Brougham is the man for me, for he has always a wrong case and fights it like a man." What stronger proof of his consummate skill and tact in the management of a cause could be given than this? He was able so to disguise the weakness of his own case, and "make the worse appear the better reason," that the ignorant rustic imagined his success was due not to the skill of the advocate but the strength of the cause. And never was success apparently so effortless. His voice, as we have said, was like that most excellent thing in woman, "ever soft, gentle, and low." It did not so much strike as permeate the ear, and envelop the hearer in an atmosphere of persuasiveness. He never overstated, and never exaggerated-faults which are the besetting sin of most counsel, and especially of young counsel who forget the maxim that on diminue tout ce qu'on exagére-and he always wished the evidence to surpass his opening statement rather than to fall short of it. He has himself told us the mode in which he dealt with juries: "I avoided every topic that I observed make an unfavourable impression upon them; and when I discovered the strings which vibrated in their bosoms, I often, by a single touch on the true chord, in the course of my address, or sometimes in an incidental remark on the evidence as it was given, saw that I had carried the verdict." How different is the course pursued by many counsel at the bar! They hammer away on a topic which they see is distasteful to the jury, and fancy they can alter the convictions of twelve men by mere pertinacity of repetition. A rock may be softened by the constant dropping of water, but a jury man's mind is hardened by the attempt to force him to assent to an untenable point.

We will now give a short sketch of the life and career of this dis

tinguished lawyer, and we will take the opportunity of adding some of our own reminiscences of the Northern Circuit. Lord Abinger left behind him the fragment of an autobiography, of which his son, the writer of the Memoir before us, has availed himself; but unfortunately it does not proceed further than the year 1816, when he received his patent of King's Counsel, although he mentions that he became Attorney-General in 1827, and was appointed Chief Baron in 1834.

Lord Abinger-or, as he is perhaps better known, Sir James Scarlett-was born in 1769 in the island of Jamaica. His grandfather married the daughter of a West Indian proprietor and had by her fourteen children, amongst whom he divided his numerous estates. His father seems to have had an ample fortune, and was able to give his son a considerable allowance, upon which he maintained himself until by his industry and ability at the bar he became practically independent. We have heard that he used to say that no man ought to be called to the bar who had not £500 a-year. This is rather an aristocratic view, and was prompted, no doubt, by pity for the men whom he saw struggling around him to get briefs, and who had to languish on for years in penury and disappointment, sustained only by that "hope deferred which maketh the heart sick." But such an independent income would in many cases be fatal to success. It would remove from its possessor the chief stimulus to exertion, and induce him to prefer inglorious ease to hard work and patient industry. It was not so, however, with young Scarlett. He seems to have taken for his motto the noble line of Lucan— "Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum;

and he worked as hard at the bar as if he had to rely solely upon his professional income for bread.

He tells us in his Autobiography that "notwithstanding the confident allegations of several journalists to the contrary, he was never at any school." The cause of this was the sensitive fear which his father and mother had of the corruption of morals incidental to the state of society where slavery exists. They resolved, and surely they were wise, to separate their children, as much as possible, from any intercourse with slaves, or with those who were in daily familiarity with slaves. His father provided him with a tutor, first a Scotchman, and then an Englishman; and to use his own words, which we well believe, his ardour was insatiable. He found that his elder brother could work out problems in arithmetic to be solved in writing better and more quickly than himself; and he therefore determined to try and work each problem in his head without writing the process, and he merely put down the result. By this means he acquired a facility of mental calculation which was of considerable use to him in after-life. There are many cases tried at Nisi Prius, involving complicated figures, where such dexterity is of signal advantage to an advocate.

It was the intention of Lord Abinger's father to send his son to Oxford preparatory to a course of study for the bar; but for reasons which he says are not worth relating, his destination was changed to Cambridge; and having left Jamaica in 1785, he commenced residence as a fellow-commoner at Trinity College in that university in his sixteenth year, having been previously admitted as a student in the Inner Temple. This is an age much younger than is usual now. Young men do not generally enter

the university before they are eighteen, and many are beyond that age. We ourselves were only scventeen when we became an alum-nus of Trinity. There is no doubt that in competition for honours it is unfair that there should be no restriction as to age. It would be unfair to allow a four-year-old to run against a two-year-old at Epsom without handicapping. The subject, however, has attracted the attention of the House of Commons; and by an amendment in the University Bill now before Parliament, the Commissioners are to have the power of regulating the age beyond which competitors for prizes are to be disqualified.

In Scarlett's time the tuition at that noble. College, Trinity, seems to have been lamentably inferior to what it is now, and has been for many years. The head-tutor whose lectures he attended had chosen the fifteenth Satire of Juvenal as the subject, when he entered the lecture-room; but what was his surprise to find that "the worthy man consumed the hour in vain endeavours to explain the rules of the College and the hieroglyphics in which it was then the fashion to write the weekly butter-bills!" Young Scarlett engaged a private tutor, but he says the choice was not happy. His knowledge was not profound, nor was his industry equal to that of his pupil. This checked his progress in classics and mathematics; and he tells us that he wasted his industry and energies on a vast amount of desultory reading without plan or method. We remember that Burke somewhere complains of the time he lost when young by miscellaneous reading; and Sir Walter Scott makes the same confession of himself. We doubt, however, whether so much harm was done by this wild liberty as these illustrious men supposed.

Both Burke and Scott must have stored up their rich treasures of multifarious knowledge by such a process; and the world has no reason to regret that their studies were not more severe and more methodical. One great incentive to Scarlett's industry was the desire to marry. At the age of sixteen he fell in love. The lady was a Miss Campbell whom he met on a visit at Titten hanger Park near St Alban's. The attachment, which was mutual, lasted for seven years -for it was not sooner that he felt himself sufficiently independent to marry; and certainly it was soon enough, although his choice was most happy.

In one of his letters to her from the Northern Circuit which he had just joined after their marriage, he said: "I have not yet had a single brief, and do not know of one which I am likely to have! . . . But do not be uneasy, my dearest; we can but go to Jamaica at last. I shall be happy anywhere where you are with me and happy." The young barrister who could write thus might well set at defiance the caprice of fortune.

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Scarlett had not been long at Trinity before he was told that he had been elected a member of the True Blue Club. It was confined to undergraduates of the College to the number of twelve, and according to its original constitution was to consist of an equal number of noblemen, fellow-commoners, and pensioners. Rank, fortune, but, above all, agreeable manners and a social disposition, were the passports to admission." But Scarlett was told that it had been long considered as a mere drinking-club, whose practice it was to meet at stated periods at Newmarket and at Cambridge and dine together "with abundant festivity." Now it so happened that Scarlett at that

time was particularly averse to wine, and did all he could to avoid drinking it, although sobriety was certainly not the fashion of the day. Besides, he was anxious to study hard and qualify himself for the serious business of life. He therefore, much to his credit, civilly declined the proposed honour, and not a little surprised his jovial companions by the refusal. He soon reaped the reward of his selfdenial. The Fellows of the College. and other Dons began to cultivate the acquaintance of the young anchorite; and with some he formed friendships which terminated only with their lives. One friendship, however, must be particularly mentioned, as it had an important influence upon his future career. A former Fellow of the College named Baynes, who had taken the high degrees of second wrangler and senior classical medallist, and was then in considerable practice as a special pleader in London, happening to visit Cambridge, was introduced to Scarlett, and attached himself to him for the express reason that he had declined to be a member of the True Blue Club. They soon became sworn friends; and Baynes gave Scarlett excellent advice both as regarded his present studies and his future profession. He introduced him, when he went up to town to keep a term in the Inner Temple, to Richard Porson, of whom one or two characteristic anecdotes are told in the Autobiography. Scarlett once saw him drink sixteen cups of tea one after another at Baynes's chambers in Gray's Inn; and it would have been well if he had confined himself to so innocent a beverage. But it is well known that Porson would drink anything provided it was liquid; and we have been told that he once sat at a supper-party until the bottles were drained and the

lights went out, when he rose and muttered, οὐδὲ τόδε οὐδὲ τἄλλο—the wit of which can only be appreciated by those who understand Greek. In proof of his extraordinary memory, Lord Abinger says that he has known him repeat the whole poem of "The Rape of the Lock," referring, as he went on, to similar passages in classical writers which he supposed Pope to have imitated. Upon one occasion he resolved to say nothing for a week which was not to be found in Shakespeare, and he astonished those with whom he lived by his readiness in answering in the very words of the poet the most trivial as well as the most grave questions that were put to him. The following specimen of his ready wit we have never seen in print. It was in former times the custom at Trinity for the scholars of the College to write Latin themes in hall on a given subject, which were to be ready before dinner. The subject was Brutus, Casare interfecto, an bene fecit aut male fecit? Porson came late, and he scribbled on a piece of paper, Nec bene fecit, nec male fecit, sed INTERfecit - which we think is one of the happiest puns ever made.

Young Scarlett had been taught by his father to study and admire the writings of Pope, Addison, and Swift; and while at Cambridge he became a diligent reader of Cicero, many of whose speeches he translated into English, and then back into Latin, when he had nearly forgotten the original. We think he could hardly have hit upon a more useful plan to acquire facility of composition in both languages. His fondness for Cicero lasted throughout life; and we have heard that, when asked which was the most useful book for a judge to read, he answered, the "De Officiis," which is characteristic of

the love of equity with which he wished to temper the rigidity and technicality of law; for it would be difficult to find anywhere a better manual of the principles of real justice than in this delightful work of the great Roman orator.

Scarlett kept his Act at Cambridge with credit, and was honoured by the presence in the schools of a good array of masters of colleges, professors, doctors, and graduates. He was urged to try for honours, and told that he might look forward to being a high wrangler; but for this he would have to remain at college six months or a year longer than was necessary for an ordinary degree as a fellow-commoner, for fellow-commoners and noblemen were, and we believe still are, entitled to "go out" at the end of their second year. He, as a fellowcommoner, could not sit for a Trinity fellowship, and he thought the delay "too great a sacrifice for the empty honour of a high degree." He says, "The desire I had formed for an early establishment in life overcame my vanity," and he therefore became Bachelor of Arts in 1789, and took up his residence in the Temple. We may mention that while he was at Cambridge he was introduced to Pitt and Perceval. Of Pitt he says that he had no opportunity of being better known. to him; but he became intimate with Perceval until his melancholy death by the hand of an assassin in 1812.

But his chief friend was Romilly, who was his guide and counsellor in his professional studies. He became the pupil of Wood, who was then practising as a special pleader, and afterwards became a Baron of the Exchequer. Wood "did not take much trouble with his pupils, but left them to learn, by the alterations he made in their drafts, the rules and principles of the science."

But Scarlett's quickness and industry soon made him the favourite pupil, and Wood condescended to send for him from time to time into his own room and explain his reasons for altering the drafts; so that after the young student had been three months in the pleader's chambers, the greater part of the whole business was done by himself.

He was called to the bar in 1791, and the vacant place in Wood's chambers was filled by no less a man than George Canning, with whom Scarlett then formed a slight acquaintance, "little imagining that he should one day become his intimate friend and zealous supporter." The question was, whether he should return to Jamaica and practise there, or try his fortune at the English bar. Romilly advised him to remain in England, at all events for a year or two; and this advice he followed. The next question was the choice of a circuit. Professional connections he had none. He did not know an attorney by sight, with the exception of two or three whom he had occasionally seen in Wood's office, but whose names were actually unknown to him. He determined to go the Northern Circuit, one of his reasons being a desire to see Yorkshire, on account, as he says, "of the attachment- of my friend Baynes to his native county, which had given it an imaginary charm for me." At Carlisle he got a brief, which was put into his hands as junior, because he had drawn the pleadings in Wood's chambers; and he was complimented on the way in which he acquitted himself by the judge and by Law, the future Lord Ellenborough, who was one of the counsel on the other side. Lord Abinger here takes the opportunity of praising the knowledge and quickness of Mr Justice Buller, who happened to be one of the judges on the circuit

when he joined, and who was certainly one of the best lawyers and nisi prius judges that this country has ever seen. There were eightysix cases tried at York-one a boundary case that lasted sixteen hours-thirty-six at Lancaster, and forty to fifty prisoners at each place; and Mr Justice Buller concluded the whole circuit in three weeks. "It was not the fashion of the bar," he adds, "to make long speeches, or to occupy any time in resisting the opinion of the judge once declared." Quantum mutata tempora! This seems to imply that Buller had no colleague; but the universal rule, so far as we have known it, has been, and is, for two judges to sit at the assizes, one of whom tries civil causes, and the other tries the prisoners. Scarlett, on the advice of Romilly, now selected as his field of practice out of London the Lancashire sessions; and at Preston, Wigan, and Manchester soon became the decided leader. He next ventured on the important step of matrimony, and in 1792 became the husband of Miss Campbell of Kilmorey, to whom he had been so long and faithfully attached. He says, in touching words: "Her children, for whom these memories are intended, lived to witness her sweet disposition, her divine temper, and consummate discretion. I lived with her in uninterrupted comfort and happiness from the time of our marriage to the month of March 1829, and have lived ever since to lament her loss." He resolved, on his marriage, to ask from his father no increase of his allowance, but lived upon that and his professional earnings until his father's death in 1798, when his fees exceeded his expenditure, and continued to do so until the time when he quitted the bar for the bench. We have heard that at one time he was making as much as £19,000 a-year, but