A BOLD LAWYER. When, in 1863, Chief Justice Sir Alexander Cockburn presided at the distribution of prizes at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, in the course of his address, he related the following incident in his legal career. Scientific men, he said, frequently showed a tendency to speak of their science in hard technical terms, which was natural, but evidence given in pedantic language was often nearly unintelligible to laymen, and consequently its value was lessened. He recollected once that a medical man of vast attainments drew up a Report, which was read in court. He (the Chief Justice) was counsel on the other side, and the Report being couched in bombastic and pedantic language he turned it into ridicule and got the verdict. On grounds which he explained he believed the verdict was right. Some time after he fell ill, and he sent for the doctor whose report he had ridiculed. The doctor said to him, "Well, I thought you were a clever fellow, but I have altered my opinion.' "How so?" he (the speaker) asked. "Because," replied the doctor, "you are foolish enough, after speaking of my Report in the way you did, to put yourself under my care." The doctor, however, treated him with. skill, and he soon recovered. SHORT COMMONS. On the evening of the coronation-day of our gracious Queen, the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn gave the students a feed; when a certain profane wag in giving out a verse of the national anthem, which he was solicited to lead in a solo, took that opportunity of stating a grievance as to the modicum of port allowed, in manner and form following: "Happy and glorious Three half-pints 'mong four of us, God save the Queen!" -which ridiculous perversion of the author's meaning was received with a full chorus, amid tremendous laughter and applause. ECCENTRIC PERSONS. ANECDOTES OF MISERS. THE moralists have dealt fairly with the Miser: if honest, he can be only honest bare-weight. History tells of illustrious villains; but there never was an illustrious miser in nature; though the keeping together of wealth, and the having and holding it fast, is a great idol of human worship, to which so much incense is offered up every day. These sacrifices have, in all times, furnished the world much to laugh at and ridicule, if not to despise. "Plum Turner" and "Vulture Hopkins," two noted misers, are immortalized in Pope's Moral Essays, Ep. 3. Richard Turner had been a Turkey merchant he died in 1733. When possessed of three hundred thousand pounds, "he laid down his coach, because interest was reduced from 5 to 4 per cent.; he then put 70,000l. into the Charitable Corporation for better interest; which sum, having lost, he took it so much to heart, that he kept his chamber ever after. It was thought that he would not have outlived it, but that he was heir to another considerable estate, which he daily expected, and that by this course of life he saved both clothes and other expenses. John Hopkins, by his rapacity, obtained the name of "Vulture:" he lived worthless, but died wealthy he would give to no person living, but left his riches, 300,000l. so as not to be inherited till after the second generation. His counsel representing to him how many years it must be before this could take effect, and that his money could only lie at interest all the time, he expressed great joy thereat, and said, "they would then be as long in spending as he had been in getting it." Hopkins was a wealthy London merchant, and resided in Old Broad-street. : He was the architect of nearly his whole fortune, which originated in some highly fortunate speculations in the stocks, and was considerably increased at the explosion of the South-sea Bubble in 1720. On one occasion he paid an evening visit to Guy, the founder of the Hospital in Southwark, who also was as remarkable for his private parsimony as his public munificence. On Hopkins entering the room, Mr. Guy lighted a farthing candle which lay ready on the table, and desired to know the purport of the gentleman's visit. "I have been told,” said Hopkins, "that you, sir, are better versed in the When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend Upon the funeral of another miser of this stamp, Sir John Cutler, was expended no less than 70007. Sir John was a loyalist in the time of the Commonwealth, and at the Restoration was created a Baronet by Charles II. He belonged to the Grocers' Company: he contributed a large sum towards the building of the College of Physicians, in Warwick-lane; in return for which a statue of the Baronet, along with another of the King, was erected in the College court. Sir John died in 1699, and his executors claimed of the College 70007. the sum which Sir John had advanced, with interest, and appearing to be charged as a debtor in the books of the deceased. A compromise was made by the executors accepting 20007., as payment in full of all demands. The "faculty of Warwick-lane," enraged at this shabby transaction, obli *Notes and Queries. terated the name of Sir John inscribed on the pedestal of his statue; but he has received a more enduring monument in Pope's Moral Essays, Ep. 3, in reference to his splendid funeral: Honours by the heralds duly paid For mode and form, e'en to a very scruple; Oh cruel irony! these came too late, And only mock whom they were meant to honour. The great Captain, the Duke of Marlborough, when he was in the last stage of life, and very infirm, would walk from the public rooms in Bath to his lodgings in a cold dark night to save sixpence in chair-hire. If the Duke, who left at his death more than a million and a half sterling, could have foreseen that all his wealth and honours were to be inherited by a grandson of Lord Trevor's, who had been one of his enemies, would he have been so careful to save sixpence for the sake of his heir? Not for the sake of his heir, but he would always have saved sixpence. When Lord Bath, his Countess, and son, visited Holkham, they forgot to give anything to the servants that showed the house; upon recollection and deliberation, they sent back a man and horse six miles with,-half-a-crown. George Colman tells us that his Lordship, when passing in his carriage, through a gate near his country-house, would give the word to halt the outriders echoed the order, the coachman pulled up, and the cavalcade stood still; and William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, stretching forth his hand from his coach bedizened with coronets, and drawn by four horses, threw to the venerable woman gatekeeper-a halfpenny! Lord Chancellor Hardwicke when worth 800,000l. set the same value on half-a-crown as he did when he was worth only one hundred pounds. Sir James Lowther, after changing a piece of silver at George's Coffee-house, in the Strand, and paying twopence for his dish of coffee, was helped into his chariot (for he was then very lame and infirm), and went home. Some little time after, he returned to the same coffee-house on purpose to acquaint the woman who kept it, that she had given him a bad halfpenny, and demanded another in exchange for it. Sir James had about 40,000l. per annum, and was at a loss whom to appoint his heir. Sir William Smyth, of Bedfordshire, was immensely rich, but most parsimonious and miserly in his habits. At seventy years of age he was entirely deprived of his sight- unable to gloat over his hoarded heaps of gold. He was to be couched, persuaded by Taylor, the celebrated oculist; by agreement to have sixty guineas if he restored his patient to any degree of sight. Taylor succeeded in the operation, and Sir William was enabled to read and write without the aid of spectacles during the rest of his life. But no sooner was his sight restored, than the baronet began to regret that his agreement had been for so large a sum. His thoughts were now how to cheat the oculist. He pretended that he had only a glimmering, and could see nothing distinctly; for which reason the bandage on his eyes was continued a month longer than the usual time. Taylor was deceived by these misrepresentations, and agreed to compound the bargain, and accepted twenty guineas instead of sixty. At the time Taylor attended him, Sir William had a large estate, and immense sums of money in the stocks, and 6,000l. in the house. Shanky Williams, as he was familiarly called, a native of Cymwd, lived about sixty years ago. He was accustomed to travel through the West of England, picking up whatever he could on the road, and selling it at the next town. In this way in the course of years he amassed a considerable sum, which he put out to interest. Disease at last overtook him in a wretched lodging at Bristol. The old man, conscious of his approaching end, could not even then withstand his money-making propensity. He sent for three men who were notorious body-snatchers, and so contrived that he should be visited by each in succession. He had the roguery to sell his corpse to each man for three guineas, and, before they discovered the cheat, contrived to secure the money; his death a few hours afterwards rendering all complaint on the part of his victims useless. Nollekens, the sculptor, was a paragon of parsimony. In his own house candles were never lighted at the commencement of the evening; and whenever he and his wife heard a knock at the door, they would wait until they heard a second rap, before they lit the candles, lest the first should have been “a runaway," and their candles wasted. Nollekens's biographer was assured that a pair of moulds, by being nursed, and put out when company went away, once lasted a whole year! By his wife begging a clove, or a bit of |