Daily Los Angeles herald., 1883-09-04


late jeremiah s. Black. It was the
privilege Of the writer OF this article TO
possess, by inheritance, the friendship
OF the ilIustrious dead, and our absence
from Los Angeles at the time the wires
bore to this Coast the melancholy intel
ligence of his demise alone prevent
ed the discharge of duty which is
precluded from being pleasure only
because death, even at a ripe and ven
cradle age, is supposed to have attached
to it something Of human sorrow.
In the case OF Judge Black II is inn
possible TO entertain sorrow. He died
full Of years and honors. The telegraph
and all the encyclopedias misstate his
age. The venerable DIR. Gwin informed
us that he and the dead statesman were
born in the same year, which would
make his age seventy-eight, instead Of
seventy-three, the figure which has
been accepted in the ordinary obitua-
ries and in the telegraphic accounts.
From his personnel il was simply out of
the question to hazard speculation as
TO his years. For a time whereof the
memory of men not yet old runneth
not to the contrary, Judge Black wore a
wig. Not in the slightest degree, how
ever, did this artificial adornment dis
guise tho noble and classical contour of
his head or detract from the majesty
Of his strong aud masculine face.
The great Pennsylvanian-perhaps the
greatest of all Pennsylvanians s-had
nothing OF the ''singed cat" order about
him--of the guild who are better than
they look, and who are sometimes as
sumed to be so purely out Of courtesy
From the very moment you entered his
presence, and before the flow OF his
inimitable conversation began--a con-
versation which has rarely been mp.
preached, and probably never surpassed,
in fullness OF Information, wit, geniality
and righteous invoctive, unless Edmund
Burke, DIR. Samuel johnson and Thomas
Babington Macaulay were the excep-
tions--the interlocutors Of Judge Black
knew that they were in the presence of
great man. In that Roman Senate
whose majestic presence held the vic
torious Goths spell-bound in their full
career of victorious slaughter, Jeremiah
S. Black would have loomed up .faciie
princeps as its best exemplar Of God-like
manhood.
II is perhaps unfortunate that, with
his consumIhate gifts, the circumstances
of his country and the bent Of his per-
sonal temperament did not admit of
Judge Blacks attaining the pronounced
political eminence to which his wonder
full gifts entitled him. During the peri
helion of his intellectual supremacy,
when he was the delight of the most
brilliant circles of the country, he was
in that voluntary retirement which so
many Other illustrious Democrats ac-
cepted as a result of the madness Of the
hour. During his incumbency of
judicial office, as District Judge and us
Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court of Pennsylvania, Judge Black
showed that he possessed a depth and
variety of judicial learning that has
never been exceeded by any man who
sat ON the bench, either in Westminster
Hall in England, or in any OF the numer-
GUS forums of the United States. As
Attorney General and Secretary OF State
for the United States, in Mr.. Buchan-
ans Cabinet, the deceased rendered i'm
portant services to his country which,
though they were not rated at their prop
er value at the time or now, will be fully
appreciated by discriminating and inn
partial posterity.
1t was as lawyer that Judge Black
chose to figure for the greater portion
of his long life, and in his profession ho
was almost without rival. Command
ing the largest regular fees ever paid to
counsel in this or any other country, he
was so indifferent to money that we
doubt il he left any large fortune behind
him. Many people will remember the
incident, some ten or twelve years ago,
where Judge Black was retained by n
southwestern railway to manage one OF
their cases at $1,000 a day. While going
to the scene of his forensic battle the
train on which he was n passenger was
thrown from the track near Louisville and
the Judge sustained injuries which de-
tanned him some thirty-two days before
he could resume his trip. swelling his
regular fee by some $50, 900 for the de-
tention.
1t was not Judge Blacks fortune, like
the elder and the younger Pitt and
Charles james Fox, TO be thrown into
the arena of eager and turbulent political
strife, but be shares with those illustri'
Gus men in that malapropos dispensn-
tion which makes their fame largely de-
pendent on tradition. How littlehas come
down TO us of Charles James Fox, for
instance, to attest his superhumau elo
auence /. 1t is lamentable in the ex-
treme that Judge Black did not devote
his almost unexampled gifts to the
writing OF the political history OF his
oountry--to some great literary work
which would have been an enduring
monument to his geniusg
As writer the deceased has never
been surpassed in his nervous and sin
envy mastery Of the English language, in
his brilliant and procreant imagination
or in his witheging power Of inyectiye
Junius is dwaried in the comparison
when we pick up any of those splendid
bursts OF eloquenee and denunciation in
which Judge Black has occasionally
blighted some Pinchbeek statesman Of
the Republican party. AS the leading
counsel for MIR. Tilden before the Elec-
toral Commission he luxuriated in an
eloquence which recalled the best efforts
OF Edmund Burke, Richard Brinsley