ing to listen to their complaints and anxious to use his wealth in helping them in time of need. The coffin had been carried from the inn to the graveside, and there rested on trestles; and the little crowd about it waited patiently for the appearance of the minister. After a time a report spread that the minister was ill; and this was shortly confirmed by the arrival of a female servant from the rectory, who said that her master had been seized with faintness, and would not be able to perform the service. Those in charge of the funeral were at a loss what to do, when a stranger who had joined the group of spectators stepped forward and offered to take the minister's place. He was, he said, a Roman Catholic priest, as indeed his black habit showed, and as he understood that Mr. Santal had died in the True Faith, he would read over him the service for the burial of the dead according to the Roman rite. No objection was raised by the onlookers, and the priest, a tall and ascetic-looking man in the prime of life, stood on the heap of earth which had been removed from the grave, and performed the service. The spectators listened with wonder, but with reverence, to the monotonous Latin prayers which he recited until all was complete. At the conclusion of the ceremony he gave no benediction, but merely ejaculated in a fervent tone the versicle from the burial service "Subvenite Sancti Dei, OCcurite Angeli Domini.” He looked round as though expecting a response, but the spectators, who understood nothing, remained silent. Only a little man at the back of the group, with shaggy eyebrows and bright eyes, whom no one had hitherto observed, but who was no doubt a Catholic, replied in a thin voice with the antiphon -"Suscipientes animam ejus." From Temple Bar. LORD BRAMWELL. A SKETCH. In one of the early chapters of the "Worthies of England," Fuller refers to the difficulty in finding information as to the judges of the land, "time having almost outworn the traces thereof." "I perceive," he adds, "though Judges have more land than bishops, they have less memorials behind them, of the time, place and manner, when and where they were born and died, and how they demeaned themselves." This still holds good. Even a distinguished judge is quickly forgotten. His reputation is as fugitive as that of an actor or a singer. To-day his name is in all newspapers; he is the central figure of a trial universally talked about; what "my lord" has said is recorded and discussed. To-morrow, his resignation once in the hands of the lord chancellor, he passes out of sight, and a year hence it may be a question, even among lawyers, whether he is alive or vegetating at Cannes. Some years ago, Lord Bramwell, then a member of the Court of Appeal, thought of retiring, and was talking the matter over with a friend. "Some one seeing you in the streets the week after you resign," said the latter, "will remark, 'I think I know that man's face.' 'Oh,' the reply will be, 'his name is Bramwell, the brother of the famous engineer.' "Then I will not resign," was Lord Bramwell's comment on this remark as to the fleeting character of judicial fame; and he did not. It might have been supposed that there would have been at least one exception to this rule, and that Lord Bramwell's memory would have escaped swift oblivion. His strong, vigorous, and simple character impressed his contemporaries. For nearly thirty years he was the best known of English judges. He had been on the Bench a longer time than any judge of the century. All his life he had been much more than a lawyer. When he resigned the office of lord justice, it was only to extend his activity into many new directions. In America he was known almost as well as in England. There his judgments were read with as much respect as here. "I wish to see Westminster Hall and Lord Bramwell,' said an American lawyer, explaining the object of his visit to Europe. To many persons Lord Bramwell had become the impersonation of English justice. And yet I fear that the fate that seems to overtake all judges has befallen my friend's memory. I have looked in vain for some sketch of a remarkable life by some who knew him better than I did. Lord Bramwell was the eldest of three distinguished brothers; one being the eminent engineer still living, and the other a brilliant lad, a universal favorite, who gave to society gifts meant for mankind, and who died in the United States without having fulfilled the promise of his early years. The father was, at first, a clerk in the banking house of Dorrien & Co. of Birchin Lane, a firm in the end absorbed by the Curries, who were themselves swallowed up in Glyn, Mills, Currie & Co. A silent, amiable, capable, upright man, he became in due time junior partner. Dorrien's was not a bank of the modern type. There were no palatial buildings, no regiment of clerks, no partners possessed of fine estates and with seats in the House of Lords or Commons. The junior partner lived over the bank; he was always to be found in the bank parlor; and he knew the face, credit, and fortune of every man whose bills he discounted. Lord Bramwell's mother, by all accounts, was endowed with rarer parts than her husband. She lived to the age of ninety-six. To her he owed the vigor and vivacity of his intellect. He went to no public school or university. He was educated at Dr. May's school at Enfield, where he received what used to be called a "plain schooling." We get a glimpse into the household life in a letter written in the stiff, formal style of the time-a style compatible with true kindliness-by the father to the lad in his thirteenth year. He sends his son a watch, with the remark in Mrs. 1 Trimmer's best style, "I wish you many years of health and happiness to wear the same. I hope you will carefully mark the ebb of time, so that you may turn out an honest and a clever man." His schooldays ended at sixteen, by which time he was Dr. May's head boy. It would be a mistake to suppose, as Lord Bramwell's rugged originality might tempt one to infer, that his culture was limited. He knew Latin fairly well. He took delight, though in a desultory fashion, in mathematics. In some early papers which have been preserved are to be found calculations and solutions of problems. In the correspondence which he and his friend, Chief Baron Pollock, never failed to keep up when they were on different circuits, are many references to such matters. French, German, and Italian, Bramwell knew; all three languages he spoke fluently, though his accent was far from perfect. Spanish he learned late in life sufficiently to enable him to read with ease any book in that language. He was no mean musician; he sang with taste; he delighted to play on the piano indeed, a piano was always to be found in his chambers; and if he had not followed the modern developments of music, few knew better the great classical operas. From his early letters and note-books, it is clear that, as a young man, he had read Hume, Bentham and Adam Smith. In his notebooks are many references to Voltaire. Altogether it is plain that he was more conversant with literature than he appeared to be or sometimes cared to show. "I did not read much," he once said with reference to his youth, "but I thought a great deal," and, as his notebooks show, on matters most diverseethics, metaphysics, philosophy, politics, and even theology. The notion that a lawyer should be a sort of secular monk, with his mind running only on "cases" and "points," was at all times wholly repugnant to him. He had, on going to the Bar, the supreme advantage of a business training. In his father's bank he acquired a knowledge of business ways and forms which enabled him to argue cogently and lucidly before a City special jury an action involving complicated bill transactions. To hear him discussing the points in dispute in Vagliano v. The Bank of England, for example, was to a banker or merchant an intellectual pleasure. Bills of lading and marine policies were not merely documents which he had read of in books; he had actually fingered them, and had seen money staked, lost, and Won upon them. After many fluctuations of intention, and forming vague plans for seeking his fortune in America, Mr. Bramwell decided to go to the Bar, which was then a very different profession from what it now is. In 1830 the Law List was a slim volume of three or four hundred pages; now it is four times as bulky. Counsel of all kinds then numbered only about one thousand; now they are about eight times as many. It was then common to practise several years as a certificated special pleader below the Bar, until the young aspirant had made good his footing, and gathered round him a group of clients. When special pleaders came into existence is not clear; the most plausible surmise is that they made their appearance at a time when, under the Penal Laws, Roman Catholics were excluded from the Bar. Under the complicated system of special pleading which existed before the Common Law Procedure Acts they flourished. By 1830 there were about forty special pleaders not members of the Bar, and they included several men destined to eminence; among others, Byles, afterwards Mr. Justice Byles, Hugh Hill, afterwards Mr. Justice Hill, Platt, Barnes Peacock, Samuel Warren, Unthank, Dodgson, Hayward, and last, but probably then best known, the two Chittys. By 1845 the special pleaders were strong enough to form a Pleaders' Club. It kept a Black Book, wherein were written the names of solicitors who did not pay their fees. Each sufferer put his initials against the name of the defaulter; and you might estimate the risk run in taking papers by noting the number of the initials. I divulge no secret in saying that the LIVING AGE. VOL. XII. 575 black list, which still exists, was very long, and, in fact, included hundreds of names. Mr. Bramwell became a pupil of Mr. Fitzroy Kelly, then the foremost junior at the Common Law Bar. Those who recall him as chief baron can scarcely understand what he was in 1830. There was the same tedious copiousness, relentless redundancy, the same labored, old-fashioned, formal mo. notony of speech, the same fearless reiteration, the same confident, naïve egotism, the same dallying over details, the same lack of humor which had marked him as an advocate; what had vanished, or was impaired, was the grasp of complicated facts, the cogent logic which made his legal arguments almost unequalled. Mr. Bramwell thus found himself, to quote Anstey's lines: Among the blest, the chosen few, His leave to use their best endeavor, Kelly was quick to detect the unusual parts of his pupil. "Ask Mr. Bramwell to look at the papers," was a frequent remark to clients when the master was busy. And yet Bramwell did not, as a special pleader, meet at once with great success. He never in one year made three hundred guineas, and in his last year as a special pleader bis fees fell to two hundred guineas. Almost in despair he resolved to be called to the Bar. Common though it was in those days to begin practice as a special pleader, there was a little jealousy, not very substantial or lasting, of those who entered the profession in this way; and the feeling is expressed in an "Installation Ode on the Advent of the Last New Pleader on the Home Circuit," by Arnould, afterwards a judge of the High Court of Bombay, and then poet The laureate of the Home Circuit. scene, we may suppose, is the mess dinner at Lewes or Maidstone, and the poet thus apostrophizes the aspiring pleader, "pale incarnation of a Surrebutter:" Bramwell had at first the fate of most men who come to the Bar with no Much smaller powerful connections. than it now is-more like a big college at Oxford or Cambridge-a distinctly able man was more likely to be quickly Gaze round the board and see each manly picked out than he is now. Mr. Bram. brow well did not at once leap into practice, nor had he to wait idle for years. His merits were solid, if not brilliant; and he was not troubled with diffidence or self-consciousness. "There are modest men," he once said; "I am not one of them." The following is his account of his first brief: July 10.-Called to Bar on the 4th of May; had a brief from Rye on the 5th to move for a rule calling on an attorney to pay a sum of money pursuant to undertaking. I felt very wretched. However, I got my rule and acquitted myself decently, I am told. I was more angry than frightened-more inclined to quarrel with any one who looked quizzical than afraid to speak. No doubt I was very agitated— so much so that I could hardly sign my name. My second case was at Nisi Prius about five weeks afterwards, when I examined a witness with great sang froid for plaintiff, the same for plaintiff, fourth for plaintiff; deserted by Kelly, addressed the jury for upwards of half an hour, with all the confidence of an old stager. Next day held a watching brief for Gunning, and was horribly nervous. Mem.-Succeeded in each, and was said to have managed my cause, when left by Kelly, very well. If so, it was comparatively only, for it certainly might have been better done, when I think of what I left undone and unsaid. But it was a trying case; lasted five hours, and on my conscience, I believe, (I) did it very tidily. Now I am being felicitated on having got called, be A backward march to thine own dwelling- cause I have made as much again as I place; should have done at pleading. Quid Or should'st thy soul some Circuit crave to tamen? I have made between £50 and away so shortly. Only, as Voltaire says, "Je n'y vois pas de ressource,"-Zadig. I certainly like my present life better. It is more cheerful; the money is more easy to earn, to say nothing of there being more of it. fessional income in days when fees were much smaller, refreshers far rarer than they now are. At the Guild Hall he acquired a reputation second to none. Neither Byles nor Lush-to name two of his contemporaries on the same cir Lord Bramwell once described his cuit-had more briefs than he in comfirst success on Circuit thus: One day I was sitting in my chambers when there came a shagbag attorney with a brief for Maidstone, Platt to lead me. In the course of the case the counsel on the other side raised an objection. Platt answered the point indignantly, and the judge thought so. I whispered something to Platt, and found myself on my legs giving my answer. "Oh, that is quite a different matter, Mr. Platt," said the judge, satisfied and convinced. I sat down, having made a very good impression. I thought briefs would be showered apon me, but they were not-that attorneys would be at my chambers when I returned, but they were not. Still, from that time, somehow, I never looked back. Long before Bramwell had taken silk he had made good his footing. He was known to be the favorite pupil of Kelly, and he had the reputation of having as little nonsense in his composition as any man of his time. As all sorts of legends, for the most part full of exaggeration, circulate respecting the earnings of a successful barrister, we may give the actual amounts of Mr. Bramwell's fees. In the sixth year after his call his income was £850; in the seventh and eighth years it had risen to £1,187 6s. and £1,533; and there is a note in the fee book of the latter year that Dowling, the wellknown law reporter, had betted him a dinner for four, that in three years he would confess to having passed all Juniors on the Home Circuit. In 1851 he was made, with universal approval, a Q.C. by Lord Cranworth, and in that year his fees mounted to £3,414. After he took silk his practice advanced by leaps and bounds, as the following figures show: first year, £4,549; second £5,846; third year £7,107; fourth £7,488. During his last year at the Bar his fees were nearly £8,000, a very large pro mercial cases. Of thirty-eight special jury actions at Croydon on his last circuit, he was engaged in no fewer than twenty-nine. Special juries came to know him, and found it difficult to resist Bramwell's pithy, apparently unstudied, talk. "It strikes me," he was wort to say, with uplifted finger and sagacious look; and what struck him, struck them Out came a homely sentence, some simple aphorism which might veil a fallacy, but which stuck to the jurymen's minds, and survived the summing-up and the disconcerting babble of the jury-room. With most of the judges he was a favorite, and in particular with that miracle of astuteness, Sir John Jervis, chief justice of the Common Pleas. In referring to Bramwell the chief justice always spoke with Bramwell." With Lord Campbell for admiration of "My learned friend, Mr. some reason he was always coming into collision. Impatient and somewhat despotic in his later years, that judge had acquired a way, as he paced up and down the bench, of dropping during the trial, for the ear of the jury, remarks of a kind which Bramwell resented. On one occasion there was an explosion. In the early stages of a case in which he was the defendant, Lord Campbell had forgotten himself so far as to let fall more than one observation favorable to the plaintiff. When Bramwell's turn to open the defendant's case came, he began in this wise: "Gentlemen of the jury, when a plausible case, supported by plausible evidence, is put before you in a plausible way, by a plausible advocate, you may be pardoned for thinking that there is no answer to it; but that a man"-and here the speaker pointed towards the judge-"whose lifetime has been passed in Courts of Justice and the administration of the law, who has been appointed to preside over your deliberations, that his experience may |