MR. CULLEN, MR. HORNE, MR. HEALD, AND MR. WINGFIELD. There's nothing simply good, nor ill alone; The only measure is, and judge opinion. Dr. Donne's Progr. of the Soul, St. 52. THE objects of ambition, separated from pecuniary consideration, are much less numerous in Chancery than in our Courts of Law, but those who aim at the highest honours even in the latter are not by any means in proportion to the probability of attainment. Indeed the Barristers in Westminster Hall appear to have multiplied so rapidly within the last ten or fifteen years, that in none of the Courts are the seats assigned to them sufficient for the purpose. In this respect, in the Common Pleas, during Term, the Advocates are least incommoded, because none but Sergeants are allowed to practise; the dreary coldness and dullness of the Exchequer usually keeps away nearly all but those who have actual business to transact. The Court of King's Bench, however, as I had occasion before to remark, is generally crowded to excess, and in Chancery, unless I am much mistaken, the proportion of Barristers attending has of late been more considerable than for many previous years. The cause of this influx is not the creation of any new offices, to which their hopes may ascend, but the great increase of business; for the love of money as every body knows is a much more generally operative impellent than the desire of rank, unless indeed the rank bring with it a proportionate pecuniary emolument. The fact of the large increase of Barristers who devote their time to Chancery practice, where strickly speaking there are but three judicial situations open to them, establishes what I have said. Sometimes indeed a common lawyer is advanced to the Woolsack and to the custody of the Great Seal, as in the recent case of Lord Erskine, but it more rarely happens (and the instance of Sir James Mansfield cannot be fairly quoted to the contrary) that a mere equity lawyer is appointed chief justice either of the King's Bench or Common Pleas they are made puisne Barons and sometimes Chiefbarons of the Exchequer, but I cannot recollect that at any period the inferior judicial seat of the common-law courts have been filled by individuals selected from the Chancery Bar. Independent of the gentlemen in bombasine who either practise or sit in this Court, it is provided with no less than twelve King's Counsel, who all enjoy either more or less business. Six of these have already been under review in the course of these articles; one I have cursorily noticed, another I have totally omitted, and of the four remaining candidates for employment I am now about to speak. Mr. CULLEN, I apprehend, may lay claim to the first mention on the ground of seniority if not of merit. He examines the cases entrusted to him with great care, and conducts them with much prudence: he seems faithfully to adhere to his instructions, and never commits the interests of his clients by indis-cretion: he is a man perhaps of more labour than talent, who makes up for his deficiency in the latter by unabated industry, and who from reading and experience has acquired as much knowledge as most of those to whom he is usually opposed. His method is very systematic, and his manner somewhat laboured, with a mouthing kind of pronunciation that looks a little like pompous effort, where an exertion of the kind is totally unnecessary: he affects to be oratorical in the wrong place, or I should rather say that he is seldom oratorical in the right: he makes a common observation upon a matter of form with quite as much, if not more ceremony than if it were a remark upon the most pinching and important part of the case. Yet do not let me be understood to say, that he is by any means an exception to that gentlemanly deportmen |