FREDERIC R. COUDERT,

Second President of the U. S. Catholic Historical Society.

BY PAUL FULLER.

Mr. Coudert, the second President of the Catholic Historical Society, died in the city of Washington on the 20th of December, 1903. His notable career, his exceptional gifts and his exalted character, were such as to call for a permanent record in the annals of the United States Catholic Historical Society.

FREDERIC RENÉ COUDERT was born in the city of New York on the 1st of March, 1832, and continued a resident of the city and identified with its interests until his death. He received his early education in the school established by his father, Charles Coudert, an officer of the Imperial Guard, who found it necessary to exile himself from his native country owing to political prosecutions after the Restoration. This training, under his father's able and watchful supervision, was such that at the early age of fourteen, he was ready for entrance to Columbia College, from which he graduated in 1850 at the age of eighteen, being chosen the valedictorian of his class. Many years later, in a public discussion, he had occasion to say that there were a few things upon which he was sensitive: the one was the land of his fathers; and the other, the Bark of Peter. Evidence of his devotion to these was never wanting. It began during his college career: when one of the professors, on the occasion of the Revolution of 1848, indulged in harsh strictures with reference to French achievements, the young scholar, whose knowledge of history was already sound and broad, was stung into a retort, which was cut short by an admonition that no discussion of "politics was allowable. It was shown again by the selection and treatment of the subject for his valedictory—a review of the "Isms" of the day.

On leaving college, he took up the study of law in the office of Edward Curtis, at that time one of the leaders of the New York Bar, a prominent Whig, the friend and intimate of Webster, and at one time a member of Congress and Collector of the Port.

While pursuing his law studies, the young man wrote and translated for the press, being conversant with several modern languages.

Always a great reader and a close student, his preparation for the Bar was thorough; immediately upon his admission he entered upon the practice of the law, and from the modest beginnings with which every earnest member of the profession is content, his success, his influence and his reputation grew steadily and continuously until his pen and his voice were stilled and his mission ended.

An English traveler, happening to be present in the Supreme Court room at Washington while Thomas Addis Emmet was arguing a case, remarked that he brought to his aid incident and illustration from every phase of human experience and endeavor; the remark comes to mind when we consider the wide and varied sphere of Mr. Coudert's intellectual activities and the universal reach of his sympathies.

At no time did he confine his study and research, nor his active labors and co-operation, to purely professional subjects. His clear discernment early taught him that the greatest masters of their professions are those who do not content themselves with its technical training, but find in every field of knowledge and in all channels of life, experience and acquirements to strengthen and to elevate the vocation which, without such aids, tends to narrow its influence and lose its power. To this intellectual appreciation was added the moral conviction that no man's obligations to his fellows are discharged by even the most assiduous devotion to the exigencies of his profession, and that duty has many other calls upon him.

Very early in his professional career he lectured in aid of struggling churches, choosing such congenial subjects as Edmund Burke, with whose great conceptions of governmental duties and

responsibilities he was always in unison; John Philpot Curran, and others of that galaxy of the Irish Bar who united mastery of their professions with passionate devotion to their country, and who irradiated their toilsome pathways with unfailing humor and abundant wit.

Under the auspices and in aid of the work of the Catholic Union, that small but laborious body of men who so long and so prudently watched over the interests of Catholics in this community, Mr. Coudert carried on a more serious work in a series of lectures, which, under the titles of "Morals and Manners," "Lying as a Fine Art," and "The Church and the Bar," confuted calumnies against the Church and dispelled many popular misapprehensions.

The wide sympathies of the man and the corresponding activity, to which I have alluded, brought their burden and their reward. Opportunities are never wanting to the man who is ready for them. The St. Vincent de Paul Orphan Asylum benefited by his counsel for years; during ten years he presided over the work of the French Benevolent Society, quieted dissensions, extinguished enmities, and welded into a potent and beneficent instrument that worthy institution; for years he was President of the Alumni Association of Columbia, and brought to its development inspiring influences born of his great love for his Alma Mater, infused into their annual reunions an earnestness and at the same time a sprightliness, a brilliancy, which became a tradition that has outlived his term.

As to politics, he held it to be "the duty of every good citizen to become, at some time or other, and to some extent, an active factor in the working of the governmental machinery," but this he also held might be "more effectually done by those who ask no reward from the powers that be, and no salary from the public treasury for being outspoken and brave." He early held the presidency of the "Young Men's Democratic Club," since known simply as the "Democratic Club"; for many years he was president of the Manhattan Club; no political campaign passed without some contribution from him, in speeches, or letters, or pamphlets, or quiet conferences. In 1876