ment to Mr. Addington not even his admirable successor -was allowed admission into the house of lords; a slight murmured at, and with reason, by a proud and sensitive profession. Their fleece alone remained dry while the dew of court favor fell on all around. Lord Hardwicke, to whose character and conduct that of Eldon most closely assimilates, was in like manner reproached for preventing the grant of peerages to the contemporary judges, Lee, Ryder, Willes, and Parker, by which he secured to himself all the judicial influence in the lord's court of appeal. We are far from suspecting that any mean jealousy of this nature influenced the late chancellor in a proscription, which for a season included his own brother in its range. He was at length ennobled, but not till more than twenty years after the original request, and till all chance of male issue was extinguished. The keeper of the great seal is believed to have entertained a firm conviction that the peerage had been already sufficiently enriched from the law, one fifth of the peers of England tracing their origin to that prolific source. His penuriousness may have been carried too far, but has been amply atoned for by subsequent profusion. Since his abdication, but eleven years have passed away, and already twelve coronets glitter on the wearers of the long robe. Peace then to his manes! The honor of the bar has surely been sufficiently vindicated.

By the great majority of that bar, notwithstanding his niggardly distribution of honors though he even kept back some eminent and deserving lawyers from the rank of king's counsel, to which their standing entitled them - lord Eldon is held in affectionate remembrance for that mixture of suavity and firmness, the mild and kindly spirit, yet dignified address, of which Chesterfield inculcated the diligent study, but which he had by nature. He is said to have possessed "pan-tile kind of mind, which allowed the arguments of counsel to fall upon it and drop thence to the ground with

out making the slightest impression;" but he listened to the counsel just called, to the merest tyro in his profession, with no less gravity of attention than to the arguments of the most disciplined veteran in the front row. "I admit freely and cordially," said Mr. Brougham, "that of all the judges before whom I have practised and I have practised much

- he is, out of all comparison, and beyond all doubt, by much the most agreeable to the practitioners, by the amenity of his manners, and the intuitive quickness of his mind. A more kindly disposed judge to all the professional men who practise in his court, never perhaps existed." On a subsequent occasion the same high authority, wishing to disparage the labors of some chancery commission which the chancellor attended, was compelled to put the house of commons on its guard against the fascination of such an accomplished courtier. "Lord Eldon had not passed fifty years of his life amid the intrigues of cabinets, the turmoils of the senate, the conflicts of the forum, and the consultations and tricks of the profession in which men were accustomed to consider closely the interests of their clients, and sometimes peradventure their own interests, to commit any of those blunders into which weak and inexperienced men might be hurried. No. The noble and learned lord attended the commission, endowed with all the graces of a complete courtier, with the most entire and unbroken good humor, with all the charm of manner which his experience had taught him to engraft on a naturally affable temper with a great reputation for profound research in the laws of his countrywith a name already associated with its legal history — the noble and learned lord, rich in all these accomplishments, clothed in smiles and courtesies, and laying aside the authority which he had a right to assume, endeavored to mislead those whom he had no right to attempt to influence." No higher tribute can be awarded to his powers of pleasing than the fears thus forcibly expressed of such an opponent; but

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he displayed the same winning grace in quarters where there could be no ground for suspecting that he assumed it from any interested motive. Upon those unhappy persons, the afflicted in mind, body, or estate, who sometimes broke through the trammels of chancery etiquette to make their grievances known in person, his singular kindness of manner acted with the force of a spell. However irregular the application, or however unbecomingly pertinacious the applicant, lord Eldon listened with most patient attention, until the object was discovered; and then advised with gentleness, or softened refusal by complacency. With all this good nature, however, he kept his court in perfect subjection. We recollect a case, which had stood so long in the paper that every one had forgotten its circumstances. When the chancellor had finished giving judgment, "I know I was in this case," said Mr. Heald, "but whether judgment is for me, or against me, I have not at this distance of time the most distinct conception." "I have a glimmering notion that it is for me," answered Mr. Horne. Their chief instantly stopped further discussion by desiring, in a tone. of grave rebuke, that counsel would not make him the subject of their observations. They yielded at once to a demeanor which softened the roughness of Bell, and subdued the despotic and domineering temper of Romilly. Though meeting the solicitors of his court almost as equals in his private room, lord Eldon would give an instant check to any undue familiarities. He had been chatting familiarly with "You never gave me a brief, Mr. L-, how "Yes I did," said the gentleman sturdily. “Nay, nay, I am satisfied of the contrary," rejoined the chancellor, "my recollection on such a point must be the better of the two." But when he proceeded to express an opinion adverse to the attorney's case, and the latter exclaimed with too much bluntness, "your lordship is decidedly wrong: I will have your decision reversed in the

an attorney. was that?"

lords." "Perhaps, Mr. L-," said the chancellor, rising, "you had better take that chair, and pronounce judgment there." His conduct to his brother judges in equity appears to have been guided by the same tone and spirit —

"Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos."

To sir John Leach, who set himself up as a rival to his superior, and wished the number of his decisions to be counted, without caring much for their correctness, the offended chancellor was in the habit of alluding with smooth-tongued but bitter censure, when those precipitate judgments were submitted to his notice on appeal. There was much of what lord Bacon calls "affected despatch" in sir John Leach's proceedings, and while he appeared to regard the quantity of judgments which he pronounced in a given time far more than their quality, he left it to his learned chief to complain, that cases were decided at the rolls, but heard when they came by appeal before the chancellor. The wits named one the court of " oyer sans terminer," and the other the court of "terminer sans oyer;" and a great and candid critic, sir S. Romilly, professed himself, to lord Eldon's extreme delight, better pleased with the tardy justice of the principal, than with the swift injustice of the deputy.

His bon-mots did not cost lord Eldon much midnight vigil, and hardly exceeded good-humored pleasantry, but they relieved and illumined the dulness of his court. "Your lordship," said sir Charles Wetherall, "cannot be supposed to be a great strategist, it is no disparagement to say that you cannot have the army-list by heart." "No, sir Charles, I know nothing of military matters," rejoined the chancellor, "all my acquaintance is with the Lincoln's inn volunteers." When a young counsel unguardedly moved for an iujunction against digging up pasture-land, and sowing it with wheat, or any other pernicious crop: "you may take your injunction," said lord Eldon smiling, "but in the north

of England we are not in the habit of calling wheat a pernicious crop." He would now and then perpetrate a detestable pun, though as conservative of the pocket as Dr. Johnson himself. The following case afforded a regular field-day to the legal punsters. It was an injunction, Metcalfe v. Thompson, for restraining the defendant from invading the plaintiff's patent for hair-brushes. The great secret consisted in some of the hairs being long, and others short. The defendant was selling brushes of this description without license. No counsel appearing for the plaintiff, the chancellor said, "this injunction must be brushed off, unless some counsel be there in a few minutes to support it." The brush of one Fox, an old wig-maker, was produced, the same to a hair as the patent brush. The chancellor inquired waggishly, "is it a Fox's brush ?" (meaning an old hair-dresser in the temple). "This old brush," he continued, "Mr. Treslove, is rather an odd sort of thing, but when you and I get as old, and our tresses have been as well worn as these, we shall look perhaps quite as antique." Mr. Treslove said he had advised his client not to show his brush. The chief of his court rejoined, as if playing at high jinks, "there I must say that you, being a pursuer, was at fault, for if an injunction is granted by this court, the article on which such an injunction is granted must be lodged with the master. I remember in a case of waste, that a person in this court, who made an affidavit, actually affixed his oak trees to his affidavit, to show the court of what nature the trees were.' The injunction was discharged amid the merriment of the court, which always sympathized with the jestive moods of its chief.

This amenity of manners, which graced and conciliated his court, formed, as it were, an all-powerful letter of introduction to a higher audience. However obnoxious to the wig opposition, not less from his tory opinions and uncompromising avowal of them, than from his long and retentive