sum considerably larger than was enjoyed by those who immediately preceded and succeeded him. It equalled, nay, in some years exceeded, the income of the Lord Chancellor, and justified, even in a worldly sense, the sagacity of the learned Lord's decision, when in 1806 he refused the seals. Before their acceptance by Erskine, the seals had been offered to Chief Justice Mansfield, who refused them on account of age, and to Lord Ellenborough, who likewise declined them on the score of his family. He was accustomed, with that loftiness of spirit which seems to have been an absolute property of his nature, to complain of the miserable driblets, the 13s. 4d. and 17. 1s., of which that princely income was composed. They would weigh his services over-nicely in the balance who should deem him, fortunate as he was, too abundantly remunerated.

In manners the Chief Justice was stately and reserved, punctiliously polite in his bearing to the bar, but dignified and severe.

Before his elevation to the bench he had the reputation of being a very pleasant companion. The pungency of his somewhat coarse wit, says an able critic in the "Law Review," his broad, odd, sometimes grotesque, jokes, his hearty merriment, which he seemed to enjoy, rather by a quaint look and indescribable manner, than by any hearty laughing, altogether formed a most agreeable and lively person, whether to hear or see.

A good specimen of his pungent humour, not always observant of time or place, is given by Lord Eldon. Upon one of the royal marriages, there being much talking during the ceremony, in one corner of the drawing-room, Lord Ellenborough exclaimed, "Be silent in that corner of the room, or you shall be married yourselves!"

That grave, almost austere, deportment in public, which is said to become monarchs and chief magistrates, peculiarly distinguished Lord Ellenborough after his elevation as Chief Justice of England. He was sometimes accused of affecting too much state, and of making the line of demarcation too deep and marked between the Bench and the Bar.

His cousin, Professor Christian, who rejoiced in the office

of Chief Justice of Ely, complained especially of this offensive hauteur. "I know why Lord Ellenborough treats me thus," said the chafed dignitary one day, after some discomfiture in Court, "he is jealous of his brother Chief Justice!" So sensitive were the Bar at this somewhat fastidious estrangement of their chief that, according to James Smith, when Lord Ellenborough set the present fashion of moving west to St. James's Square from Bloomsbury, the circumstance gave general dissatisfaction, and was a prominent topic in the newspapers for a week!

As if to keep aloof from the body of practitioners, the Chief Justice discontinued those evening conversation-parties in term, to which every gentleman, well educated and respectably introduced, was in the habit of being admitted. To judge from the freezing ceremonies at Serjeants' Inn Hall, their social loss was not to be deplored.

"I remember," said Lord Brougham, "being told by a learned serjeant, "that, at the table of Serjeants' Inn, where the judges meet their brethren of the coif to dine, the etiquette was, in those days, never to say a word after the Chief Justice, nor ever to begin any topic of conversation. He was treated with fully more than the obsequious deference shown at court to the sovereign himself." Such transcendental stateliness must have been exaggerated, but if not, I am glad to believe that it has passed away for ever. The body of serjeants were too much gentlemen, surely, to have patiently endured, and the Chief Justice too high bred a man systematically to inflict, such a paramount indignity.

In person Lord Ellenborough was robust, but ungraceful; above the middle size, and sinewy, his masculine frame presenting an appearance of great strength till shattered by dissease. Sir Thomas Lawrence, taking a likeness of him in his official dress, in which he looked best, has thrown off a fine vigorous portrait. The broad and commanding brow, the large and regular features, the projecting eye-brows, dark and shaggy, the stern black eye, from which flashed not unfrequently indignation or contempt, gave a character of gravity not unmixed with harshness to his countenance, even when in repose. A dignified severity was its peculiar and prevailing

expression. His figure was ungainly, and his walk singularly awkward. He moved with a kind of semi-rotatory step, and his path to the place to which he wished to go was the section of a parabola. The serjeant employed to drill the Lincoln's Inn corps said that Mr. Law was the only person he could never teach to march, and would never make a soldier. Both Lord Ellenborough and Lord Eldon were turned out of the awkward squad for awkwardness. Those who judge of character by handwriting would find their theory strengthened on looking at his notes, which justify his own description in a letter to a friend *: "Pray, my dear Sir, write legibly to your great folks, for it would be melancholy to lose all the effect of the many good things I am sure you send them, by the carelessness of packing them up. For my own part, I continually regret having paid so little attention to so very necessary an art; and, as it is now somewhat too late to aim at the graces of writing, I stick fast to what only is in my power, a good, plain, stiff, legible character.”

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Although in a character marked by such strength of features (to quote again the eloquent language of Magee), the lineaments of the softer virtues could scarcely be expected to mix, yet those who knew him in the unbendings of his retirement can fully attest the spontaneous emotions of a latent tenderness, which it seemed as much his study carefully to conceal, as in this age of affected sensibility it is that of others to display."-" There was a rough husk about him," said an intimate acquaintance, "and a hard shell like the cocoa-nut, but the core was not without milk." Uniting the law and firmness of Holt with the dignity and classical learning of Mansfield, he equalled them both in judicial ability, though deficient in placidity and grace. The defects which marked and shaded the character of the Chief Justice are those which peculiarly belong to Englishmen, and chiefly resolve themselves into faults of temper. He did, for the long term of sixteen years, execute justice; he did maintain truth ; and all that obloquy can allege is, that he executed the one, in some few instances, with rigour, and boisterously main

*The late Archdeacon Coxe, who wrote an exceedingly bad hand.

tained the other. But what are these defects? Not a feather's weight in the scale, when opposed to that painstaking diligence which never folded the hands in sleep- to that unflinching, sturdy independence which even enemies admiredto the moral integrity which equalled (it could not transcend) his intellectual strength, and the most perfect legal constitution, both by nature and training, that it was possible to form. By duties well and honestly done by privileges well asserted-by aggressions on constitutional law well repressedby the sturdy maintenance of all that was according to law, and the fearless subjugation of every thing against law, he has won a lofty place in the history of his country, and has left a name which is held in the highest honour by his profession. The writer of the present imperfect memoir has commented freely on a judicial life, whose greatness can admit of occasional censure. He has borne his pillar, however roughly hewn and imperfectly shapen, towards the erection of that monument which is justly due to the merits and honours of the deceased peer, and may repeat the hope of the veteran of antiquity, that, though the trophy is of perishable materials, when it should have been of marble, it may yet be allowed to stand from respect to the noble name recorded by it.

CHAPTER X.

THE LIFE OF LORD ERSKINE.

A COMPLETE life of this master of forensic eloquence has yet to be written. In the volumes of his speeches, reported with elaborate care, and the collection of those State Trials which darkened the close of the last century, there is raised indeed a tablet to his memory as durable as our language, — the xтμà és ά, which the Greek historian congratulated himself, and not in vain, on erecting. But of Erskine's daily skirmishes and triumphs in the courts, of his gay and happy temperament, of his social and companionable excellencies, of his wit and repartee, of those qualities of head and heart, which made the orator forgotten in the man, the traditions are becoming each year more faint, as the contemporaries who loved him pass away, with all their vivid recollections. In this neglect he has shared, it is true, the common fate of eminent lawyers, the best and greatest of whom, Nottingham, and Somers, and Hardwicke, failed to obtain a faithful chronicler.

It was reserved for the "Law Magazine" first to sketch those memorable portraits, that were long wanting in the gallery of national worthies; and in the "Lives of the Chancellors," a tardy justice may yet be rendered to the most amiable and best of advocates, Erskine. There is no name more dear to the profession which he gladdened, adorned, and exalted; no legal memory which is held in more affectionate esteem by the people. It will be my endeavour to concentrate the rays of light that illumine his character, as the idol of special juries, and glory of Westminster Hall; to bind together the Sibylline leaves which illustrate his life and conversation; to amass the materials that may hereafter be moulded and chiselled, by more skilful hands, into a monument worthy of his genius, and lasting as his fame.