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 engrossed by an enormous practice, which must have rendered systematic study impossible. After years spent in the Court of Chancery-exclusively engaged in equity, with the 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 development 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. "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 treat.' ing 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." As Lord Eldon spoke of Lord Northington, so would he be spoken of himself. He too had a "manly mind"-firm in principle, apprehensive and slow in its application-deliberating sometimes to the injury of individuals, but 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 "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, th 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 hu manity 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 and the admiration of the world. What he thus achieved in the wide field of international jurisprudence, he accomplished also with equal success in the narrower spheres of ecclesias-usual wisdom and humanity-with that true tical, matrimonial, and testamentary law. And though, where so many higher excellencies stand forth, that of style may seem comparatively immaterial, it is impossible not to notice that scholar-like finish of his judicial compositions, 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. "To vindicate the policy of the law is no necessary part of the office of a judge; but, if it were, it would not be difficult to show that the law, in this respect, has acted with its wisdom and that real humanity that regards the general interests of mankind. For though, in particular cases, the repugnance of the law to dissolve the obligations of matrimonial cohabitation may operate with great severity 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. from their common offspring-and in a state of the most licentious and unreserved immorality. In this case, as in many others, the happiness of some individuals must be sacrificed to the greater and more general good." We wish we could follow the famous civilian through all the delicate windings of this "pretty quarrel" between Mr. and Mrs. Evans; the masterly analysis of the waiting-woman's motives; the elegant etiquette of the lying-in chamber; the prerogatives of the nurse, and fantastical distresses of the mistress-and give some specimens of Sir William Scott's gayer style. But the embroidery of each case is so equally woven, the effect so much depends upon harmony of colour and exact proportion; the sly humour is so nicely, and almost imperceptibly, mingled with the worldly wisdom, that it would be unjust to tear away fragments and exhibit them as specimens. If there is a fault it lies in a tendency to attenuation of the matter in sentences "With linked sweetness long drawn out;" and yet it would be difficult to find a word we would change, or a sentence we would spare. Although the refinement of expression is almost undisturbed, the sense is always manly nothing affected, sickly, or sentimental-but common sense arrayed in the garb of fancy. The vivid exhibition of scenes in domestic life; the opposition of motives and passions; all invested with a certain air from the rank in society of the suitors, (for the poor rarely indulge in the luxuries of the Consistory Court,) reminds us more of the style of comedy which was fading from the stage before Sir William Scott retired from the bench, and which his dramatic tastes particularly fitted him to appreciate. He must have been indignant, even when Garrick performed Archer, at the impudent usurpation by the hero of the Beau's Stratagem of the civilian's office, when he sets up a rival court of his own for the dissolution of unhappy partnerships for life, audaciously declares "Consent, if mutual, saves the lawyer's fee;" and consequently destroys the Judge's function. In each of his best civic developments, the curtain seems lifted on an elegant drama of manners: husbands and wives quarrel and recriminate in dialogue almost as graceful as Sheridan's; youths of fortune become the appropriate prey of rustic lasses, in spite of obdurate fathers; and a good moral, better enforced than most stage conclusions, dismisses He the parties and charms the audience. once said he could furnish a series of stories from the annals of Doctors' Commons which should rival the Waverley Novels in interest; and we wish he had tried it! churchyard at the usual fees, when his last earthly mansion was composed of materials so durable as to resist for an unusual number of years that decomposition which might enable the narrow space to receive a due succession of occupiers. This subject, so shocking in some of its attendant details, so mortifying to human pride in some of its aspects, becomes in his hands suggestive of solemn but gentle disquisition on the essence of the sentiment which requires the reverent disposal of the dead, and on the forms through which, in various nations and times, it has been breathed. From the simplicity of patriarchal days, through the splendid varieties of that affected duration at which the Egyptian monarchs aimed, down to the humble necessities of a pauper funeral and brief sojourn of the untitled dead in a domicile of their own, before being associated directly with dust, he discourses-"turning all to favour," if not to "prettiness," and giving a vital interest to ashes and the urn. In his researches he delights to measure stately wit with that prodigious master in the empire of the grave, Sir Thomas Browne; and though he falls far short of the embossed grandeur of the sepulchral essay on "Urn-Burial," which stands alone for fantastic solemnity in English Prose, he diffuses a gentle atmosphere over the poor-crowded cemetery, and regulates the ceremonies and gradations in the world of death with the same Grandisonian air with which he had adjusted the contests of the fair and innocent and frail among the living. After discussing the modes of sepulture, and vindicating the authority of his court to arrange the differences, he thus sums up the matter in immediate dispute: "It being assumed that the court is justified in holding this opinion upon the fact of a comparative duration; the pretensions of these coffins to an admission upon the same pecuniary terms as those of wood, must resort to the other proposition, which declares that the difference of duration ought to produce no dif ference in those terms. Accordingly, it has been argued that the ground once given to the body is appropriated to it for ever—it is literally' in mortmain unalienably—it is not only the domus ultima, but the domus æterna of that tenant, who is never to be disturbed, be his condition' what it may-the introduction of another body into that lodgment at any time, however distant, is an unwarrantable intrusion. If these positions be true, it certainly follows that the question of comparative duration sinks into utter insignificance. "In support of them, it seems to be assumed that the tenant himself is imperishable; for surely there can be no inextinguishable title, no perpetuity of possession, belonging to a In Lord Stowell's latter days a cause came subject which itself is perishable-but the before him which afforded a strong contrast to fact is, that 'man,' and 'for ever,' are terms' the vivacity of those nuptial and connubial quite incompatible in any state of his exist contests which had glowed and sparkled and ence, dead or living, in this world. The time loured so often before him; and if dull in the must come when ipsa periere ruinæ,' when the progress, grew beautiful in the judgment. It posthumous remains must mingle with and involved a question between the church war- compose a part of that soil in which they have dens of the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, been deposited. Precious embalments and and the patentee of iron coffins, on the right costly monuments may preserve for a long of a parishioner to burial in the crowded time the remains of those who have filled the 19 N more commanding stations of human lifebut the common lot of mankind furnishes no such means of conservation. With reference to them, the domus æterna is a mere flourish of rhetoric; the process of nature will speedily resolve them into an intimate mixture with their kindred dust; and their dust will help to furnish a place of repose for other occupants in succession." These seem serious matters of disquisition for advanced age; but Lord Stowell, like his brother, was too vividly assured of the life beyond the grave to contemplate the close of this life and the subsequent decay of his mortal frame with anxiety; and though his faculties almost faded before he sunk into the tombgently as he had lived, and talked, and judged -his serenity of mind was undisturbed, and his grace of manner even to the last lingered about him. In finally contemplating the history of these two brothers, we are struck with the harmonious interest which the picture derives from their unenvying, unbroken affection, which must have doubled to each the pride and success of his own life in that of the other. To William, John Scott, Lord Eldon, owed that he was not a tradesman in a country town; and year after year, as poverty pressed on him and briefs came slowly, he was indebted to the purse of one who felt the full value of money, but insisted on investing his own savings in his brother's fortune. Both sharing the same undoubting faith in the Established Church of their country; the same dread of innovation; the same recollections of their arduous, painful, merry school-days, and of the loveliness of the same university-they found in the differences of their tastes new grounds of mutual congratulation and pride,-Sir William delighting to speak of Sir John's almost incredible labours; while the attorney-general took credit for the civilian's gentle gayeties, and grew proud while listening to his social praise. Both were charged with an undue love of pecuniary accumulation; and, no doubt, they went firmly on, almost with equal steps, to the attainment of great wealth; but this not so much with an ignoble desire of mere money, as the steady wish to achieve an end of which the gain was only the symbol, and its amount the proof-part of that single aspiration to get the start of their fellows in the game of life, which disregarded all minor excitements, vanities, and successes, and placed Respice Finem' for its rule. The bounties of Lord Eldon were unostentatious, frequent, and sometimes princely; magnificently conceived and often dexterously hidden; and although the long possession of the Great Seal enabled him to rival the estate which Lord Stowell derived literally from the fortune of war, there seems no reason to doubt the sincerity of the regret with which he left the Court of Common Pleas the quiet of which suited his disposition, while its dignified office of administering the law of real property by ancient forms now no more, proposed to him genial labours and serene decisions. Both, indeed, were chargeable with a want of the splendid hospitality befitting their station;-a fault the more to be regretted in the case of Lord Eldon, who, while filling at the bar its first offices, and during his long possession of the most digni fied of all civil positions under the crown, had cast upon him the duty of keeping alive the social spirit of the bar; encouraging its young and timid aspirants; disarming jealousies, and soothing the animosities which its contests may engender; and preserving its common conscience and feeling of honour, by encouraging the association of its members in convivial enjoyments under the highest auspices. But Mr. Twiss gives the true excusewe can scarcely admit it as a perfect justification-for a dereliction of that duty which for tune casts on her favourites-in the distaste of Lady Eldon for society, and in the habits which she acquired when obliged to practise rigid self-denial, and asserts, we believe truly, that “his domestic arrangements, from the time of his lady's death, were such as befitted his great fortune and high station." This was, however, too late to repair the opportunities lost during many years, of not only securing the love but sustaining the character of the profession, to which he was devotedly attached in all its branches. If, however, these great lawyers were not prodigal of extensive entertainments, they loved good cheer themselves, and delighted to believe that it was enjoyed by others. No total abstinence, nor half-abstinence, system was theirs. Whether the statement be true, which the genial biographer of Lord Stowell in the " Law Magazine" makes, "That he would often take the refection of the Middle Temple Hall by way of whet for the eight o'clock banquet,” we will not venture to assert; but we well remember, more than thirty years ago, the be nignant smile which Sir William Scott would cast on the students rising in the dim light of their glorious hall, as he passed out from the dinner table to his wine in the parliament chamber; his faded dress and tattered silk gown set off by his innate air of elegance; and his fine pale features beaming with a serene satisfaction which bumpers might heighten but could not disturb. He and Lord Eldon perfectly agreed in one great taste-if a noble thirst should be called by so finical a namean attachment to port wine, strong almost as that to constitution and crown; and, indeed, a modification of the same sentiment. Sir William Scott may possibly in his lighter moods have dallied with the innocence of claret-or, in excess of the gallantry for which he was famed, have crowned a compliment to a fair listener with a glass of champagne-but, in his sedater hours, he stood fast by the port, which was the daily refreshment of Lord Eldon for a large segment of a century. It is, indeed, the proper beverage of a great lawyer-that by the strength of which Blackstone wrote his Commentaries-and Sir William Grant meditated his judgments-and Lord Eldon repaired the ravages of study, and withstood the shocks of party and of time. This sustaining, tranquillizing power, is the true cement of various labours, and prompter of great thoughts. Champagne, and hock, and claret, may animate the glittering superficial course of a Nisi Prius leader-though Erskine used to share his daily bottle of port with his wife and children, and In closing this imperfect notice of the lives bers, which weakens the power of moral con- 1. |