gallery of the House of Commons but from inference; for he is seldom audible beyond the benches surrounding him. He is not required to speak but upon legal questions, which have been more numerous than usual within the last two or three sessions. His addresses are very inefficient, and draw but few cheers even from those who are most interested in encouraging him. Sir W. Garrow generally obtained his greatest applause from his antagonists, who of course received with shouts the sentences in which he committed himself, and destroyed his own positions. This is an error into which the present Attorney-General is too prudent to be likely to fall; but if he did, the smallness of his voice would frequently enable him to do it with impunity.

SIR ARTHUR PIGGOT.

Un style trop égal et tojours uniforme.
Bolleau, Art. Port. C. 1.

It is generally remarked in the profession that the Chancery is the most gentlemanly of all the courts: this epithet requires explanation:-a learned court or an impartial court would be intelligible, but few persons would understand precisely what is intended by a gentlemanly court of law or equity. Some might suppose that it meant a place where most money is gained by the least labour, and a barrister consequently soonest acquires the property of a gentleman; the fact however is otherwise: others might fancy

that it meant a court where none but individuals of a certain station in society practise: but this would also be incorrect; while a third party might imagine that it was composed of men, who in the ordinary intercourse of life conducted themselves with greater decorum and propriety. I am not aware however that in this respect the counsel in one court have much, if any, advantage over those of another. In Chancery there is certainly not so much low business requiring a knowledge of mean legal artifices, and therefore particular individuals may be excluded; but as a body they are pretty nearly upon an equality, and perhaps in all the courts some might be pointed out who have resorted to all kinds of despicable expedients and base contrivances to get into the good graces of the attornies; who have practised the art of hugging with complete success-who have secured business by invitations to dinner-by well-timed presents of fish or game-by hearty and unseen shakes of the hand in the street, which they dared not have given in Westminster-Hall, and by all those ingenuous means, to which

men of great talent have before now condescended, and by which men of little talent have sometimes gained considerable fortunes.

The difference however between the Chancery and other courts consists more in the mode in which the business is transacted than in the nature of the business itself, or the means by which it has been procured; and this distinction is owing less to the Bar than to the Bench. The Court is gentlemanly, because the judge is a gentleman: for there perhaps never was a man who presided in such a situation with more suavity and urbanity than Lord ELDON-who more effectually endeavoured to fore-shorten the distance between the Bench and the Bar-who listened with more patience to the observations of counsel on all sides, and whose chief fault arises from a painfully anxious desire to have no fault. Of course I here separate his judicial from his political capacity; for I applaud the first just as highly as I reprobate the last, and on this account my tribute will at least be thought to have the merit of since

rity. He is considered, and rightly, one of the ablest Chancellors ever intrusted with the great seal, and his natural disposition, as far as an opinion can be formed of it in public, seems to be as kind and amiable as his mind is well instructed in the learning of his profession. He listens with equal patience to the oldest and to the youngest counsel; and suitors who are unable or unwilling to employ advocates are never impetuously dismissed unheard. His Lordship, on one occasion, declared that it was the duty of a judge to devote his utmost attention to persons in such a predicament: and that he who even needlessly interrupted them, much more repelled them with unfeeling and coarse brutality, was unworthy of the office confided to him. This mild and tranquil deportmentthis gentlemanly ease-cannot have been displayed by Lord Eldon, for more than sixteen years, without producing a corresponding

* In the case of Thomas Nias, a bankrupt, who put Lord Eldon's resignation to the test, for he made an address to His Lordship, which occupied the greater part of two days, and consisted of the most minute details.