but I wish every man to retain his opinion, though at the cost of three dozen of port. To save you from spending your money upon bets you are sure to lose, remember that no man can be a great advocate who is no lawyer—the thing is impossible."

Erskine used to say that when the hour came that all secrets should be revealed, we should know the reason why -shoes are always made too tight.

Latterly, Erskine was very poor; and no wonder, for he always contrived to sell out of the funds when they were very low, and to buy in when they were very high. "By heaven," he would say, "I am a perfect kite, all paper; the boys might fly me." Yet, poor as he was, he still kept the best society.

L-A-W.

It is singular, but it is matter of fact, that there are persons who have a passion for being at law, and contrive to be never out of it. Of this description was a Mr. Bolt, a wharfinger on the Thames. In the cause-paper of the sittings after every term, Bolt's name regularly appeared, either as a plaintiff or a defendant. In a cause at Guildhall, Mingay was counsel against him, and spoke of him in very harsh terms for his dishonest and litigious spirit. Erskine was counsel for him : Gentlemen," said he to the jury, "the plaintiff's counsel has taken very unwarrantable liberties with my client's good name. He has represented him as litigious and dishonest: it is most unjust. He is so remarkably of an opposite character, that he goes by the name of Bolt-Upright." This was all invention.

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LORD ELLENBOROUGH'S HUMOUR, AND POWER

OF RIDICULE.

Lord Ellenborough sometimes read flippant pedantry, or hopeless imbecility, lectures of quaint and grave sarcasm peculiar to the man. An eminent conveyancer, who prided himself on having answered thirty thousand cases, came express from the Court of Chancery to the King's Bench to argue a question of real property. Taking for granted, rather too rashly, that common lawyers are little more acquainted with the Digest of Cruise than with the laws of China, he commenced his erudite harangue by observing that “ an estate

in fee simple was the highest estate known to the law of England." "Stay, stay," interrupted the Chief Justice, with consummate gravity, "let me write that down." He wrote, and read slowly and deliberately the note which he had taken of this A. B. C. axiom. "An estate in fee-simple is the highest estate known to the law of England. The Court, sir, is indebted to you for this information." There was only one person present who did not perceive the irony, and that was the learned counsel who incurred it. But though impervious to irony, it was impossible even for his self-love to avoid understanding the home thrust lunged by the judge at the conclusion of his harangue. He had exhausted the year-books and all the mysteries of the real property law in a sleepy oration, which effectually cleared the Court, insensible alike to the grim repose of the bench and the yawning impatience of the ushers; when at the close of some parenthetical and apparently interminable sentences, the clock struck four, and the judges started to their feet, he appealed to know when it would be their pleasure to hear the remainder of his argument. "Mr. P." rejoined the Chief-Justice, we are bound to hear you, and shall do so on Friday, but pleasure has long been out of the question."

Ellenborough was once strangely posed by a witness, a labouring bricklayer, who came to be sworn. "Really, witness," said the Lord Chief-Justice," when you have to appear before this Court, it is your bounden duty to be more clean and decent in your appearance." Upon my life," said the witness, "if your lordship come to that, I'm every bit as well dressed as your lordship." "How do you mean, sir?" said his lordship, angrily. "Why, faith," said the labourer, "you come here in your working-clothes, and I'm come in mine."

When Lord Ellenborough was Attorney-General, he was one day listening with some impatience to the judgment of a learned judge, afterwards his colleague, who said, "InV.——, I rule that," &c. "You rule! said the AttorneyGeneral, in a tone of suppressed indignation, but loud enough to be heard by many of the bar,-" You rule! you were never fit for anything but a copy book!"

A Quaker coming into the witness-box at Guildhall without a broad brim or dittoes, and rather smartly dressed, the crier put the book into his hand and was about to administer the

oath, when he required to be examined on his affirmation. Lord Ellenborough asking if he was really a Quaker, and being answered in the affirmative, exclaimed, "Do you really mean to impose upon the Court by appearing here in the disguise of a reasonable being?"

A witness dressed in a fantastical manner, having given very rambling and discreditable evidence, was asked, in crossexamination, "What he was?" Witness.-"I employ myself as a surgeon." Lord Ellenborough, C.J.-"But does any one else employ you as a surgeon?"

Henry Hunt, the famous demagogue, having been brought up to receive sentence upon a conviction for holding a seditious meeting, began his address in mitigation of punishment, by complaining of certain persons who had accused him of "stirring up the people by dangerous eloquence." Lord Ellenborough, C.J. (in a very mild tone)—" My impartiality as a judge calls upon me to say, sir, that in accusing you of that they do you great injustice."

A very tedious Bishop having yawned during his own speech, Lord Ellenborough exclaimed, "Come, come, the fellow shows some symptoms of taste, but this is encroaching on our province."

At the coming in of the "Talents" in 1806, Erskine himself pressed the Great Seal upon Ellenborough, saying, that “he would add to the splendour of his reputation as Lord Chancellor." Ellenborough, knowing that on his own refusal Erskine was to be the man, exclaimed, “How can you ask me to accept the office of Lord Chancellor, when I know as little of its duties as you do?"

Lord Ellenborough's manner was very peculiar, and was so closely imitated by Charles Mathews, the elder, in the character of Flexible, in the farce of Love, Law, and Physic, that soon after the production of that piece, Mathews received a hint from the Lord Chamberlain's office to desist from so telling a piece of mimicry.

Lord Ellenborough had no mean power of ridicule-as playful as a mind, more strong than refined, could make it; while of sarcasm he was an eminent professor, but of the kind which hacks, and tears, and flays its victims, rather than destroys by cutting keenly. His interrogative exclamation in Lord Melville's case, when the party's ignorance of having taken accommodation out of the public fund was alleged—

indeed was proved-may be remembered as very picturesque, though, perhaps, more pungent than dignified. "Not know money? Did he see it when it glittered? Did he hear it when it chinked?" When a favourite special pleader was making an excursion, somewhat unexpected by his hearers, as unwonted in him, into a pathetic topic-" An't we, sir, rather getting into the high sentimental latitudes now?"

The author of the clever Criticisms on the Bar, (first printed in the Examiner, 1818,) was no admirer of the general deportment of Lord Ellenborough, either on or off the Bench: "but," he adds, "it is not unfrequently a very useful lesson, and a very fine display of power, to witness the manner in which he drives directly onward to the just end of a causelike a mighty elephant in a forest, trampling down the low brushwood under his feet, and tearing away all the minor branches that obstruct his impetuous progress.'

Lord Ellenborough's reply to William Hone's "My Lord, I protest, my Lord, I protest," was "Protest, and go about your business!" In one of his trials Hone asserted that there was not a single counsel who would venture to support his own convictions against the opinion of a presiding judge; and the author of Criticisms on the Bar ventures to say, "There was not a single Barrister present, whose hollow bosom did not echo the sentence, and silently admit its truth!"

JOHN SCOTT AND JAMES BOSWELL.

These capital stories are related in Lord Eldon's AnecdoteBook:

"At an assize at Lancaster, we found Dr. Johnson's friend, Jemmy Boswell, lying upon the pavement—inebriated. We subscribed at supper a guinea for him and half-a-crown for his clerk, and sent him, when he waked next morning a brief with instructions to move, for what we denominated the writ of Quare adhæsit pavimento,' with observations, duly calculated to induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the necessity of granting it to the judge, before whom he was to move. Boswell sent all round the town to attorneys for books, that might enable him to distinguish himself, but in vain. He moved, however, for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge was perfectly astonished, and the audience

amazed. The judge said, 'I never heard of such a writwhat can it be that adheres pavimento ?-Are any of you gentlemen at the Bar able to explain this?' The Bar laughed. At last one of them said, 'My Lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhæsit pavimento. There was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement.'

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Jemmy Boswell called upon me at my chambers in Lincoln's Inn, desiring to know what would be my definition of Taste. I told him I must decline informing him how I should define it ;-because I knew he would publish what I said would be my definition of it, and I did not choose to subject my notion of it to public criticism. He continued, however, his importunities in frequent calls, and, in one, complained much that I would not give him my definition of taste, as he had that morning got Henry Dundas's (afterwards Lord Melville), Sir Archibald Macdonald's, and John Anstruther's, definitions of taste. "Well then,' I said, 'Boswell, we must have an end of this. Taste, according to my definition, is the judgment which Dundas, Macdonald, Anstruther, and you, manifested, when you determined to quit Scotland, and to come into the south. You may publish this if you please.'

LORD ELDON'S BEGINNINGS.

Mr. Scott finally removed to London in 1775, considerably depressed in spirits as to his future prospects, which is not surprising, considering that he was almost without a sixpence he could call his own, to support himself, his wife, and by this time their infant child, John. His first house was in Cursitor-street, of which he used to say-"Many a time have I run down from Cursitor-street to Fleet Market, to get sixpenny-worth of sprats for supper."

"When I was called to the Bar," said he to Mrs. Forster, "Bessy and I thought all our troubles were over: business was to pour in, and we were to be almost rich immediately. So I made a bargain with her, that during the following year, all the money I should receive in the first eleven months should be mine, and whatever I should get in the twelfth month should be hers. What a stingy dog I must have been to make such a bargain! I would not have done so afterwards. But however, so it was; that was our agree