IX ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY AT MONTPELIER, OCTOBER 26, 1882, ON THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF SAMUEL PRENTISS SAMUEL PRENTISS MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY,-I have been invited to say something before you touching the life and character of Samuel Prentiss. In the lack of a better substitute, I did not feel at liberty to decline; but I can offer you nothing in response that shall come up to the mark of a finished essay or an elaborate address. I have not explored the usual materials of the biographer; I have not been able-indeed, I have not cared-to put anything upon paper; I have rather preferred to try to set before you, in a simple and familiar way, my own recollections of the man; to sketch his portrait for you, as well as I can, in rough crayon, as it remains, and will always remain, in my memory. If the color of the picture should appear to any of you too warm, if it should seem rather the tribute of an admiring friendship than the cool discrimination of the historian, I shall make no apology for that. You will be quite at liberty to bear in mind that the recollections I am drawing upon are those of my youth, and that the enthusiasm and reverence that are youth's happiest gifts leave in all later years their after-glow upon the memories of their time. It is well for us, those of us who live to be old, that it is so. It is benef icently ordered that the old man shall be always the laudator temporis sui, the eulogist of his own day. I was warmly attached to Judge Prentiss in his lifetime; I honor and revere his memory more than that of most men I have known; and I have known many. My father and he were bound together, all the days of their lives, by the intimacy of an uncommon friendship. "And sacred was the hand that wrote, Thy father's friend forget thee not." Judge Prentiss was, in all senses of the word, an old-fashioned man. His active life was passed within the earlier half of this century. He came to the bar of Vermont in 1802, and he died in 1857. Historically speaking, the interval since then is not very long; but in the rapid development of American society it is a good while. In all the changes and chances of life there is nothing that so forcibly illustrates the saying of the Scripture, that "the fashion of this world passeth away," as the changes and the differences in the generations of men. They succeed each other in a perpetual succession, yet no two are ever alike but in the certainty of their disappearance. Each has its own character, its own successes, its own imperfections, its own memories. History, therefore, whether personal or national, must be regarded from the point of view of its own age; it is idle to try to estimate it in the light of ours. Judge Prentiss belonged to his own time. He was the product of the early days of Vermont. There is something easier to state than to describe in the influence of the time upon the quality of the men produced in the beginning of a State. It is akin to what is seen in some agricultural products, which are better in the virgin soil than any cultivation can ever make them afterwards. Whether it is in the dignity of their employment as the founders of institutions, whether it is in the vigor and freshness which attend the youth of a State, like the youth of life, or whether such emergencies bring to the surface and into conspicuous view a higher order of men, whatever the reason may be, the fact remains: the fathers are larger than the children. But when we eulogize the virtue and the advantages of the past, we do not necessarily disparage the present. I am not one of those who believe that the world degenerates as it grows older. As change is the condition of life, so compensation is an unfailing condition of change. For whatever time takes away, it compensates in what it brings. Much that is precious perishes as it passes; but with new life comes always new beneficence. The events of Judge Prentiss's life can be rapidly told. They are few and simple. He was born in Connecticut, in 1782, of a good old stock, who traced back their lineage to an excellent family in England. His great-grandfather fought for the king in the old French war, and his grandfather fought against the king, a colonel in the Revolutionary war. He came to Vermont, which was the El Dorado of the best young blood of Connecticut in those times, and was admitted to the bar in 1802, before he was twenty-one years of age. He practised law in Montpelier until 1825, when he was made a judge of the Supreme Court. In 1829 he became Chief Justice. In 1830 he was elected to the United States Senate, and again in 1836. In 1841 he was appointed Judge of the United |