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was a vacillating judge, who had hardly formed any opinion at all upon the case, and might be overset by the casting of dust in the balance to make either side almost indifferently preponderate. They who knew him best were well aware that he had months before thoroughly sifted the whole question, formed a clear and unhesitating opinion upon it, come as quickly as possible to that conclusion, and persisted in it with much greater firmness, nay pertinacity, than the most determined looking of his predecessors, Lord Hardwicke, who decided each case as he heard it, assigning shortly and clearly the grounds of his judgment; or Lord Thurlow, who growled out his determination without a doubt or a reason, and without any delay, as if the decision followed the argument by a physical train of connexion, and as if no such thing as a doubt could ever exist in the judicial nature, and no such thing as a reason could be asked at the hands of judicial wisdom and power. It would be no exaggeration at all to assert that Lord Eldon's judgments were more quickly formed, and more obstinately adhered to, than those of any other judge who ever dealt with such various, difficult, and complicated questions as he had to dispose of.

But the apparent hesitation and the certain delay were of the very worst consequence to his usefulness on the Bench; and his inattention to the arguments of counsel produced on their part an habitual prolixity from which the Bar has not yet recovered. From these causes arose the delays which in his time obstructed the course of justice, and well nigh fixed the current in perennial frost. It would be erroneous to say that all the efforts since made to clear the channels and revive the stream had restored its pristine and natural flow. The suitor and the country will long continue to feel the five-and-twenty years of Lord Eldon's administration.

His knowledge and his ingenuity were not confined

to his own peculiar branch of jurisprudence, the law of England. He was an admirable Scotch lawyer also; and he had the courage to decide, as well as the ability to sift, some of the greatest cases that have ever been brought by appeal from the Courts of Scotland, reversing the judgments of those courts on questions of pure Scotch conveyancing, and reversing them so as to offend those lawyers at first who were afterwards ready to confess that he was right, and that he had preserved the integrity of the Scotch law. But as a judge of appeal in general, he often showed want of nerve; he would carp and cavil at the judgment below-argue over again all the reasonings of the judges-express doubts-raise difficulties-and show constant dissatisfaction-but end with affirming.

The defects which have been noted in his judicial capacity are of course to be traced in the Reports of his judgments. The force of the opinion, and even the course of the argument, are lost in the labyrinth of uncertainty, doubts, and ever conflicting arguments which make up the whole mass. In the sands which spread out far as the eye can reach, which shift perpetually about, which rise in whirls, and are tossed about and heaped up in mountains-the eye loses the view of the point towards which the current of decision is directed, and indeed the current itself is lost in the wide expanse. These learned and elaborate performances are therefore of far less use than they might have been as guides to future lawyers; for the arguments are lost in special circumstances, and the principal points choked among the details. It was said, by Mr. Justice Williams, wittily and correctly, that they would be of special use as soon as the old Ptolemaic cycle should begin a second time to run, and every one thing to happen over again which had occurred before, and in the same order.

The private character of Lord Eldon was blameless : his temper was admirable; his spirits gay and lively;

his manners easy and graceful; far beyond those of any other man who had led his life of labour, and mingled but little in general society. In the domestic relations he was without a fault; affectionately attached to his family, mourning for years the great bereavement of his eldest son, and for years devoting himself to the care of an invalid wife with an assiduity not often exceeded. Indeed, it was to the accidental circumstance of his marriage, contracted clandestinely, and which prevented him from associating much with her family for some time, that they both owed the recluse habits which produced a distaste for society, and led to a very exaggerated notion of his disposition being parsimonious. What little ground there was for the charge resulted, certainly, from the very narrow circumstances of his early life, the consequence of his imprudently marrying before he had an income sufficient to support a family. In those days he had qualified himself for acting as a conveyancer, in case his failure to obtain practice in London should make it advisable to retire into the country, and lead the obscure though respectable life of a provincial barrister. Nor was this event in his history, at one period, improbable or remote. Weary with waiting for clients, he had resolved to quit Westminster Hall, and, turning his back on the "fumum, et opes, strepitumque Romæ," to seek his native city. The accident of a leading counsel's sudden indisposition introduced him to the notice of the profession, and prevented his name from being now only known as designating a still more learned and able recorder of Newcastle than the late very learned and able Mr. Hopper Williamson.*

Reference has already been made to his powers of conversation; the part was named which he took in the select circle of the Princess of Wales, frequented by the most accomplished wits of the day. He was,

That, far from being himself parsimonious, he expended large sums in acts of kindness, is a matter of absolute certainty.

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indeed, a person of remarkable talents in that kind. His perfect good humour would, in his exalted station, have made his society agreeable anywhere but at a court; there he must shine more proprio Marte than by the foil of his station in the background. But he was well able to do so. He had no mean powers of wit, and much quickness of delicate repartee. In relating anecdotes he excelled most men, and had an abundant store of them. Though, of course, from the habits of his life, they were chiefly professional, his application of them to passing events was singularly happy. The mingled grace and dignity of his demeanour added no small charm to his whole commerce with society; and, although the two brothers differed exceedingly in this respect, it was usual to observe that, except Sir W. Scott, no man was so agreeable as Lord Eldon.*

* A saying of his may be related in proof of his ready wit. Being charged, and truly, with never entering a church, though always talking as if he was its great supporter, he said he was a buttress which was placed outside. The publication of Lord Eldon's 'Life' by Mr. Twiss throws much important light on his history. While it raises his private character for kindness and for generosity, it certainly leaves no longer any room to question his having acted as Chancellor in great state affairs while George III. was insane, requiring, as the physician delicately expresses it, the use of "artificial prudence," natural prudence being asleep; and it also proves that Lord Eldon carried on a secret intrigue with Mr. Pitt for the removal of Mr. Addington, Lord Eldon's colleague, and indeed chief, undertaking to deliver Mr. Fitt's letters against him to the King, wholly without Mr. Addington's knowledge. This subject is fully discussed in the second number of the Law Review. Mr. Twiss's work is very ably and very impartially written. It gives curious proofs of Lord Eldon's hesitation when he had to give his statements in a definite form; for the anecdotes which, when he related them, were so racy and so pointed, generally lose their merit in his diary or note-books, by being qualified and frittered down, as if when he came to put them in writing his doubting and hesitating habits interfered.

SIR WILLIAM SCOTT

(LORD STOWELL).

FEW names are more intimately connected either with classical or judicial recollections than the one which has just been mentioned.

There has seldom if ever appeared in the profession of the Law any one so peculiarly endowed with all the learning and capacity which can accomplish, as well as all the graces which can embellish, the judicial character, as this eminent person. Confining himself to the comparatively narrow and sequestered walks of the Consistorial tribunals, he had early been withdrawn from the contentions of the Forum, had lost the readiness with which his great natural acuteness must have furnished him, and had never acquired the habits which forensic strife is found to form-the preternatural power of suddenly producing all the mind's resources at the call of the moment, and shifting their application nimbly from point to point, as that exigency varies in its purpose or its direction. But so had he also escaped the hardness, not to say the coarseness, which is inseparable from such rough and constant use of the faculties, and which, while it sharpens their edge and their point, not seldom contaminates the taste, and withdraws the mind from all pure, and generous, and classical intercourse, to matters of a vulgar or a technical order. His judgment was of the highest caste; calm, firm, enlarged, penetrating, profound. His powers of reasoning were in proportion great, and still more refined than exten

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