"James Topham Brady life, it is thought that his peculiar abilities would have won for him a high place in the State; but he uniformly declined all political honors. The Attorney-Generalship of the United States was once offered him; but he did not accept it, preferring the pleasures of his independent course at the New York Bar. The great advocate, having courted the jealous mistress of the law assiduously, passed on through life without having married. He never realized the comforts of "The Hanging of the Crane," so charm ingly portrayed by Longfellow, in his poem under that title. Being of a sunny and mercurial nature, he floated on the bubbling tide of fawning and flattering society, in which his smiles were ever courted and ever welcome. The Hon. John R. Brady,1 an accom plished justice of the Supreme Court of New York City, is a brother of the subject of our sketch, — a man of eminent ability as a jurist, and one who is most highly respected and revered. At the meeting of the members of the Bar of New York in memory of Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson, Mr. Brady pronounced a senti1 Since this article was written, Judge Brady died, on the 161I1 of March, quite suddenly, of apoplexy.
309
ment which most appositely illustrates his catholic spirit and his humane character: "Like you," he observed, with a high sense of regard for the opinion of his associates, "I honor greatness, genius, and achieve ments; but I honor more those qualities in a man's nature which show that while he holds a proper relation to the Deity, he has also a just estimate of his fellow-men, and a kindly feeling toward them. I would rather have it said of me after death, by my brethren of the bar, that they were sorry I had left their companionship, than to be spoken of in the highest strains of gifted panegyric." That sentence illustrates and bespeaks the nature of the man. Although more than twenty years have rolled their onward course since James T. Brady was called from his beneficent sphere of usefulness (he died on the 9th of February, 1869), there are many in the profession in New York City at the present time who re call with grateful recollection and endear ment his genial face and his noble character, knowing full well, in the words of tribute of Antony to Brutus, that — "His life was gentle, and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, ' This was a man .' ' "
