The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1889-06-06

but assisted by taking part in an act
i've judicial administration; such labors {
as produced the wisdom and won the {
fame of Parsons and Marshall, and
Kent and Story, and Holt and Mans (
field. Il
"In the next place, he must be a
man, not merely upright, not merely
honest and well-intentioned,- but a
man who will not respect persons in
Judgment He shall know nothing
about the parties, everything about the
case. He shall do everything for JUS
tice nothing for himself; nothing for
his friend nothing for his patron;
nothing for his sovereign. If on one
side is the executive power and the
Legislature and the people-the
sources of his honor, the givers of his
daily bread-and on the other an in
dividual, nameless and odius, his eye
is to see great nor small, attending
only to the 'trepidations of the bal
ance' If law is passed by unani
NOUS Legislature, clamored for by the
general voice of the public, and a
cause is before him on it, in which the
whole community is on one side, and (
an individual, nameless or Cdius, on |
the other, and he believes it to be
against the Constitution, ne must SO
declare it, or there IS no judge. 1t
Athens comes there to demand that
the cup of hemlock be put to the lips
of the wisest of men, and he believes
that he has not corrupted the youth,
nor omitted to zvorshib the gods Of the
city, moi, introduced ne7y divinfties Of
his oz0n, he must deliver him, although
the thunder light on the unterrified
: brow"
These words present a perfect
picture of and are applicable IN all
their truth and beauty to the late
Judge Ruffin.
In the brilliant career of the late
Thomas Ruffin, his eminent ability
and fullness of learning, his compre-
r hensive grasps Of the most difficult
: problems of Jurisprudence, his fertility
t of resourse, his patience in the investi-
!, cation and preparation of cases, and
v his answering adherence to his con-
e vctions, we see displayed qualities
:. which mark him as having realized the
r beautiful, truthful, and powerful words
of Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes:
p "This abstraction called the Law
wherein as in a magic mirror we see
# reflected, not only our own lives, but
6 the lives of all men that have been
7. When l think on this majestic theme
d my eyes dazzle. If we are to speak o
. the law as our mistress, we who art
d here know that she is mistress onl,
,e to be wooed with sustained and lionel.
N passion only to be won by straininl
ID all the faculties by which man is likes
,b to a god Those who, having begun
N the suit, turn away uncharmed, do s.
ne either because they have not bee1
=" vouchsafed the sight of her devine fig
~ ure, or because they had not the heal
IT. for SO great struggle. TO the love
,d of the law, how small a thing seem
the novelist's tales of the loves an
~ fates of Daphnis and Chloe. How pal
,,s a phantom even the Circe of poetr
,rs transforming mankind with intoxica
A. ing dreams Of fiery aether and tf
lie foam of summer seas and CLOWN
greensward, and the white arms
,us women! For him no less a histol
will suffice than that of the moral II
wv of his race For him every text tn
nj he deciphers, every doubt that he r
me solves adds a new feature TO the u
ma. folding panorama Of mans destll
an upon this earth. Nor will"his task
of done until. by the furthest STREET
,ile of human imagination, he has seen
snt with his eyes the birth and growth
be society, and by the furthest stretch
md reason he has understood the philos
phy of its being. When | think til
nal of the law, | see a princess might
-, than she who once wrought at Bayet
~ eternally weaving into her web q
the figures of the everlengthening past
soar figures too dim to be noticed by
idle, too symbolic to be interpreted
'5 h;s cept by her pupils, but to the disco
ing eye disclosing every painful s.
reat and every world shaking contest
eau which mankind has worked and fou
und it's way from savage isolation to org
ster ic social life.
"But we who are here know the
be even better in another respect.
ming see her daily, not as students and p
y to osophers, but as actors in dram
not which she is the providence and O
and ruling power. When l think of
titu- law as we know her in the court-he
that and the market, she seems to M
pru- woman sitting by the wayside, benz
the whose overshadowing hood every
State shall see the counte nance OF his
code serts or needs The timid and O
h us borne gain heart from her protec
j., but smile. Fair combatants man
5, we standing to their rights, see her k
and ing the lists with the stern and
of eliminating eye of even justice.
COM wretch who has defed her most sa
And commands, and has thought to c
which through the ways where she was
hous- finds that his path ends with her,
long beholds beneath her hood the ine'