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CHARLES SUMNER.

(HARLES SUMNER was born in Boston, Massachusetts, January 6th, 1811.

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His grandfather, Major Job Sumner, was an officer of the Revolutionary army; and his father, Charles Pinckney Sumner, a lawyer by profession, and an accomplished gentleman of the old school, held during the latter part of his life the responsible position of sheriff of Suffolk county, which comprises the city of Boston.

At ten years of age, Charles Sumner was placed in the public Latin school of Boston, the best preparatory institution for classical training in New England, and, during the five years that he remained there, gave abundant evidences of industry and ability. Of naturally studious habits, he devoted much of his leisure time to reading history, of which he was passionately fond, and often arose before daylight to peruse Hume, Gibbon, and other favorite authors. At the age of fifteen, he entered Harvard College, where he was graduated in 1830, holding a respectable rank in his class, though one by no means commensurate with his natural abilities. More interested in the general improvement of his mind than in the acquisition of academical honors, he deviated from the prescribed curriculum whenever it was opposed to his plans or tastes, and pursued an independent course of reading in classical and general literature. Having devoted another year to private reading in his favorite studies, he entered in 1831 the Law School at Cambridge, where, under the instruction of Professors Ashmun and Greenleaf, and Justice Story, he acquired a profound knowledge of judicial science. Not content with the information to be gained from the ordinary text-books, he explored the curious learning of the old year-books, made himself familiar with the voluminous reports of the English and American courts, and neglected no opportunity to trace the principles of law to their sources.

While still a student, he contributed articles to the American Jurist, a law quarterly published in Boston, which attracted attention by their marked ability and learning. Subsequently, he became the editor of this periodical, and it is a fact creditable to his early acquirements that several of his contributions have been cited as authorities by Justice Story. With each of the distinguished jurists above mentioned he was on terms of cordial intimacy; and Justice Story, down to the time of his death, in 1845, was his warm friend and admirer.

Leaving the Law School in 1834, Mr. Sumner passed a few months in the office of Benjamin Rand, in Boston, with a view of learning the forms of practice; and in the same year was admitted to the bar, at Worcester. He immediately commenced practice in Boston, where his reputation for learning and forensic ability secured him a warm welcome from the members of his profession, and offers to enter lucrative law partnerships, which he declined, preferring to make no engagements which should interfere with a long-cherished plan of making a European tour. In addition to his large practice, he assumed the duties of reporter of the United States circuit court, in which capacity he published three volumes of cases, known as "Sumner's Reports," and comprising chiefly the decisions of Justice Story; and during the absence of the latter at Washington, he filled his place for three winters at the Cambridge Law School, by appointment of the university authorities—a significant proof of the estimation in which his abilities were held. His lectures on constitutional law and the law of nations were prepared with much labor, and greatly enhanced his reputation. Amid these absorbing pursuits he found time to edit "Dunlap's Treatise on Admiralty Practice," left unfinished by the author, and to which he added a copious appendix, containing many practical forms and precedents of pleadings, since adopted in our admiralty courts, and an index, the whole making a larger amount of matter than the original treatise.

In 1837, having in the preceding year declined flattering offers of a professorship at Cambridge, Mr. Sumner turned aside from the temptations and emoluments of professional life, to make his contemplated visit to Europe, where he remained until 1840. Carrying to foreign lands his enthusiasm for his profession, he made a special study in Paris of the celebrated Code Napoleon, both in its essential principles and forms of procedure, with which his previous studies in civil law had made him tolerably familiar. In England, where he remained nearly a year, his opportunities for meeting society in all its forms were such as are rarely accorded to American travellers. Bench and bar vied with each other in paying attentions to him; and in private circles, as well as in Westminster Hall-where, on more than one occasion, at the invitation of the judges, he sat by their side at trials-his reception was most gratifying. As an evidence of the impression which his extensive learning and accomplishments produced upon an eminent English jurist, it is related that, several years after his return to America, during the hearing in an insurance question before the court of exchequer, one of the counsel having cited an American case, Baron Parke (since created Lord Wensleydale, the ablest perhaps of the English judges of the time) asked him what book he quoted. He replied, "Sumner's Reports." Baron Rolfe inquired, "Is that the Mr. Sumner who was once in England?" and, upon receiving a reply in the affirmative, Baron Parke observed, "We shall not con