these matters in the course of the trial, and acquitted himself with ability in his reply. At the close of 1823 the resignation of Sir Robert Dallas having made a vacancy in the Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas, Sir Robert Gifford was promoted to that office with a peerage; and, in the spring of 1824, he was transferred from the Common Pleas to the Rolls, as the successor of Sir Thomas Plumer. The appointment was not satisfactory to the Chancery bar; and their disfavour, joined to his own want of early experience in equity practice, made the Rolls Court somewhat difficult and uncomfortable to him. He took great pains, however, and, being naturally quick to learn, he would, probably, had he lived for a few years, have surmounted many of his disadvantages; although in almost everything he did there was visible a constraint which seemed to result from fear of getting beyond his depth, and unwillingness that this depth should be too accurately sounded. It was in the judicial business of the House of Lords where the jurisdiction is merely appellate, and where points, therefore, can seldom arise on the sudden, that he was seen to the greatest advantage. In the disposal of the Scotch appeals, more especially, he gave much satisfaction, and was of material use in enabling Lord Eldon to devote a greater portion of his time to the duties of the Court of Chancery," &c.

LORD STOWELL.

"Lord Stowell had the good fortune to live in an age of which the events and circumstances were peculiarly qualified to exercise and exhibit the high faculties of his mind. The greatest maritime questions which had ever presented themselves for adjudication,-questions involving all the most important points both in the rights of belligerents and in those of neutrals,arose, in his time, out of that great war in which England became the sole occupant of the sea, and held at her girdle the keys of all the harbours of the globe. Of these questions, most of them of first impression, a large proportion could be determined only by a long and cautious process, of reference to principle, and induction from analogy. The genius of Lord Stowell, at once profound and expansive, vigorous and acute, impartial and decisive, penetrated, marshalled, and mastered all the difficulties of these complex inquiries; till, having 'sounded all their

And

depths and shoals,' he framed and laid down that great comprehensive chart of maritime law which has become the rule of his successors, and the admiration of the world. What he thus achieved in the wide field of international jurisprudence, he accomplished also with equal success in the narrower sphere of ecclesiastical, matrimonial, and testamentary law. though where so many higher excellences stand forth that of style may seem comparatively immaterial, it is impossible not to notice that scholar-like finish * of his judicial compositions, by which they delight the taste of the critic, as by their learning and their logic they satisfy the understanding of the lawyer. Like Lord Eldon, he was more repelled by fears of change than attracted by hopes of improvement. On questions, therefore, which involved any kind of disturbance, whether legal, political, or ecclesiastical, his voice was almost always against the mover; or if he opposed not with his voice, as he was little given to parliamentary display, he resisted with a steady vote and an influence which, from his learning, his station, and his close connection and communion with the Chancellor was vastly potential. But he was not more stubborn in legislation than he was free and facile in society; he lived with all the best political and literary company, and to the latest period of his London life his presence was coveted at all the most agreeable tables of the time, without distinction of party."

LORD ERSKINE.

"There are but few materials for estimating the judicial merits of Lord Erskine. In truth, his celebrity does not so naturally connect itself with the equity bench as with the common-law bar. When he came to the Court of Chancery he had not been very conversant with those particular departments of jurisprudence through which the science of equity is most easily approached; and he remained not long enough in that court to become familiar with all its principles. His decisions, therefore, are, perhaps, of less authority than that of some judges, much his inferiors both in strength of understanding and in reach of thought, but more versed in the doctrine and practice of equitable jurisprudence. His fame, however, may well afford to waive any claim upon the short annals of his chancellorship. For more than a quarter of a century

This judge had a great desire to unite, with the distinction he had earned as a man of talents, the reputation also of a man of ton. Having mixed but little in his early days with the higher classes of society, for whose conversation, indeed, neither his original education nor his subsequent acquirements had very well adapted him, he made the mistake of supposing that a gentleman ought to have something artificial in demeanour and delivery; and thus he contracted an affectation of manner, in which levity and primness was somewhat fantastically blended. The Prince of Wales, always a nice observer upon taste and manners, was particularly diverted with this foible in a man of Sir John Leach's station and abilities. The Anecdote Book relates the following story.

"It has long been the habit to give the Chancellor, carrying his purse, the nickname of Bags.' When Sir John Leach was Chancellor to the Prince, he also had a purse; and the Prince said, as Sir John was not so rough in his manners as a King's Chancellor usually was, but a much more polite person, he should call him Reticule.' Some of his talents were

66

extraordinary, and had gained him a just distinction in Parliament as well as at the Bar. He delivered himself with great clearness and neatness of expression, and his judgments showed an extensive knowledge of the practice of his Court. He, however, trusted too much to his quickness, and sometimes suffered it to hurry him from his propriety. From the readiness with which he apprehended facts, the most numerous and complicated, he fancied that the same rapid glance had made him master of all their legal bearings too. The consequence was, that, jumping to his conclusions, he often heard with impatience the arguments at the Bar, and, when points were pertinaciously pressed, was not always courteous to Counsel.* If he would have suffered himself to suppose it possible that any conception of his own could be mistaken, he might have held a high place among the judges of our Courts of Equity; but, from his haste to dispose of the causes before him by breaking them down prematurely, his decisions have failed to obtain the full praise which perhaps they intrinsically deserve. Though his address was not agreeable, his disposition was friendly; and, in spite of some littlenesses, he was a high-spirited and firm man. There were no misgivings, no qualms in his courage; and severe afflictions of bodily disease, which more than once acquired the application of the knife, were borne by him with unflinching fortitude."

Mr. Leach

one which is now justly esteemed among a statesman's most essential endowments,the firmness necessary to check the march of self-entitled Liberalism, with its train of noisy, lawless camp-followers. But in politics the values of certain qualities vary with the times; and in Mr. Perceval's day, when the best informed classes of society, who now feel it needful to make a stand against progressive movement, were favourable at least to such an amount of change as might adjust the old institutions of the country to its modern exigencies, the unyielding resolution of the Minister found but little sympathy among persons unconnected with his party. So far from being acccounted to him for a virtue, it was set down as his chief defect. With somewhat more of justice, he was reputed to be deficient in extent and com. prehensiveness of view. The course of his earlier life had not left him sufficient leisure for studying the general philosophy of politics, and the safe limits of the antagonist forces which mingle in the constitution of a free community. Belonging by birth and connection to a party whose great maxim was to keep things as they were, he had taken it for granted that their prescriptive opinions must be right. Of those opinions he was suddenly called from his profession to become the ministerial champion; and whatever tended to shake or even qualify them, he regarded as prejudicial to the monarchy and to the Church, to both of which he was sincerely attached. He, therefore, with the dauntless courage of his nature, directed the whole force of a strong and ready, though near-sighted, mind against innovation in general, without sufficiently distinguishing in favour of demonstrated improve ment. But his opposition, however zealous, was generous and frank; and though, from the want of early training for that kind of conflict, he was under some disadvantage in his first struggles with the practised politicians of the Whig opposition, yet he took up, and employed with so much quickness, judgment, and spirit, the materials furnished to him by his colleagues and subalterns, that, possessing also the gift of a correct and perspicuous style, he soon became, by the confession of all parties, one of the most powerful debaters of his time. He had personal qualities, too, which contributed materially to his acceptation in debate. His domestic virtues, his fidelity to his friends, his ardent and almost flagrant zeal, his sincerity, his disinterestedness, his unaffected piety, his extensive benevolence and charity, all told upon his parliamentary position, and fortified him as a Minister, by the regard which they won for him as

a man. No kindlier tribute was ever bestowed upon the memory of a rival than the graceful allusion to his death in Mr. Canning's celebrated speech of the 22nd of the following June, on the Roman Calic question:-When I first gave notice of this motion (early in the month of May), I expected that my most formidable antagonist upon it would be my late lamented friend; and I should have argued the question with him in no other spirit and with no other feelings than

If a brother should a brother dare' to the proof and exercise of arms. I know not who is to buckle on his armour against me this day. Would to God that he were here to wield his weapons with his own hand-that the cause had the advantage of his abilities, so we had the benefit of his presence,

"In early life, Lord Londonderry, then Lord Castlereagh, by the measures which he took as a member of the Irish Government for suppressing the rebellion and effecting the Union, had incurred the virulent hatred of the demagogues of Ireland; and his official reputation afterwards sustained much damage from the failure of the Walcheren expedition, fitted out under his management. But when, on the death of Mr. Perceval, he succeeded to be leader of the House of Commons, he evinced powers, both of general counsel and of departmental administration, which rapidly raised him into high esteem; and the ability with which he negotiated the great settlement of Europe at the conclusion of the war definitively placed him, by general consent, in the foremost rank of the statesmen of his time. Strangers, visiting the gallery of the House of Commons in the expectation of a rhetorical display from its leader, were generally disappointed in Lord Castlereagh, whose ordinary language, abundantly fluent, was wanting both in force and in correctness;

although now and then, on subjects of special excitement, he would rise for a short time into a strain which few of his adversaries could equal. In the judgment, however, of persons who understood the practical objects of Parliamentary debate, his general defects of style were fully compensated by those other more essential merits which he eminently combinedhis long experience and accurate knowledge of public affairs-his leading spirit, his clearness and grasp of understanding, his judicious selection of topics, his gal▾

lant adherence to his friends and followers, and (which was by no means the least important with such an assembly as the House of Commons) the dignity of his aspect and bearing. So great indeed for many years was his influence, political and personal, in that House and with the higher classes in general, that, although not placed officially at the head of the Government, he enjoyed perhaps a larger share of its credit and power than was possessed by the First Minister of the Crown; and his loss, while it was sincerely lamented on private grounds, became also, in reference to the consequential arrangements of the Ministry, a subject of the greatest political embarrassment."-Lord Eldon called his loss quite irreparable.

MR. CANNING.

"The genius of Mr. Canning was of the largest scope and of the finest order. Upon some of those general principles of politics which have become associated with his memory, the judgments of mankind will probably be ever divided; but, even with the most determined of his opponents, it has long ceased to be matter of question, that boldness, originality, and grandeur, were the characteristics of his policy. That policy, too, was essentially English. It was upon English principles that he upheld authority-it was upon English principles that he succoured liberty-it was to English interests, in the most enlarged and generous sense, that his heart and his energies were devoted -and his leading conviction was that 'England, to be safe and happy, must be great.' It was not, however, until his latter years that he reached the full measure of his merited fame. He had attained no small celebrity at college, and even at school; and had acquired, before he was five-and-thirty years of age, great literary distinction and a pre-eminent_reputation in the House of Commons. But that loftier praise, which belonged to him as a leader of his country's councils, was reluctantly and slowly conceded. Long before the public in general had recognised the real extent of his powers, he had been characterised by one of the more discerning and candid of his opponents

* as

the first logician in Europe.' But ordinary observers clung to ordinary preju

dices. The combination of solid with brilliant qualities is so rare, that people commonly suppose an abundant sparkling of wit on the surface to indicate a dearth of wisdom beneath. The self-love of the vulgar will not brook to acknowledge any one man as their superior in several distinct departments of mind: and thus it was assumed that the dazzling favourite of the House of Commons could not possibly possess the qualifications of a sound statesman. The full recognition of his superiority was further retarded by another cause which it must be owned that he had himself set in motion-the ill-will of those whom his talent for ridicule had annoyed. The laugh passes away, but the smart remains; and none are more thin-skinned than the thick-witted. Those whom in the buoyancy of his spirits he had satirised, and among whom were found some members even of his own political party, sought their revenge according to their nature, and gave him out as a mercurial, flighty rhetorician, a mere epigrammatist, wanting in all the solid parts of business.t At his entrance into the Cabinet, and for many years afterwards, the offence was still unforgiven, and the disparagement was still reiterated. When the Ministry began to divide itself into two sections, the one somewhat rigid in its adhesion to actual establishments, and the other a little adventurous in experiments and concessions, the part taken by Mr. Canning, in favour of the larger and more hazardous theories, led to certain differences of opinion between him and Lord Eldon; and of these differences, widened as they had been by the Cabinet conflicts of September 1809, the enemies of Mr. Canning took all possible advantage, sedulously contrasting his character, such as they themselves had chosen to misrepresent it, with the sterling qualities of the Chancellor. The Chancellor, it is hardly requisite to say, had no share in these petty attempts -for no man's mind was more averse from animosity or intrigue, and no man was less disposed to seek his own credit by injuring the personal character of a colleague; but it is among colleagues that political differences breed most displeasure; and something of a militant spirit did certainly disclose itself now and then between these two distinguished members of the Government.§ In Mr. Canning it

broke out by way of incidental sarcasm upon the old-fashioned tenets of the legal dignitary; while the Chancellor would indulge in a little quiet satire on the stirring genius of the parliamentary leader. But the fiercest assailants of Mr. Canning were the low party in Church and State; who, hating him for his anti-revolutionary principles, and galled by his perpetual and powerful chastisements of their foremost pretenders, dogged him with unremitting malice, in hopes, by damaging his fame, to discredit his authority. They were ceaselessly on the watch for the slightest slip in his parliamentrry or official course, and, of the few blots he made, every one was hit. At length, however, genius, courage, and time, conquered all obstructions: and the English people, undeceived as to his character, rendered to it a complete, though a tardy, justice. As an orator, he stood beyond rivalry, and almost beyond comparison.* He com

bined, as has been happily said, the free movement, spirit, and reality of British Parliamentary debate, with the elaborate perfection of the forum and the agora,

and the accessary accomplishments and graces of modern literature. It is scarcely an exaggeration to affirm, that in his single person were united all the highest gifts of eloquence which nature had distributed among the most eminent of his Parliamentary competitors.† A lucid, close, and forcible logic, effective alike for the establishment of truth and the exposure of absurdity, hypocrisy, and pretension, an elevated tone of declamation, appealing not so much to passion, as to what was noblest in thought and sentiment,- -a stream of imagery and quotation, rich, various, and yet never overflowing the main subject,-a light artillery of wit,' so disciplined, that not a shot of it flashed without telling upon the issue of the conflict,-an unfailing, yet constantly diversified, harmony of period, and a magical command of those lightning words and phrases, which burn themselves, at once and for ever, into the hearer's mind, these, and all these in their perfection, were among the powers of that eloquence which death had thus suddenly hushed," &c.

MR. URBAN,

City, Nov.

IN your Magazine for April last, I sent a few remarks on the pottery called Samian, which I was pleased to see elicited a continuation of the subject from your correspondent E. B. P. I am induced to make some further observations, as the writer appeared to doubt the authenticity of a quotation which I made from Pitiscus, and wished to know, whether it was to be found in his Lexicon? if so, under what head? as he had referred to several without success.

It is to be found in the Lexicon under the head "Simpulum," where Pitiscus, after giving numerous authorities to show that the Samian ware was used by the Romans at their re

ligious sacrifices, adds, "Ex luto namque Samio, quod est in insula Samo, in rubrum colorem vertente, plurima ego observo vasa etiam ad veterum sacrificia. Quod in talem usum inserviisset lutum Samium docet Cicero de Rep." (Apud Non. iv. 434.)

It is true (as E. B. P. observes) our author only compiled his elaborate Lexicon little more than a century since; but I think it probable he had some good authority for the remark, as his work is one of great research, and replete with valuable information, advancing little without a reference to prove the correctness of his assertion.

The writer also seemed to require some distinctive evidence that the Samian of Pliny was red; but I think