PREFACE.

The death of my father, Joseph P. Bradley, on January 22, 1892, placed in my hands as his sole executor, all his papers and MSS., a large and varied collection. Appreciating its value and importance, I have been engaged for some years in examining and arranging it in convenient form, and after submission to several distinguished and learned friends of my father, I have, at their earnest solicitation, undertaken to gather together those heretofore unpublished and unspoken thoughts of his, which he habitually wrote down in all manner of memoranda, record and common-place books, as they became settled convictions of his mind.*

To these I have added such public addresses and lectures as seem pertinent to such a collection. But I have endeavored to eliminate all strictly legal subjects, except the lecture before the law students of the University of Pennsylvania, it being the purpose of this volume to record in a permanent way his acquisitions in other departments of thought than the law. His legal reputation will be judged by his opin

ions from 9th Wallace to 141st United States, which, in the language of Chief Justice Fuller, "constitute a repository of statesman-like views and of enlightened rules in the administration of justice, resting upon the eternal principles of right and wrong, which will into oblivion."

never pass

In presenting these thoughts of Mr. Justice Bradley, it should be borne in mind, therefore, that they include only such as are appropriate to a collection of miscellanies. Much, probably three-quarters, of the time occupied in studies distinct from those incident to the prosecution of his profession, was devoted to mathematics, his favorite subject, and the results of his thoughts and work in that department of science are found recorded in many places, whole blank books being filled and reams of paper covered with solutions and discussions of various problems, indicating profound knowledge of and familiarity with the principles of astronomical, geometrical and physical mathematics. But the very nature of the work is such as to preclude its introduction into these pages. Still certain entries in his "Records" have seemed worthy of preservation, if not for their own novelty, at least as an index to this phase of the mental acquirements of this many-sided man.

That these studies were not superficial, but deep and thorough, is evidenced by an examination of his

correspondence, in which is found the letters of expert engineers, practical mechanics and even college professors, soliciting his advice and his judgment on mechanical and scientific devices and methods.

It is evidenced, also, as applied in his dissection of complicated patent litigation before the Supreme Court of the United States, in which his pre-eminence has been so forcibly maintained by that leader among great American patent lawyers, Mr. George Harding, of Philadelphia, who says: "In that branch of law (patent), as a judge, he has never been surpassed, if he has been equalled. No matter what department of the arts was involved, mechanics, chemistry, electricity or steam engineering, he mastered the subject."

Still another subject to which he devoted much time and labor was genealogy.* To a complete history of his own family, with all its ramifications in this country, involving a large correspondence and personal inspection of old town records and documents in Connecticut, he added the compiling of the history of his wife's family and connections (Hornblowers, Burnets, Gouverneurs, etc.), besides the records of many collateral branches, all duly preserved in MSS., necessitating that manual and mental labor and application that so astonished those who only knew him by his work as lawyer and judge. As his

*The Bradley Family of Fairfield." N. J., 1894.

Published privately in Newark,