to overlook the importance of contemporary events in their relation to the future; but history has always placed the founders of States among the most illustrious of our race, and to this class the subject of these observations emphatically belonged. The head of a large and distinguished family, at an advanced age, surrounded by associations from which it must have been most difficult for him to escape, he severed the ties which bound him to his native State, crossed a continent, and in a country scarcely redeemed from barbarism and exceptional in all its conditions, established centres of usefulness and of influence, which have most powerfully contributed to the rapid, but symmetrical and steady, progress that has attracted to the Pacific Coast the wondering admiration of the world. Not only this, but in his place on the Bench, with great questions to decide, in the solution of which he was almost unassisted by precedent, he most actively and beneficially participated in the just application of legal principles to anomalous and intricate combination of fact, and thus rendered to society, perhaps the greatest benefit that wisdom and learning can confer. The single volume of his opinions, edited by one of his sons, is a monument to his memory which will excite the attention and respect of future generations, and the utility of which will be coëxtensive with the existence of the Union.

The death of Judge McAllister was sudden but not unexpected. In the various Courts of San FranciscoMunicipal, State, and Federal-the usual honors were paid to his memory, and were accompanied by eulogies, both from the Bench and from the Bar, more than ordinarily earnest and impressive. The funeral ceremonies. were rendered highly imposing by the number, the respectability, and the sincerity, of those by whom they were witnessed.

To those who enjoyed the advantage of a personal acquaintance with Judge McAllister, especially to the narrow circle where his inner life was spent, there are other thoughts and other feelings suggested by his death, which are best unuttered. "Quis talia fando temperet a

lachrymis." With reverential tenderness he was committed to the peace and serenity of the tomb. There, in that beautiful cemetery, overlooking the Pacific, where the war of our hard and struggling life cannot penetrate, and where the western breezes make soft music amidst the graves of the unforgotten dead, he shall calmly and securely sleep, while in the metropolis of California his descendants shall worthily transmit his lofty virtues and his intellectual fame, and throughout the Pacific Coast, society, ever expanding and ever improving, shall permanently feel the impulse of his labors, and shall preserve his name on the roll of its most illustrious Pioneers.

JOSEPH G. BALDWIN.

BY J. G. HOWARD,

AUTHOR OF THE "BLOVE PAPERS."

HE father of Joseph G. Baldwin, a native of Connecticut, emigrated to Virginia at an early period of his life; and after a few years' residence in his adopted State, married a lady of his own name from Maryland, whose uncle subsequently became very distinguished in the judicial annals of Virginia. That father still lives at Lynchburg. Born at Staunton, in the county of Augusta, on the 22d of January, 1815, we find young Joseph, at the tender age of twelve, developing unusual business precocity and earnest self-reliance in the performance of the arduous and responsible duties of a Deputy District Court Clerk in his native town. Still further illustrating his youthful energy and early mental capacity, we hear of his assuming the entire editorial control of a popular newspaper, at Buchanan, in the county of Rockbridge, at the very boyish period of seventeen. And it may be here remarked with propriety, that no better instance can be adduced than the individual now under review, of the tendency of our peculiar institutions to foster and reward the unaided efforts of the emulous offspring of comparative indigence.

How he acquired his legal knowledge, save by night vigils, cannot be told; but a comparative lad of but nineteen years of age, he is next seen at DeKalb, in the State

of Mississippi, springing into legal notoriety, and the caressed and intimate associate of such luminaries as Wiley P. Harris and J. T. Harrison, and that marvel of modern oratory, S. S. Prentiss. Between him and the latter arose upon the instant an enduring regard, stronger than the ties of brotherhood. It was the sudden meeting of kindred genius--the blending and coalescing of two master-spirits. It was wonderful, the strange affection that knit so indissolubly together those two nervous minds. It was just as the great advocate was embarking at New Orleans to breathe his last in his loved Natchez. He turned away from the coterie of almost worshiping ones who surrounded him, to his devoted friend, Colonel Alexander Walker of the Delta. "Alec, be sure," said he in that melting voice of his, "to write my love to Joe Baldwin. I have written my last on earth. A great man is Joe. He has no superior as writer and lawyer. He comes the nearest to my idea of an universal genius." It was the tribute of dying worth to living excellence.

At twenty-one, young Baldwin repaired to Sumpter county, in the State of Alabama, continuing the practice of his profession with renewed zest and extraordinary success, until summoned by the voice of the people to the State legislative councils. In '44, he acquired much oratorical reputation as an electoral canvasser on the Whig ticket; and in 1849 was defeated by Col. S. W. Inge for Congress, by 250 votes; yet establishing his personal popularity in that violent Democratic State by securing the suffrage of every county in his district but

one.

At that time, the practice of the law in that section of the country was somewhat peculiar. The attorney was in the habit of traversing his entire judicial circuit. The termination of this protracted itinerancy left him but a scant space of some two or three months for devotion to his home clientage. It was during one of those hurried intervals, and while fretted with an extensive and lucrative practice, that he indicted by snatches and at candle light, that series of sketches now so popularly known under the soubriquet