partiality. He has great executive ability, and is very energetic in the despatch of business. He is a cultivated, courteous, and Christian gentleman, with all that these terms imply. He has social qualities of a high order, being genial, companionable, and an expert story-teller. He is possessed of a vigorous constitution, is in excellent health, and capable of performing the severest literary or judicial labor. As a scholar, as a lawyer, and as a jurist, he ranks among the very ablest in the great West. If he carries with him to Washington his Kansas habits of early rising, he will sur prise his associates upon the bench, as he is often found in his library reading court papers or preparing an opinion in an im portant case as early as six a. m. Judge Brewer was not an applicant for the position to which he has been chosen. Several prominent members of the bar of his circuit suggested to him, after the death of Mr. Justice Matthews, that he should be a candidate for the vacancy. He de clined, and said " that the office was not one to be contested tor, being too high and
sacred." Notwithstanding his positive refu sal to make any effort to be placed upon the Supreme Bench, his eminent qualifications for the place were called to the attention of the President by many distinguished mem bers of the bar and bench both in the East and West. It is widely reported that he was largely assisted in securing his promotion through an act of courtesy and generosity on his own part. The choice lay, finally, between him and Judge Henry B. Brown, of Michigan. The two men had been classmates at Yale. Judge Brewer wrote a letter to a mutual friend, highly praising his old college-chum and expressing the hope that he would secure the appointment. This letter found its way to the President, as a recommendation for Brown; and its fairness so impressed the President that he appointed Brewer. The new Justice is notably fitted by char acter, temperament, learning, industry, and experience, to be a member of the highest judicial tribunal of the nation, and his appointment is distinctly one that will strengthen the Supreme Bench.
PUNISHMENT IN EFFIGY. TN the earlier stages of civilization, the J effigy of a person was never held to be a mere likeness, but was identified more or less with the very person himself. The least educated classes in civilized countries still exhibit a survival of the old belief in the punishme'nts they bestow upon effigies. They serve the figure as they would like to serve the original, if he were not dead or absent. There was probably much of this temper in our English forefathers when they first burned Guy Fawkes; the 5th of Novem ber was no mere day of amusement. It is in this temper, mixing religious conviction I and pleasure, that the effigy of Judas is so severely punished in Holy Week by the na-
tions of southern Europe and their descend ants in America. Execution by effigy seems to the practical minds of the English (as it did to the Romans) too puerile to be used by a serious nation. We should find no satisfaction for our own indignation, and see no indication of the majesty of our law, in punishing a crimi nal's picture, because we could not punish the criminal himself. The French, however, have always treated symbols with gravity; the de facing of the portraits of the last emperor, and the destruction of the Venddme Column were forms of effigy punishment. Execution by effigy was a solemn legal institution in France prior to the first Revolution. It was
