Personal Recollections of English Law Courts. (except Chelmsford) lamentably all at sea where pretty questions of sailing were in volved. It was in this court that Lord Westbury appeared one day in a yachting jacket, to sit amongst lords spiritual and temporal to decide a question of church doctrine or ritual; evoking the remark from one right reverend member of the court that he had no idea that a chancery suit could be so short. And in the most august tribunal of all, the gilded chamber of the lords my own eyes have seen in the flesh three great men whose names are in the records of history, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord St. Leonards, and Lord Brougham. There were giants in those days. Will any one writing hereafter, reminiscenses of the nineties say the same; or has the race of giants died out? We have still with us (I had written Herschell, alas, now no more!) Lords McNaughten, Davey and Russell, who may even yet live to prove that the race is not extinct. Who were the leaders of the common law bar in the sixties? First and foremost, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, then getting old and feeble, Sir William Atherton, an able lawyer, but ponderous, a favorite object of Bethell's satire. When Kcthell was raised to the woolsack, and some one suggested Roundell Palmer being made attorney-general over the head of Sir W. Atherton, Bethell's remark was, " The suggestion presupposes an object which is non-existent. I have never yet discovered that Sir W. Atherton has any head over which Mr. Roundell Palmer could by any possibility be placed." Then there was Mr. Edwin James, Q.C. and M.P. for Marylebone; a man of unattractive pres ence, but a very able advocate, who got into an enormous practice in the criminal courts and at nisi f>rius, and was within one step of the solicitor generalship; but he lost himself in some financial trouble or other and was compelled to leave the bar; he settled in New York, but never made his way there; returned to England, and died
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in obscurity. Sir Robert Collier got the solicitor generalship instead, of whom there is not much to be said, except that later on his promotion to the Court of Appeal caused a scandal which (with others) brought down the Liberal government. In the early six ties appeared some letters to the " Times, signed " Historicus," written by Harcourt, now Sir William, the champion of militant Protestantism; they were able letters, deal ing with questions of international law, and interesting at that time, as the American States war was then in full fling. Great expectations were formed of his future career at the bar; but, though he has made a great name for himself in other places, the law courts have seen little of him at any time, or he of them, except in crown cases. The favorite leader in those days was un doubtedly Bovill, faeile prineeps amongst advocates, who ought to have made a better judge, but death cut him off before his time. It is surprising how many judges die off soon after their promotion to the bench. Bovill, Honyman, Quain, Holker, Thesiger, all died soon after leaving the bar. Is the quiet of the bench too great a change from the bustling activity of the bar for the con stitution to stand? In old days the law officers of the crown were often kept at the House of Commons till the small hours of the morning were growing larger. A former clerk of Bethell's has told me that Bcthell not infrequently sat in his room at the House till daybreak, then walked home to Mayfair, continued his work, breakfasted, and walked to Lincoln's Inn, without going to bed. Yet in these degenerate days the workingman is advised by his leaders to strike for a working day of eight hours. The life of a leading counsel when on circuit in the sixties must have been very trying; etiquette forbade briefs to be delivered be fore he reached the assize town, and a leader would perhaps be briefed on one side or the other in every action on the test for trial.
