competitors were few, he soon found that this was not the scene on which he could fulfil the prophecies which great judges had pronounced on the outset of his career.

But there is another branch, or rather associated branches of this great profession, requiring powers and habits of thought and feeling different, perhaps opposite, to those which should endow the advocate who would be the charmer of the hearts of juries. To study the law as a science; to trace its principles upwards to their source in the early yet ripe wisdom of our English annals, and thence to follow it through the thousand ramifications which extending wealth and population have rendered needful; and thus to acquire that knowledge which may enable its possessor to solve with confidence the most intricate questions, and to present the aspect of each which he is retained to sustain, encrusted with learning, but lucid in outline and clear in result,— is an employment laborious and silent indeed, but not unhappy in its progress nor doubtful

the lights cast on them from the passions and the hopes of the client, to be refracted through the mind and coloured by the fancy of the counsel! In the majority of his causes he becomes, therefore, always a zealous, often a passionate partisan; lives in the life of every cause (often the most momentous part of his client's life)" burns with one love, with one resentment glows,"-and never ceases to hope, to struggle, or to complain,-till the next cause is called on, and he is involved in a new world of circumstances, passions, and affections. Sometimes it will be his province to track the subtle windings of fraud, pursuing its dark unwearied course beneath the tramplings of busy life; to develop, in lucid array, a little history or cluster of histories, tending to one great disclosure; to combine fragments of scattered truths into a vivid picture; or to cast the light from numerous facts on secret guilt, and render it almost as palpable to belief as if disclosed to vision. At another time, the honour or the life of man may tremble in his hands; he may be the last prop of sink-in its reward. To succeed in this course, a ing hope to the guilty or the sole refuge clasped clear and sound understanding, a retentive by the innocent; or, called on to defend the and not fastidious memory, an untiring indussubject against the power of state prosecution, try, either finding or creating a love of its may give to the very forms and quibbles with work, are all that is required; but how rare which ancient liberty was fenced, a dignity, are these qualities, compared to the lower deand breathe over them a magic power. Some-grees of those which are deemed loftier-or times it will be his privilege to pierce the how rarely do they withstand the temptations darkness of time, guided by mouldering char- of pleasure or the more dangerous seductions ters and heroic names; or, tracing out the of the listlessness and dreamy inaction which fibres of old relationships, to explore dim are the besetting sins of studious life! The monuments and forgotten tombs, retracing student who is brave enough to embrace such with anxious gaze those paths of common a course with heroic devotion, has objects life which have been so lightly trodden as to strongly defined before him in the horizon of retain faint impress of the passenger. One his mind; for him hour is linked to hour, and day he may touch the heart with sympathy for day to day, by the continuous effort to ap"the pangs of despised love," or glow indig-proach them; and his life, instead of being nantly at the violation of friendship, and ask, for wrongs beyond all appreciation, as much money as the pleader's imagination has dared to claim as damages; the next he may implore commiseration for human frailty, and preach nothing but charity and forgiveness. The sentiment of antiquity-the dawnings of hope -the sanctity of the human heart in its strength and its weaknesses, are among the subjects presented in rapid succession to his grasp;-with the opportunity sometimes, in moments of excitement, when his audience are raised by the solemnity of the occasion above the level of their daily thoughts, to give hints of beauty and grace which may gleam for a moment only, but will never be forgotten by his delighted hearers. In this sphere, Erskine moved triumphant;—lending his pliant sensibility to every modification of human feeling he touched on-gay, grave, pitying, humourous, pathetic, by turns-casting all himself into every subject, and forgetting himself within it, and shedding on the world of Nisi Prius hues of living beauty, which seemed to glance and tremble over it. Mr. Scott touched on the verge of his sphere in his circuits; but though an earnestness which all clients admire, a humour not too refined for the most vulgar apprehension, and a temper always under control, procured for him some business at the Assizes in days when

dissipated among various pursuits, and fretted by doubts and vanities, is massed by the coherence of its habits into one consistent whole, and acquires a dignified harmony. By toiling thus in an artificial world, the great lawyer not rarely preserves to old age the simplicity and the freshness of childhood,-moving about as unconscious of the fever of life as a shepherd whose experience is bounded by his native mountains.

When Lord Eldon entered on his studies, the English law formed a body of old principles and modern instances, far better adapted to animate and reward such a career than its present condition. Although even then greatly increased in bulk since the palmy days of its first expositors, it was not, as now, perplexed by multitudes of statutes, expressed in the barbarous jargon peculiar to modern legislation, oppressing the understanding and “darkening counsel with words without knowledge;” nor bound up or frittered away by new rules, fashioned more on imagined expediency than on principle, and presenting an array of voluminous discords which may well strike a student with dismay, and induce him, in despair of acquiring a mastery over the whole, to rest contented with such knowledge of indexes, “small pricks to their subsequent volumes," as may enable him to find some authority to quote, or some expedient to grasp, on the exi

of his sovereign," is equally applicable to the early triumphs of his professional career. His powers were all massed together, and moved by a single impulse, and did not jostle or interfere with each other's influence. In every suit in which he was counsel at the bar, in every struggle of political controversy, or in the tenor of his private life, he saw his object clearly before him; and toiled upward to realize it with undivided strength by the straightest, though often the most arduous pathssome joke, innocent of wit or fancy alone relieving its patient sternness.

gency of each occasion. The system of law, a single distracting pleasure. Mr. Twiss's just however applicable to the enjoyment, the de- remark-" that in the station he was eventuscent, and the transfer of real property, though ally called to fill, his want of imagination was despoiled of some of its forms of ancient dig- one of his advantages; for the judgment, the nity, and debased by limitations of time, which, highest of the intellectual powers, and in pubhowever generally convenient, sometimes pro-lic affairs worth all the rest, was thus left to tect the grossest injustice-making kindness exercise undivided and undisturbed its empire work a sort of disseisin, and arming ingrati- in his mind and its influence in the counsels tude with power-is even still an extraordinary scheme of ingenious architecture, reducing the vestiges of feudal barbarism to consistent form, and extracting from the usages of violence and tyranny the securities of social rights. The system of equity too, not a capricious relaxation of the strict rules of law, but having a sisterly entireness of its own, little disturbed as yet by the busy hand of tumultuous legislation, retains a kindred if not an equal claim for a mind braced for laborious study. To the perfect mastery of these systems, with the more miscellaneous complexities of commercial law, Lord Eldon on quitting Oxford devoted his powers, admirably fitted for the work by all they included, and scarcely less by all they wanted; and the consequence was slow, gradual, and complete success in his profession-secured before he added to his toils the anxieties of political life-and calmly and steadily grasped as his first object amidst them.

Thus constituted by nature of masculine understanding-beyond the common order rather in its grasp than in its essence-destined to move altogether when it moved at all,' Lord Eldon was fortunate in a kindred simplicity of religious and political creed. The effect of his early lessons in the old-fashioned school at Newcastle was to implant in a strong and simple mind a sense of the reality of reliThe great element of Lord Eldon's success, gious truths, as imbodied in the formularies both in legal and political life, was the re- of the Church of England, which admitted of markable simplicity which characterized his no more question than if it was the object of moral nature, his intellect, his opinions, and corporal vision. In his defence, therefore, of his purposes. Even his prodigious industry, that which was part of his own being, he felt which seemed to rejoice in the accumulation no scruple; no airy speculations disturbed the of toils on those which would stupify men who repose of his settled thought; to protect the are accounted laborious, was a subordinate Church against Romanism on the one side, power to this singleness of being and aim. and Dissent on the other-regardless of the If he ever cherished tastes which might dazzle expediencies of the times, or deriving new or distract him in his stubborn career, he soon strength of opposition from them-became to crushed them beneath the weight of his studies. him through life a natural if not an easy office. Once, indeed, when a young member of the He at least "knew his course." In like man. House of Commons, he attempted an elaborate ner, his attachment to the order of things in speech on the third reading of the India Bill, the State, as he found it, was scarcely less garnished with Shakspearian quotations vio; | hearted-with him it was not a matter of lently applied, and scraps of Latin and texts reasoning, but of fact, so distinctly perceived, of Scripture let into the mosaic-work of his that he regarded the brilliant defence of the incomposition, with strange contrast of colour-stitutions he loved by the eloquence and wit having resolved, with characteristic boldness, to rival Sheridan; but the House listened with astonishment to the wilful extravagance of the hard-headed lawyer; and he never repeated the error. Encouraged by the intellectual successes which his industry won in more congenial studies, he thought perhaps that he had only to apply the same labour to the department of wit and eloquence, in order to obtain a similar victory-as an eminent special pleader whom we had the happiness to know, rejoicing in the ease with which he produced works of extraordinary practical merit by distributing the labour of filling up his own masterly outlines among his pupils, once gravely proposed to manufacture novels and plays by a similar process. After this failure-which does not seem to have impaired his character with the House for sterling sense and comprehensive legal knowledge-he resolutely abstained from all attempts to adorn his natural plainness of speaking, or to relieve his toil by

of Canning with uneasiness, as if unquestionable truths were lowered in dignity by being protected by the dazzling fence of genius. When, therefore, his tendency to doubt and hesitate in the decision of those complicated questions of fact and equity which depended for adjudication on his individual view of their bearings, is invidiously contrasted with his prompt resistance to all extensive innovations, it should be recollected that his attachment to the institutions of England, as he first knew them, was one of the laws of his moral and intellectual nature;-it might be narrow, bigoted, inconvenient; incapable of gracefully bending to the necessities of the times; but still it was part of his true self: an attack on Church and State was to him the same thing as a violation of his paternal roof or an insult to a domestic affection. The same simplicity of nature, wiser than the most cunning policy, rendered him a greater, or rather a dearer favourite in the closet of the Sovereign than many who ha

"It had fallen," he said, "to his lot to send to the Lord Chancellor at the rising of his court, to inform him that on the ensuing morning his majesty would receive the recorder's report, containing probably forty or fifty cases. On proceeding from his Court of Chancery, the noble and learned Lord would, as was his uniform practice on such occasions, apply himself to the reading of every individual case, and abstract notes from all of them; and he had known more than one instance in which he had commenced this labour in the evening, and had been found pursuing it at the rising of the next sun. Thus, after having spent several hours in the Court of Chancery, he often employed twelve or fourteen more in the consideration of cases which involved the life or death of unhappy culprits."

striven to maintain an ascendency by the ap- | construction of law. Mr. Peel, when Secretary pliances of servility or the arts of flattery. In for the Home Department, in one of the deGeorge III. he found a master with a nature bates on the imputed delays of the Lord Chancongenial to his own; and devoted himself cellor's Court, thus bore testimony to this exwith his whole heart to him, in the true spirit emplary caution in sanctioning the infliction of Shakspeare's servant" of the antique world." of capital punishment :The qualities in his Royal Master which, beyond his station, attracted and justified this strong attachment, have never been so fairly developed as in the disclosures made and verified by Mr. Twiss, who shows the King as sustained in maintaining his resistance to revolutionary associations and movements, not merely by a regal obstinacy and undaunted courage, but by a depth of sentiment and earnest belief in principles, to which even those who have been most disposed to admire the resolution and to bless the issue have not always done justice. His Chancellor's conduct towards him, amidst those oscillations of reason which made him feel the need of a true friend, well requited his affection. Lord Eldon, by personal interviews with the King, became convinced that he was competent to discharge the functions of royalty; and, therefore, instead of encouraging measures which might induce the malady they assumed, he took on himself the responsibility of treating him as competent, when his own wavering might have been destructive. Surely there is no inconsistency between a sudden decision in such a case of feeling and conduct, and long hesitation on the result of a mass of facts, or of nice legal ana-Abraham Newland, was tempted to supply the logies, determining the earthly fate of a family, and affording a precedent for the administration of justice in similar cases for future times!

One remarkable instance, in which his doubts-more valuable often than the certainties of ordinary minds—stood between a convict and death, notwithstanding the unfavourable opinion of a majority of the judges, may here be selected from a long catalogue. Mr. Aslett, after many years' service as second cashier of the Bank of England under Mr.

deficiency of large speculations in stock by misappropriating an immense amount of the Exchequer bills which the bank held, and which were committed to his care. On detecAlthough Lord Eldon strenuously resisted tion, he was indicted for the capital felony of all important changes in the law, he was earn- embezzling Exchequer bills, the property of estly devoted to its liberal administration, with- the Bank of England; but when his fate seemed out regard to persons or consequences. "The sealed beyond the reach of hope, it was disquality" of justice was with him as little covered that the auditor, whose signature was "strained" as that of mercy. In deciding on necessary, by statute, to authenticate Exchethe charges to be preferred against the parties quer bills, had not been regularly appointed to accused of treason for their share in the Eng- his office; and though an act of Parliament lish combination of 1794, he manifested a was passed to render the documents he had nobleness of determination, beyond the sug- signed valid as between the government and gestions of expediency, as, in the conduct of the holders, that retrospective authentication the prosecutions, he maintained a courtesy of did not justify the description of the embezzled demeanor which won the respect of his most papers in the proceedings against the prisoner ardent opponents. He believed the offence to as Exchequer bills. On this objection, Mr. Aslett be treason; and although a conviction for that was acquitted, but was detained to meet the crime was more than doubtful, while a convic- charge in another form-that of misapplying tion for seditious conspiracy might have been "effects and securities" of the bank-on which regarded as almost certain, he rejected the he was convicted, and upon which a majority safer and the baser course, and acted on the of the twelve judges held him amenable to the severe judgment of his reason. The analysis extreme sentence of the law. The Lord Chanof these trials by Mr. Twiss-one of the most cellor's mind, however, was not satisfied that masterly and striking passages of his work- these irregular documents could, in a case of while it may leave the prudence of the At-life, be strictly holden even to justify this more torney-General open to question, must satisfy general description: Mr. Aslett therefore esevery impartial mind of the elevation of the caped death; and after suffering many years' motive by which he was impelled. While he imprisonment in the State apartments of Newdreaded any relaxation of the criminal law-gate, with this sentence hanging over him, but as if all its old "terrors to evil-doers" would not unsolaced by social and even festive revanish in air if its most awful penalty were liefs, was pardoned on condition of quitting his removed from crimes against which it had country for ever.

long been threatened-he endured the most In the comprehensiveness and accuracy of anxious labour to prevent its falling on an in-his legal knowledge, Lord Eldon was perhaps nocent sufferer, or one who, however guilty, was the greatest of all English lawyers-certainly not subjected to its infliction by the plainest exceeded by no one of any age. If it is re

"Rose v. Bartlett," he refused to believe that they had been used.

"We all know," said he, "that Lord Northington was possessed of great law-learning and a very manly mind; and I cannot but think that he would rather have denied the rule altogether than have set it afloat by treating it with a degree of scorn, and by introducing distinctions calculated to disturb the judgments of his predecessors and remove the landmarks of the law."

maintaining the majesty of justice by the fear of precipitate decision-and (notwithstanding the complaints annually made of him in the House of Commons because he pondered long before he pronounced judgments which would decide the destiny of a suitor, and did not achieve impossibilities) over-mastering a world of labour which almost makes the mind dizzy in its contemplation. Nothing, indeed, could have enabled him to endure such labour but his undoubting faith in the great principles of his life-that kindness of nature which charms away animosities by its unaffected courtesy-and which, amidst the distractions of party, and the “fears of change perplexing nations," enabled him to preserve an exalted position in the minds of friends and opponents

membered how greatly, even in his time, the mass of statutes and decisions had expanded from the days of Lord Coke-how the provinces of common law and equity had assumed a systematic distinctness-and how easy of application his knowledge was to each of them in turn, and also to every branch of Scottish law which arose before him on appeal-it will be scarcely possible adequately to conceive the aptitude for study and the power of continuous labour which he must have exercised in the few years which elapsed before his time was As Lord Eldon spoke of Lord Northington, engrossed by an enormous practice, which so would he be spoken of himself. He too must have rendered systematic study impossi- had a "manly mind"-firm in principle, appreble. After years spent in the Court of Chan-hensive and slow in its application-deliberatcery-exclusively engaged in equity, with the ing sometimes to the injury of individuals, but exception of the superficial varieties of his circuits, and the arduous duties of his great offices in state prosecutions-he assumed the functions of Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas with as much ease, and performed them with as perfect a mastery over all subjects, as though his life had been spent in the practice of the common law; and indeed manifested a promptitude and vigour, which he was so often accused of wanting when called upon solely and almost finally to decide on the fortunes of suitors in the Court of Chancery. One passing allusion to his having just come from a court of equity, by way of apology for quoting a decision in that court, is the only circumstance throughout his judgments, reported by Bosanquet and Puller in the second volume of their reports, which could lead to the suspicion that he had ever practised on the other side of Westminster Hall. In subtlety of apprehension, indeed, he is exceeded by Littledale; in ingenious application of legal analogies, by Holroyd; in lucid purity of expression, by Lord Chief Justice Tindal and Lord Lyndhurst; but in extent of knowledge and the facility of its application, he is exceeded by no judge of whom we have either experience or memorial. It is true that his style is heavy and involved-that the principles of law and the circumstances of fact are sometimes blended in his judgments so as to appear confused-but the matter is always there which not only justifies the particular decision, but supplies the rule for time to come. So far was he from shrinking from the deve lopment of principle, that in the only case which, while he was Chief Justice, was sent from the Court of Chancery for the opinion of the Court of Common Pleas, he deviated from the usual practice of merely certifying the opinion of the Court to the Chancellor, and delivered a long exposition of the principles involved in the question-what words in a devise will pass leaseholds-discussing all the numerous authorities, and reconciling them to each other and to an intelligible rule. In this case, with a noble zeal for the fame of a deceased lawyer, he manifests that vigour of mind which was never perplexed except by the fear of doing injustice. Referring to some reported expressions of Lord Northington, impeaching without overruling the old case of

* Thompson v. Lady Lawley, 2 Bos. and Pul. 303.

"An ever-fixed mark, Which look'd on tempests and was never shaken."

With a gentler devotion to legal studies, but with accomplishments felicitously harmonizing with them, Lord Stowell nearly kept pace, step by step, with the promotion of his younger brother. His residence at Oxford for eighteen years-a period of collegiate seclusion unexampled in the life of a successful lawyerprepared him to look on the varieties of human life and character which passed before him during the ensuing half century of professional labour, through a softening medium. Selecting for the scene of his practice the cloistered courts in Doctors' Commons, he avoided both the dazzling hurry of Nisi Prius advocacy, and those tremendous labours of the equity student which are scarcely enlivened by the arguments of the open Court of Chancery. But although the scene of his exertions was quiet and sequestered, his competitors few, and the discussions conducted with a sort of academical amenity, the subjects which, as advocate and as judge, he examined and adorned, spread widely throughout society: on the one hand, extending through the gravest considerations of international law to the horizon of the civilized world; and on the other, affecting those domestic relations in which delicate subtleties of passion and temper influence the most important of human rights and duties, and, above all the changes of fortune, tend to make life wretched or happy. In the dingy recesses of Doctors' Commons, the hopes and fears, the frailties, the passions, the loves, the charities of many lives were dis

cerned in ever-shifting variety—as in a camera | tion in saying, that they ought to do so in every obscura-and never were they refined by such country of the civilized world." elegance as when touched by Lord Stowell. Of his efforts during his period of advocacy, when his evenings were enjoyed in the brilliant society of which Dr. Johnson was the centre, the world knows little; but his judgments during the years when he presided over the High Court of Admiralty and the Consistory Court, exhibiting all the aspects of each case, enable us to guess at the dexterity with which he presented the favourable views of the causes committed to his charge, and the beauty with which he graced them.

Of Lord Stowell's decisions the following character is given by Mr. Twiss in language worthy of the subject:

But the more popular judicial essays of Lord Stowell-for so his judgments may be not improperly regarded-are those pronounced in the Consistory Court in questions of divorce, restitution of conjugal rights, and nullity of marriage. Partaking more of the tone of a mediator than a censor, they are models of practical wisdom for domestic use. The judgment in the case of Evans v. Evansa suit, by a lady, for divorce by reason of cruelty-presents a beautiful example of his enunciation of wise and just principles, of his skill in extracting from the exaggerations of passion and interest the essential truth, and of the amenity and grace with which he could soften his refusal to comply with a lady's prayer. Thus he lays down the rule which should govern such unfortunate appeals:

"The humanity of the court has been loudly and repeatedly invoked. Humanity is the second virtue of courts, but undoubtedly the first is justice. If it were a question of humanity simply, and of humanity which confined its views merely to the happiness of the present parties, it would be a question easily decided upon first impressions. Everybody must feel a wish to sever those who wish to live separate from each other, who cannot live together with any degree of harmony, and consequently with any degree of happiness; but my situation does not allow me to indulge the feel

"Lord Stowell had the good fortune to live in an age of which the events and circumstances were peculiarly qualified to exercise and exhibit the high faculties of his mind. The greatest maritime questions which had ever presented themselves for adjudicationquestions involving all the most important points both in the rights of belligerents and in those of neutrals-arose in his time out of that great war in which England became the sole occupant of the sea, and held at her girdle the keys of all the harbours upon the globe. Of these questions, most of them of first impression, a large portion could be determined only by a long and cautious process of reference to principle and induction from analogy. The genius of Lord Stowell, at once profoundings, much less the first feelings of an individual. and expansive, vigorous and acute, impartial and decisive, penetrated, marshalled, and mastered all the difficulties of these complex inquiries; till, having "sounded all their depths and shoals," he framed and laid down that great comprehensive chart of maritime law which has become the rule of his successors "To vindicate the policy of the law is no and the admiration of the world. What he necessary part of the office of a judge; but, if thus achieved in the wide field of international it were, it would not be difficult to show that jurisprudence, he accomplished also with equal the law, in this respect, has acted with its success in the narrower spheres of ecclesias-usual wisdom and humanity-with that true tical, matrimonial, and testamentary law. And wisdom and that real humanity that regards though, where so many higher excellencies the general interests of mankind. For though, stand forth, that of style may seem compara- in particular cases, the repugnance of the law tively immaterial, it is impossible not to notice to dissolve the obligations of matrimonial cothat scholar-like finish of his judicial composi-habitation may operate with great severity tions, by which they delight the taste of the critic, as by their learning and their logic they satisfy the understanding of the lawyer."Life of Lord Eldon, vol. iii. pp. 255-6.

The perspicuity of Lord Stowell's judgments in the Admiralty Court obtained for them not only the respect, but the reluctant accordance of the foreign powers who were most interested in impugning them. Having sent a copy of some of them, privately printed, to the Admiralty Judge of the United States, he received the following remarkable answer:

"In the excitement caused by the hostilities raging between our countries, I frequently impugned your judgments, and considered them as severe and partial; but, on a calm review of your decisions, after a lapse of years, I am bound to confess my entire conviction both of their accuracy and equity. I have taken care that they shall form the basis of the maritime law of the United States, and I have no hesita

The law has said that married persons shall not be legally separated upon the mere disinclination of one or both to cohabit together. The disinclination must be founded upon reasons which the law approves, and it is my duty to see whether these reasons exist in the present case.

upon individuals, yet it must be carefully remembered that the general happiness of the married life is secured by its indissolubility. When people understand that they must live together, except for a very few reasons known to the law, they learn to soften, by mutual accommodation, that yoke which they know they cannot shake off: they become good husbands and good wives from the necessity of remaining husbands and wives-for necessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties which it imposes. If it were once understood that, upon mutual disgust, married persons might be legally separated, many couples who now pass through the world with mutual comfort, with attention to their common offspring, and to the moral order of civil society, might have been at this moment living in a state of mutual unkindness-in a state of estrangement

*1 Haggard, 35.