ways distinguished by the coif or black patch in the middle of their wigs; the origin of which I think no man really knows; for though several writers have imagined they did, like the false witnesses of old their testi mony did not agree. The late Baron Pollock was I think, the last of the serjeants; all judges of the common law courts before the judicature acts became virtute offieii mem bers of Serjeants Inn, and gave each of their brethren a gold ring with a motto engraved. When Serjeant Simon was appointed, the motto suggested for him by some wag was "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have thee." The serjeants were always addressed by the bench as " Brother." The best known amongst them in the sixties were Shee, Parry and Ballantine. Before we leave the common pleas, I must tell you a story of Sir William Erle, too good to be lost. He was an original member of the judicature com mission, and sat on the commission after he had retired from the bench. Later on the scope of the inquiries of the commissioners was extended to an inquiry into the working of the county courts. One day Erle came into the committee room and said, " I was anxious to see for myself the actual working of these courts, so I have spent the whole day in one of the Metropolitan county courts; I sat in the body of the court, and no one recognized me; I assure you I spent a most instructive day." I have heard of the great organist and composer Dr. S. S. Waley once on a holiday, strolling into the parlor of a country village organist, and asking to have a music lesson, by way of a joke. Con ceive the late Lord Herschell, or Lord James of Hereford, sitting for the sake of instruc tion in a country county court. Bovill suc ceeded Erle, but died very soon after; and Coleridge succeeded Bovill, afterwards go ing to the Queen's bench on Cockburn's death. Then lastly there was the old court of Exchequer, presided over by Chief Baron Pollock, the father of untold generations.
He and Baron Piatt once went together to Liverpool to hold the Assizes, and a state ment appeared in the local newspapers, and therefore of course must have been true, that those two learned judges had fifty-four children between them. The old Chief Baron married three wives, and his son, the late lamented Baron Pollock followed his father's example in this respect. Does the habit run in the family? I do not remember the old Chief Baron in his best days; he was getting very old and his powers were waning in the sixties. He would often sit with his eyes shut, and those who knew no better imagined he slept; but he was all there, and any rash counsel misquoting a reported judgment, or drawing on his imagination for his laws found the old judge very wide awake. He was a great judge to the last, and Martin and Bramwell and Wilde sitting with him made a strong court. Wilde, though he sat for a short time only in the Exchequer, had held high rank at the bar as leader of the northern circuit; and when he succeeded Cresswell in the probate and divorce court he made a most excellent judge and he earned the peerage which gave him the title of Lord Penzance. But it was an ill day for the church when he was made dean of the Arches court, a post for which he had no training, or natural qualification. I see he has just now resigned the office. In the sixties the judicial committee of the Privy council heard appeals from the Admiralty and Ecclesiastical courts, sitting in an upper chamber of the big building facing Whitehall below the horse guards; the court was approached from Downing street. Here I have seen the greatest lawyers of old days, Lord Chelmsford, whose knowledge of sailing, picked up when he was a midshipman, was invaluable to the court in Admiralty appeals; Lord Kingsdown, good old Sir John Taylor Coleridge the biog rapher of Keble, and Lord Wensleydale whose praise is in the gospels of Mecron and Welsby; all great lawyers, but all of them
