The Governor was, as just said, an example of Emerson's famous saying that a Conservative is a Democrat grown old and gone to seed.

He was in my judgment a greater intellectual force than any other man in his time, Daniel Webster not excepted.

It was a force before which Webster himself more than once recoiled.

Yet he probably won more cases, year in and year out, than either of them.

His mind was like a steel spring pressing on every part of the other side's case.

It seemed as if a client no sooner put his head on the handle of Washburn's office-door than his heart warmed to him like that of a mother toward her first-born.

He was public-spirited, wise, kind-hearted, always ready to give his service without hope of reward or return to any good cause, a pillar of the town, a pillar of the church.

He was one of the very greatest of American lawyers.

He was impulsive, somewhat passionate, but still with an affectionate, sunny, generous nature, and a large heart, to which malice, hatred, or uncharitableness were impossible.

He was a consummate advocate, a favorite alike with Judges and jurors, winning his causes wherever success was possible, and largely employed.

If he had any foible which affected at all his usefulness or success in life it was an impatience of authority, whether it were the authority of a great reputation, or of party, or of public sentiment, or of the established and settled…

Nothing shakes the authority of a court more than the frequent habit of individual dissent.

But no better Judge ever sat in a Massachusetts court-house.

He made a most eloquent and powerful appeal to the aldermen to refuse the petition, in the name of morality and good order.

He stated the deplorable effect of attending such exhibitions on the character of the youth of our city of both sexes, cited the opinion and practice of our ancestors in such matters, and made a profound impression.

He then warned his hearers against the young man who was to follow him, whom, he said, he loved as his life, but he was there employed as a lawyer with his fee in his hand, without the responsibility which rested upon them of protecting…

He met his father with a clear, simple, modest, but extremely able statement of the other side; pointed out the harmlessness of such exhibitions when well conducted, and that the strictness which confounded innocence and purity with guilt…

His method of speech was clear, simple, spirited, without much pathos or emotion, but still calculated to stir and move his hearers.

I told him that I had lately been elected to the Senate after a considerable controversy, and that I did not think I could in justice to the people of the State make a vacancy in the office which would occasion a new strife.

Judge Nelson was a master of equity and bankruptcy.

He held on like a bull-dog to a case in the justice of which he believed.

He liked to discuss difficult and profound questions of public policy, constitutional law, philosophy, and metaphysics.

He discovered the priceless Body of Liberties of 1641, which had remained unprinted from that time, although the source from which our Bill of Rights and constitutional provisions had been so largely drawn.

The title, which the kindness of our countrymen has given to Massachusetts, that of Model Commonwealth, I think has been earned largely by the character of her Judiciary, and never could have been acquired without it.

But while all his opinions are full of precedent and contain all the learning of the case, he was, I think, equally remarkable for the wisdom, good sense, and strength of his judgments.