be facile princeps.²

1 David Francis Atcherley, 1783-1845. The ‘Annual Register’ of 1845 (his death was on July 6) gives an account of his professional career.

2 James Parke, 1782-1868. He assisted the Crown officers in the prosecution of Queen Caroline; was made a judge of the King's Bench in 1828, and of the Exchequer in 1831; resigned in 1855, and was upon his resignation raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Wensleydale. A second patent was issued to remove a disability from sitting and voting in Parliament, which arose from the limitation of the first patent to the term of his natural life. See reference to Baron Parke's subtlety and eccentricity in Arnould's ‘Life of Lord Denman,’ Vol. I. p. 329, Vol. II. p. 250. In 1872, Justice Blackburn referred to him as ‘probably the most acute and accomplished lawyer this country ever saw.’ Brinsmead v. Harrison, Law Reports, 7 C. P. pp. 547, 554. Sumner during this visit dined several times with Baron Parke. Eight years later, when an insurance case was cited in the Court of Exchequer from ‘Sumner's Reports,’ the Baron asked, ‘Is that the Mr. Sumner who was once in England?’ An affirmative reply being made, he said, ‘We shall not consider it entitled to the less attention because reported by a gentleman whom we all knew and respected.’ Sumner, when visiting England in 1857, received courtesies from Baron Wensleydale.

Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.

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Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 1

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To Judge Story.