gained over the Conservative party and shows the position which he attained as a statesman.

Cairns now seems a distant figure belonging to a quite departed generation. In later times, had Lord Herschell not prematurely died at Washington whilst engaged on an official mission to the United States on the Venezuelan boundary question, it is not impossible that he would have won fame as a statesman not less than that of Cairns. Herschell united in an unusual degree conspicuous merits as judge and statesman-perhaps in time he would have become more famous on the larger stage. To a mind of singular quickness he added sagacity and an insight into men, a self-reliance and a self-control which fitted him more than most of his contemporaries for high political office. In 1886 he formed one of the famous Round Table Conference upon the Home Rule question, and in 1892 he was one of the Cabinet Committee which drafted the second Home Rule Bill. Of that Committee Lord

Morley and Mr. Bryce are now alone left, and this bare enumeration shows the position which, had fate been kinder, might in time have been Herschell's in the councils of the nation. Though as a judge both learned and quick, the tendency of his mind was probably rather political than judicial, and he has left no mark on English jurisprudence. He was perhaps more supple than Lord Selborne in reconciling himself to the demands of party; and he was free also from the ecclesiastical idiosyncrasies which marked not only Selborne but Hatherley and Cairns. His mind was of a broad and tolerant cast, and he had been educated in a legal school more likely than the Court of Chancery to breed a statesman. Herschell

is in many ways certainly not the least agreeable personal figure of this group of Chancellors, for he was full of varied interests, kindly, friendly, and courteous. Lord Selborne's gravity of manner rarely left him. Lord Cairns' austerity was almost chilling, and, like Mr. Gladstone, he had the old Covenanter's habit of seeing the finger of Providence in acts obviously due to his own volition. Lyndhurst was rather too pronouncedly a man of the world, and the kindly, smiling face of Cranworth, if always pleasing, was a little monotonous. In his life. at the Bar and on the Northern Circuit Herschell had not only in his professional work a varied experience of legal business, but on the social side he had been brought into contact with various sorts and conditions of men, and had had opportunities of enlarging his knowledge of different sides of human nature. The difference between the Common Law and Chancery Bars in their effect upon character is certainly obvious in the case of the Victorian Chancellors; and unquestionably more facility in handling men is apparent in those Chancellors whose professional life was passed at Westminster and not at Lincoln's Inn.

After considering the careers of the Victorian Chancellors some may be tempted to think that a lifelong legal training does not tend to make a man a statesman, and that the pursuit of politics does little good to law. It is, however, certain that the combination of law and politics has in every generation given us a group of men at once remarkable and interesting, the like of which is not to be found in any other country. And those who care to study individualities and powerful wills directed to the attainment of legitimate objects of civil ambition

by the straightforward exercise of high attainments will find no more marked and admirable examples than in the Chancellors of the reign of Victoria, even though their influence in English law and procedure has, on the whole, been less than would have been anticipated from their high position.

CHAPTER XI.

THE INNS OF COURT.

THERE is sometimes to be seen in an English landscape the remains of a great tree, firmly rooted in the ground, but with a huge and immovable trunk, and without branches, only a few feeble green shoots indicating that life still exists in it. An Inn of Court at the present time may be likened to such a tree: it is there, fast rooted among English institutions, having a certain ancient picturesqueness, but maimed, and with little of its former vigour and luxuriance left. Yet it is so firmly fixed that it is less likely to be removed than many younger growths.

From a purely utilitarian point of view the Inns of Court are anachronisms. When we compare their elaborate but unwritten constitutions, their buildings and their revenues, with present practical results, the difference between their functions now and in the past is remarkable. They have ceased to be great educational bodies; their main business is to admit to the Bar those who desire to practise as advocates in England. Certain tests of fitness are required from those so admitted; and to enable students to pass the examinations instruction is given. But the passing of the examination is the main point upon which the student sets his mind. Thus the

Inns of Court are rather examining than educational bodies. They are also the owners of premises which are the business resort of one branch of the legal profession, but this fact cannot be regarded as in any sense a fulfilment of a public duty; it is now the result of a longcontinued custom, but it is a thing which could be as well, if not better, managed by a limited company of ten years' existence as by a society which counts its lifetime by centuries.

Moreover, the creation of a General Council of the Bar has not only deprived the Inns of Court of their old disciplinary functions, but has made the unfitness of these societies to control a part of the legal education of the country more obvious. Yet still they are here, and here they will certainly remain, the object of constant criticism, more historically interesting than practically useful.

To-day, as we have said, the Inns of Court fill a comparatively small place in the legal system of England, and are of no account at all in the social life of the time. Thus their legal and their social importance in the past is apt to be overlooked and forgotten. But England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot be understood without a proper recognition of the place filled by the Inns of Court, and of their influence on English law and society, just as to know the society and the politics of Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century we must appreciate the clubs and coteries of St. James's Street.

For the true realisation of an institution in the past we