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Those impulses which move masses of people and produce events of great character, do not belong to law, which is merely a restraint upon evil-doers. The folly of former legislation has suffered it to trench on provinces which do not belong to it, as in its prohibitions of free trade, and its odious support of slavery. Laws purporting to be for the regulation of manufactures and trade, and the encouragement of industry, are injudicious obstacles to national prosperity. Our governors, therefore, do well to sweep away all such, and to keep laws within their proper sphere. Lawyers will oppose all this, as Lord Eldon does, though they knew nothing about it. It is enough that they imagine it to be their own ground, which they will not see contracted. Their fathers sanctioned similar absurdities, and they were all sages. They will not meet Messrs. Robinson and Canning on the merits of the general welfare, by calculations, facts before committees of the House in evidence, or on the broad basis of the common benefit of nations, but in the spirit of a sect. They deliver their opinions ex cathedra, and think the world bound by them. They oppose every amelioration in the state required by the changes of time; insist on the continuance of the penal code, that stigma on the nation and on humanity; decry free opinion on religious subjects, that they may keep in use the word toleration in a country where more than two-thirds of the people are of the tolerated sects; and permit the unfortunate and perhaps innocent prisoner at the bar of justice to be sacrificed, because the allowing him counsel is contrary to legal precedent, though he cannot utter a word in his own defence; he may be gibbeted, but customary forms of law must not be broken!

The arguments often used by legal men on public questions are specious, unintelligible, or so devoid almost of common sense, that one might suppose they could not but note the deficiency afterwards, and feel for it, were it not that the habit of saying something for a client when he has really no solid ground to stand upon in Court, becomes habitual, and is adopted on weak questions out of it. They undervalue the sense of a community, which they reduce to the level of the jury-box, and suppose the aggregate understanding of an empire may be insulted and brow-beat, or wheedled and cajoled, like Gloucestershire clodhoppers. In a late motion in Parliament, for example, a liberal and honourable member in the profession, whose eloquence and talent are confessed by most, and must have led him in triumph on the sound side of the argument, played off the bar-system in a weak case of defence of a friend, disregarding facts, and trying to support himself on mere moonshine. Among other things, it was in unshaken evidence, that the chief justice of a colony, who was, according to the honourable speaker, a perfect lawyer, had doffed his civilian's garb for a military one, to sit on a court martial; that the court martial was illegal in itself, and therefore its procecdings vicious; that evidence received was illegal, and such as no British judge would allow; and that all these things would have been manifest to one not very deeply learned in the law; and, finally, that this individual signed a sentence of death on a man so illegally tried. What is the sum of the defence made for the person so arraigned, not in a confined Court, but in the Senate of a nation--in the hearing of an empire? Why, in substance, that he, the

speaker, had known him (his friend) to be a man of integrity, of sound and correct judgment, when he was at Trinity College, Cam bridge, and that, as a Fellow of Trinity College, he must be a man of high honour and liberal sentiments. This is speaking to character, the thing usually done last, even in a law Court, in mitigation of punishment; but how are the facts answered for the accused in the present instance? He, so learned and versed in law, and liberal, and impartial, puts on a soldier's garb on an illegal court martial-but he was of Trinity College, Cambridge! He took a part in proceedings that were vicious altogether; the very act speaking his deficiency as a lawyer, or his bad conduct as a man :-but he was of Trinity College, Cambridge! He subscribed a sentence of death on the individual so tried, when a man executed by an illegal tribunal is murdered-but he was of Trinity College, Cambridge! Such is a specimen, given without any thing of the merits of the case alluded to, merely to shew how much the habit of the profession will prevail on momentous occasions out of Court, over men of high abilities and talents; and, in the present instance, over one who is not a mere lawyer, but is looked up to out of his profession. Examples of a similar kind may be found without number, in the speeches of Crown lawyers in particular, in the Houses of Parliament. Now these things will not do before the world, and are better left alone, though in law Courts they may have their weight. A Fellow of Trinity may be an awful individual generally in the eyes of Cambridgeshire juries, but public opinion may differ on the merits of a particular person, matriculated among that truly honourable body. Twelve honest yeomen may be so dazzled by the eloquence of a counsel, that they may not detect a fallacy; nay, it may cling so to their minds, that no summing-up of the judge may remove its effect, and they may return their verdict upon it; but to persuade the public in these days, by what fifty in a hundred can see is rank sophistry, is like trying to overturn a pyramid with a lever a foot in length.

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It is much to be deplored for the lawyer's sake, and the sake of the public, that his study is so unnecessarily laborious and complex. His habits of application, directed in part to other branches of knowledge, would tend to raise him in public estimation, and materially assist in cases that require an acquaintance with arts and sciences, commerce and manners. This deficiency of lawyers, in all but their immediate pursuit, is clear to every one but themselves. On the Queen's trial it was remarked that the Attorney-general was so ignorant of foreign manners and customs, that it seemed as if he had never read a book of travels in his life." This is not, however, so much the fault of the individual as his profession. In these days, when a portion of general knowledge is necessary to every man, the lawyer sees it further and further removed from his attainment, by the increase of statutes and cases, and the ridiculous circumvolution of law and its practice. Yet every attempt to simplify it will be met, as it always has been, by opposition from themselves. The accumulation will go on until it fall into greater confusion than at present, or be swept away by some political hurricane. The lawyer must, therefore, more than ever resign himself to his tedious business. He must be content to live in ignorance of a thousand important things, because the die of his life is cast, and

human nature cannot conquer impossibilities. Great allowance, then, must be made for the bulk of the profession, on the score of their prejudices and narrowness of feeling. The bright examples which it has offered in walks out of the profession, were purchased at a sacrifice of legal knowledge. While, therefore, great palliation for the lawyer is to be found in the nature of his calling, he should admit his deficiency in matters foreign to it, and not presumptuously interfere beyond his last." He must not think himself qualified for a legislator, only because he carries the written laws into effect. To perform what is prescribed, requires far less liberal and elevated talent than those necessary in delivering the prescript. Still the ambition of the profession is proverbial, and the effort of the lawyer to rise in the world often costs sacrifices which would be too dear for men of different habits to pay ; but he has no scruples where others hesitate, and verily he has his reward! I.

TROUBADOUR SONGS.

1.

THE warrior cross'd the ocean's foam,
For the stormy fields of war;
The maid was left in a smiling home,
And a sunny land afar.

His voice was heard where javelin-showers
Pour'd on the steel-clad line;

Her step was midst the summer-flowers,
Her seat beneath the vine.

His shield was cleft, his lance was riven,
And the red blood stain'd his crest;
While she-the gentlest wind of Heaven
Might scarcely fan her breast.

Yet a thousand arrows pass'd him by,
And again he cross'd the seas;

But she had died, as roses die,
That perish with a breeze!

As roses die, when the blast is come,
For all things bright and fair;-
There was Death within the smiling home,
How had Death found her there?

2.

They rear'd no trophy o'er his grave,
They bade no requiem flow;
What left they there, to tell the brave
That a warrior sleeps below?

A shiver'd spear, a cloven shield,

A helm with its white plume torn,
And a blood-stain'd turf on the fatal field,
Where a chief to his rest was borne !
He lies not where his fathers sleep,
But who hath a tomb more proud?
For the Syrian wilds his record keep,
And a banner is his shroud!

F. H.

LIFE AND REMAINS OF THE REVEREND EDWARD DANIEL CLARKE, LL.D.*

If it be true that "history, written as it may, is sure to please," biography has still higher claims on the human heart. To a greater dramatic unity, there is added, in this species of composition, the charm of a closer display of individuality and idiosyncrasy-of feelings to participate, and of affections to share. In history, the events are the chief causes of attraction; in biography it is the man which attaches; and, as we pursue the tale, from the cradle to the grave, we so identify ourselves with the hero, that, unless he be among the most worthless and corrupt of his species, we enter into all his views, delight in his successes, are mortified at his disappointments, and part with him at the last page, as with one to whom we had actually been bound through life by the ties of friendship. Contemporary biography has even a still stronger hold upon our sensibilities. It is impossible to have lived long in the world without having known something of the man who is eminent enough to have become the subject of a memoir, or of the persons and things with which he has been in relation. Such reading, therefore, is always, in some degree, reminiscence; the associations of "auld lang syne" revive as we proceed, deceased friendships are renewed, forgotten adventures are recalled, old habits and feelings are renovated, and a melancholy and tender interest steals over the mind, quite unconnected with the intrinsic merits of the narration, or the qualities of its hero. During the perusal of the volume now under consideration, we have been, in some measure, the willing victims of this species of enchantment, but we trust that we are under no undue influence, when we pronounce the work in question to be in no common degree amusing and instructive. Through the whole course of our own academical career, the name of Clarke was "familiar to us as household words;" and two coincidences of time, connecting our academical honours with his, supply the place of immediate acquaintance in giving a personal interest to his history: still, however, we repeat it, Cambridge men, and Cambridge anecdotes, and the still greater tie of some congeniality of pursuits in subsequent life, have but a small share in the pleasure we have received from the perusal of these memoirs.

The history of a literary man is soon told; and even if that literary man has been a traveller, the " personal narrative" of his voyage through life will not occupy many sheets. Of the 670 pages which constitute the volume before us, by far the greater portion is occupied with extracts from Dr. Clarke's manuscript journals and from his letters to his friends, written during his several absences on the continent. These extracts, exhibiting the first impressions of the author, and being stamped with the impress of that freshness and that sincerity which so often evaporate in the process of more studied composition, are marked by a vivacity of thought, and a rapidity of narrative, which leave no pause for ennui; and the ideas, being forcibly conceived, are presented to the reader with all the reality and distinctness of sensitive impres

Life and Remains of the Rev. Edward Daniel Clarke, LL.D. Professor of Mineralogy in the University of Cambridge. 4to. pp.670.

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sions. The gay good-humour of a constitutionally happy man, whose temperament concentrates all his powers upon the present, and whose constant occupations admit little leisure for fretful retrospects, or for feverish anxieties for the future, ilumines all he writes: and though his reflections are far from being uniformly just, his remarks accurate, or his conclusions logical, when he leaves his own peculiar sphere of inquiry to embark in moral or political speculations, yet these excursions are far from frequent or obtrusive; and his observations are for the most part those of a man who sees clearly, and has his heart in all he examines and all he describes.

Dr. Clarke was descended from a line of churchmen and literati. William Wotton was his great grandfather. His grandfather, a fellow of St. John's, was distinguished and dignified by the appellation of mild William Clarke, from his preeminent possession of that quality, at all times too little appreciated, but doubly valuable in a churchman. His father likewise followed the clerical career; and it is not very reputable to the spirit which governs our church and state establishments, that three generations of men, no less gifted with intellectual endowments than remarkable for their virtues, and who were likewise not wholly unbacked by powerful friends, should have had so small a share of church dignities, and should have been unable to accumulate a permanent income for their descendant. At the death of his father, Dr. Clarke was left an undergraduate of Cambridge, with the smallest possible means of pursuing his academic studies; and he was indebted to the friendship of Dr. Beadon, the master of his college, and to the forbearance of the tutors in pecuniary matters, for the means of obtaining a degree. So strongly, however, had nature implanted in him those propensities which have marked his course through life, and laid the basis of his reputation, that under all this pressure, with warm affections to those dear and near relations, who, in some degree, were dependent upon his exertions, and a conscientious regard for his duties, he was unable to tie himself down to the dull and unprofitable routine of collegiate studies; and we find him occupied in amusing the university with a balloon, at the precise moment when, in common prudence, he ought to have been qualifying himself for "an honour." From his earliest youth he had exhibited strong and striking traits of a taste for experimental science: but with a mind restless and incessantly active, he acquired at school the reputation of a dull boy, and passed through college unnoticed, save for his gentle and kindly affections: so unfavourably do bygone institutions, and studies no longer in harmony with the wants of the age, operate on the best dispositions and the brightest intellects. The remarks of the biographer on this topic merit quotation.

"In this irregular and careless manner, undistinguished as an academic in his own College, and altogether unknown as such to the University at large, was formed and educated almost to the age of twenty-one, a man, who in his maturer years was numbered both at home and abroad amongst the most celebrated of its members; who in various ways contributed not less to its embellishment, than to its reputation; who was honoured and distinguished by it while living, and followed by its regrets when dead.

"It was his misfortune that his education was almost entirely his own, the result of accident rather than of system, and only begun in earnest at that

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