tribute is due to the high qualities of Mr. Sherman, and will profit those who survive him, is as just, as it is widely extended beyond the circle of private friendship. We propose, therefore, to present a condensed view of his character, and such an analysis of the elements and sources of his strength, as the space we can consistently allot to this purpose will permit.

The Hon. ROGER MINOTT SHERMAN was the son of the Rev. Josiah and Martha Sherman. He was born at Woburn, Mass., May 22, 1773, and was the youngest of six children. His father was brother to the Hon. Roger Sherman of revolutionary celebrity, who will ever be illustrious as one of the most eminent of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was in the fourth generation of descent from Capt. John Sherman who emigrated from Dedham, England, to Watertown Mass., about the year 1635. His mother was daughter of the Hon. James Minott, of Concord, Mass., a man of eminence in his day. She was in the fifth line of descent from George Minott who came from England, and was one of the first settlers of Dorchester, Mass., and a ruling elder in the church planted there. The unsettled and tumultuous state of society during the Revolution, rendered the situation of many clergymen precarious and unsettled. The father of the subject of this notice came to Milford in this state in 1775, and was for some time pastor of the second church in that town. He thence removed to Goshen, and for some years ministered to the church in that place. He finally settled in Woodbridge, and continued in the ministry there the residue of his days. These changes occurring during the childhood and youth of his son, the latter, of course, accompanied him through these migrations. We have no knowledge that during this period of his life he exhibited

any peculiar traits or indications, or that any events occurred respecting him worthy of record. It must indeed have been apparent, that his mind was of a superior order. Nor did he contract any habits unfriendly to intellectual growth and culture. His character was unstained by vice. He had the stimulus of judicious parental training, and, what is often still more effective, of poverty, to make the most of his faculties and opportunities.

In 1789, when sixteen years old, he entered the Sophomore class in Yale College. Six weeks afterwards his father died, leaving his family destitute, as his salary had barely been adequate to his support. But it is seldom that any obstacles or difficulties can arrest or prevent the education of a first rate mind. A kind Providence will usually conspire with its own resolute determination, and untiring efforts to surmount all obstacles, and give it the advantage of the most perfect discipline and culture. His uncle, Roger Sherman, of illustrious memory, received him into his family, and aided him to the extent of his ability. During the last two years of his academic course, he resorted to teaching in New Haven, in order to obtain the means of defraying his expenses. But he so arranged the hours of his school, that it did not prevent his regular and punctual attendance on all the College exercises, nor his maintaining a high rank as a scholar.

After the completion of his academic course, he immediately commenced the study of law. For this purpose he placed himself under the tuition of the most celebrated jurist in the state, and contrived, meanwhile, to support himself by teaching. For the first two years after his graduation, he taught an academy in Windsor, and studied law with the Hon. Oliver Ellsworth, who was among the greatest of the great men of that period, and for

some time Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He next studied in the office of the late Judge Reeve, of Litchfield, and paid his current expenses by teaching a common school.

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But superior talent can not long be cramped for want of reasonable facilities for its full development. In March, 1795, he was chosen tutor in Yale College, and became the instructor of the class that graduated in 1797. He continued the study of law under the Hon. Simeon Baldwin, who still survives his distinguished pupil. He retained his tutorship until May of the following year, when, having been a short time previous admitted to the bar in New Haven, he resigned the office, and located himself as practicing lawyer at Norwalk, Conn. In the office of tutor, he displayed decisive tokens of those high qualities and endowments, which raised him to subsequent fame. He succeeded the late Judge Gould in the charge of the class which he instructed. The elegant scholarship, the lucid logic, the exquisite taste, the rhetorical finish, as well as the urbane and graceful manners, for which this gentleman was distinguished, are still remembered by many of our readers. It was, therefore, a somewhat hazardous position for a new incumbent, unless he was thoroughly furnished for his place. In the following sketch of Mr. Sherman's career as tutor, communicated by a member of the class under his tuition to Rev. Dr. Cooley of Granville, Mass., we see that those same qualities of mind and heart, which made him eminent through life, made him so in this station. "His first appearance, owing to his extreme modesty, was not imposing. To say that he was unassuming, is not saying the whole truth. He seemed diffident to a degree hardly compatible with a station which required the exercise of authority, as well as the communication of instruction. No dispo

sition, however, was at any time manifested to make a comparison with his predecessor in office disad vantageous to the new incumbent ; and, in a short time, it was found that none could be made. Such was his perfect acquaintance with the studies of his pupils, his elevated and comprehensive views, and his clear and happy method of giving instruction, combined with the unfeigned friendliness of his manner, that his influence operated as efficiently and more benignly than any exercise of authority could have done. He encouraged much oftener than he reproved; but when reproof was necessary, he administered it in such a manner as to leave the subject of it more his friend than he was before. He remained in this situation somewhat more than a year, enjoying the entire confidence of the trustees of the College, and of his associates in the faculty, the affections of his pupils, and the respect of all."

During his tutorship he joined the church in Yale College. As this was the period when his religious opinions and feelings became settled, and took that determinate and fundamental bias which they retained through life, it is proper to record, briefly, what is known of his history in relation to this subject. We have every reason for believing that, during his childhood and youth, he enjoyed the wisest Christian training and nurture, and was surrounded by the most pure and propitious Christian influence. His father was an able and popular minister of the old New England stamp. His mother was a lady of rare strength of mind and excellence of character. It could scarcely be otherwise than that such parents should, in the most judicious and effective way, bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That they did so, we infer from the high Christian character of their children, from the reverential man

ner in which Mr. Sherman was wont to allude to them; and still more decisively, from the fact that his piety was of that solid, symmetrical, discriminating cast, which rarely appears in one who has not "from a child known the Holy Scriptures." One of his sisters married the Rev. Justus Mitchell, of New Canaan, an excellent minister, who, like many of the most eminent clergymen of that period, obtained a portion of his support by teaching. While preparing for College, and subsequently during his vacations, until he was settled in life, Mr. Sherman was much in his family. In the family of his uncle, also, and while studying law, he was under the influence of the highest models of Christian character, of men who were pillars and ornaments of the church as well as the state. But at this portentous period, when the shock of the French revolution agitated, and the poison of French infidelity tainted the whole civilized world, the infection spread extensively in this country. Infidelity was fast growing into fashion with young men of rank and education. Multitudes thought the profession of it to be essential to a reputation for intellectual independence, and the only way of escaping the reproach of mental servility and vulgarity. Another cause of the prevalence of this spirit, was the general depravation of the public mind by the protracted war of the Revolution. But to whatever cause it may have been due, infidelity had at this period a most disastrous prevalence in Yale College. Says Prof. Kingsley, in his life of Dr. Dwight, "the degree to which it prevailed may be conjectured from the following fact. A considerable proportion of the class which he (Dr. Dwight) first taught, had assumed the names of the principal English and French infidels, and were more familiarly known by them than by their own." As Dr. Dwight became president shortly af

ter Mr. Sherman became tutor, it is clear that the whole education of the latter must have been pursued in the midst of this pestilential atmosphere. Nor was he wholly unaffected by it. Although he was never swerved from his habitual purity of life and manners, yet he was for a time, during his collegiate course or soon afterwards, shaken by the ingenious sophistry of Hume; a writer who by his precision and perspicuity of style, his dialectic skill and subtilty, was peculiarly fitted to awaken the admiration of a youthful mind, in which the logical faculty was predominant. But this skeptical aberration was transient. It put him in a position so uncongenial with the whole structure and genius of his mind, with the whole scope of his early impressions, his tastes and predilections, that he could no more be held to it than a sturdy oak momentarily bent from its upright attitude by a tornado. He soon found in studying Edwards, that a profounder metaphysical sagacity than Hume's had been brought to the support and triumphant vindication of divine truth. Dr. Dwight, too, no sooner took charge of the College, than he put forth his gigantic strength in battling and crushing the rampant deism which prevailed among the students. Of his eloquent discourses then delivered on this subject, we have often heard. Mr. Sherman express the most fervent admiration. His original religious opinions returned with new strength of conviction. He was not only confirmed in his belief of them, but he felt their truth experimentally. They were impressed on him "with the demonstration of the Spirit and of power." He became in the judgment of charity a true Christian. He made profession of his faith by joining the College church, and through a long life held fast his profession, a shining example of Christian excellence. But we will not dwell on this subject, as we shall

revert to it again when we come to give an estimate of his whole character, after having completed the narrative of the chief events of his life.

He was married to Miss Elizabeth Gould, Dec. 13, 1796. She was the daughter of Doctor William Gould, formerly of Branford, but at that time of New Haven, and sister of the late Hon. James Gould of Litchfield. With this gifted and estimable lady, who still lives to mourn his loss, he was united for near half a century, in the enjoyment of great conjugal and domestic happiness, terminated only by his death. The only issue of the marriage was two sons, born Oct. 18, 1799. Their names were James Minott, and William Gould. They were children of extraordinary promise, and had no blight overtaken them, we know not why the celebrity of the father would not have been perpetuated in his sons. They both displayed from infancy rare intellectual and moral qualities. They were conscientious, and had a religious and devotional turn to a degree seldom witnessed in childhood. They showed uncommon brilliancy, vigor, and buoyancy of mind, a strong love of study, of the exact sciences, and of elegant literature. But in God's mysterious providence, they were both smitten, before the high hopes which they reasonably excited could be realized.

James M. had progressed in his studies with remarkable rapidity till the age of fifteen, when he became the subject of strong religious impressions. Owing to an unfortunate circumstance which occurred at an important crisis in his spiritual exercises, they degenerated into a fixed and incurable melancholy. This at length disordered and consumed his mind, till it issued in decided insanity. After medical skill had done its utmost, the distemper still remained, with occasional abatements and lucid intervals. It was during one of these intervals that

he entered the class in Yale College which graduated in 1825. He was obliged by a recurrence of his malady to take a dismission before the close of his Freshman year; but while he remained, we understand, on the testimony of one of his classmates, that he stood without a rival among them, especially in the department of mathematics. Almost daily he engaged, at the recitations, in discussions with his tutor upon principles and methods of solving arithmetical and algebraical questions altogether beyond the apprehension of most of his classmates. This was a decisive test of what he would have become, if he had retained unimpaired for life the original powers of his mind. He died in Bloomingdale Asylum, Aug. 8, 1833. Those who knew him best had the highest confidence in his Christian character, and that, having put off this tabernacle in which he groaned, being burdened, he was clothed upon with the shining robes of immortality. Thus those parental hopes which had been raised to the highest pitch were blasted. In place of them arose a long and severe trial of his parents' faith, patience, and resignation. But they had this consolation to assuage their grief over his untimely decay, that he was endowed with a portion superior to all worldly riches, a glory resplendent above all earthly hon

ors.

William G. died at Fairfield, Aug. 15, 1838. He was early prostrated in a manner different from his brother, but still not less peculiar and afflictive. When four years old, he was seized with epileptic fits. These returned upon him periodically till his death. They produced a gradual, at first imperceptible, but in the end decisive decay of his bodily and mental powers. He was never insane. He was rather enfeebled and paralyzed as to the operations of his mind. He united with the church in Fairfield in 1815. His

first religious impressions can not be traced to any assignable date. From infancy he exhibited a conscientious fear of God, which never forsook him, and signs of true piety which brightened until the day of his death. The most skeptical never doubted his piety, however rudely they might stigmatize the generality of Christians as hypocrites. His conceptions of Christian truth and duty were remarkably just, exact, and discriminating. His conscience was tender and scrupulous to a degree almost morbid. In his case, the new creature in Christ remained sound, healthy, and entire, amid the total wreck of his natural powers. In death he doubtless departed to be with Christ, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Thus, the untimely blight of these sons of promise, came with the alleviations of hope, and parental grief was softened by the bright prospects of the beloved dead.

In 1807 Mr. Sherman transferred his residence from Norwalk to Fairfield, where he remained till his death. Here he was a chief pillar in church and society. He exercised a powerful and beneficent influence in all ecclesiastical, civil and social concerns. He shed a dignity and luster over the society of the place, and gave importance and fame to the town and county.

He had practiced law but a short time before his eminence in his profession was universally felt and admitted. Nor would it have been otherwise, had he begun his career in any age or country. He brought to the bar an extraordinary combination of qualities for success. His mind was of the highest order-distinguished for logical acuteness, elastic energy, and indefatigable appliHis person was dignified and commanding. His elocution was sonorous, graceful, and impressive. His manners courteous and winning. His life was unsullied, and his character not only unim

cation.

peachable, but of great weight. His fidelity to his clients and devotion to his cases, were thorough and unvarying. Hence he forthwith rose to the first rank in his profession, and before his death was confessedly without an equal as a practitioner at law in his own state. His business rapidly increased, till in his own and other counties of the state, and in great cases in other states, he was tasked to the full extent of his abilities. In this practice he continued through life, except when withdrawn from it to official stations, or prevented by sickness.

In politics, Mr. Sherman belonged to the school of Washington, Jay, Hamilton, Ellsworth, and his illustrious uncle. While men of this stamp were ascendant in Connecticut, he was rising in political distinction as rapidly as in the legal profession. While yet young, he was summoned to important public stations, and honored with the respect and confidence of the leading statesmen of that period; being regarded by them as a rising star of the first magnitude. In 1814 he was chosen a member of the upper branch of the legislature-a body then composed of our most able statesmen. Few elective bodies have so seldom changed their members.

Whoever was once elected to it, retained his place until he forfeited it by mal-conduct, or was raised to a higher office. And in those days, a nice regard was had to merit in the allotment of these and all other public offices. When this is the fact, a senate of twelve, virtually permanent, is sure to be composed of the most gifted men. In illustration of the scrupulous regard which was had to actual merit in the popular election of senators, we have often heard Mr. Sherman say, that of the whole number nominated, there was one man who at each election for several years was almost but not quite elected; and this exactly represented his actual