several of the others he was defeated; and partly by his excessive use of the power, partly by his failure in the exercise of it, he had the agony, to him most excruciating, of both being signally defeated in his attempts to crush the press, and of causing all the discussions of the ex officio power which first brought it into hatred and then into disuse. This is that successful barrister, that skilful special pleader, that acute lawyer on common points, that dexterous and expert practitioner, (for all this he was as certainly as he was a little-minded man)-this is he whom the men that contemn Lord Erskine, and look down upon Lord Mansfield, and would fain, if they durst, raise their small voices against Sir Samuel Romilly, hold up as the pattern of an English lawyer. SIR WILLIAM GRANT. Ir from contemplating the figure of the eminent though narrow-minded lawyer whom we have been surveying, we turn to that of his far more celebrated contemporary, Sir William Grant, we shall find, with some marked resemblances, chiefly in political opinions and exaggerated dread of change, a very marked diversity in all the more important features of character, whether intellectual or moral. We have now named in some respects the most extraordinary individual of his timeone certainly than whom none ever better sustained the judicial office, though its functions were administered by him upon a somewhat contracted scale-one than whom none ever descended from the forum into the senate with more extraordinary powers of argumentation, or flourished there with greater renown. It happened to this great judge to have been for many years at the bar with a very moderate share of practice; and although his parliamentary exertions never tore him away from his profession, yet his public character rested entirely upon their success until he was raised to the bench. The genius of the man then shone forth with extraordinary lustre. His knowledge of law, which had hitherto been scanty and never enlarged by practice, was now expanded to whatever dimensions might seem required for performing his high office; nor was he ever remarked as at all deficient even in the branch most difficult to master without forensic habits, the accomplishments of a case-lawyer; while his familiarity with the principles of jurisprudence and his knowledge of their foundations, was ample as his application of them was easy and masterly. The Rolls Court, however, in those days, was one of comparatively contracted business; and, although he gave the most entire satisfaction there, and in presiding at the Privy Council in Prize and Plantation Appeals, a doubt was always raised by the admirers of Lord Eldon, whether Sir William Grant could have as well answered the larger demands upon his judicial resources, had he presided in the Court of Chancery. That doubt appears altogether unfounded. He possessed the first great quality for despatching business (the "real" and not "affected despatch" of Lord Bacon), a power of steadily fixing his attention upon the matter before him, and keeping it invariably directed towards the successive arguments addressed to him. The certainty that not a word was lost deprived the advocate of all excuse for repetition; while the respect which his judge inspired checked needless prolixity, and deterred him from raising desperate points merely to have them frowned down by a tribunal as severe as it was patient. He had not, indeed, to apprehend any interruption-that was a course never practised in those days at the Rolls or the Cockpit; but while the judge sat passive or unmoved, it was plain that, though his powers of endurance had no limits, his powers of discriminating were ever active as his attention was ever awake; and as it required an eminent hardihood to place base coin before so scrutinising an eye, or tender light money to be weighed in such accurate scales as Sir William Grant's; so few men ventured to exercise a patience which yet all knew to be unbounded. It may, indeed, be fairly doubted whether the main force of muscular exertion, so much more clumsily applied by Sir John Leach in the same court to effect the great object of his efforts-the close compression of the debate-ever succeeded so well, or reduced the mass to as small a bulk as the delicate hydraulic press of his illustrious predecessor did, without giving the least pain |