his vote would be on the other side; and we remember its being once drolly stated that Wilberforce was always of the opinion of the last speaker-except when he happened to speak last himself.... Another drawback on the Parliamentary efficiency of his latter years was his habit of taking notes, which so entirely absorbed his attention that he often lost the real substance of the debate; and while his hat was full, and his coatpockets stuffed out like panniers with copious memoranda of every word that had been uttered, he never knew what any one had said." Though Mr. Croker in this extract characteristically puts his statements in the most offensive manner possible, it appears from other sources that they are substantially

correct.

On his retirement from Parliament, Wilberforce withdrew into the bosom of his family, there to pass the calm and peaceful evening of his days. His last years were checkered by the loss of a large part of his fortune. His eldest son had entered upon a speculation in a milk company which proved a failurc, and Wilberforce, who had become guarantee for him, had to pay a very large sum-between £40,000 and £50,000, it is stated. Such a disaster, however, in no serious degree troubled him. He had never cared for money except as a means to do good with, and he bore the calamity with unclouded serenity. A great triumph gladdened the closing days of his life. The last public information he received was, that the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery had been read for the second time in the House of Commons. "Thank God," said he, "that I should have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the abolition of slavery!" During his closing illness his sunny cheerfulness never deserted him for a moment. Talking of his being kept from exercise, he said, "What cause for thankfulness have I, that I am not lying in pain, and in a suffering posture, as so many people are! Certainly it is a great privation to me, from my habits, not to be able to walk about, and to lie still as much as I do; but then how many there are who are lying in severe pain!" On July

Death of Wilberforce.

85

29th, 1833, he expired, aged seventy-three years and eleven months.

Wilberforce had desired to be buried beside his sister and his daughter in a vault at Stoke Newington; but it was felt that such a man should lie amid the honored dead of England in Westminster Abbey, and a requisition to that effect was addressed to his relatives by many of the most distinguished men of both parties. There, accordingly, he was laid, in the north transept, close to the graves of Pitt, Fox, and Canning. No one of more noble and gentler nature lies buried there; no one of whom we think with more kindly and loving feelings.

THE AMELIORATION OF THE CRIMINAL CODE.

SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY.

THE life of a great lawyer does not in general possess much popular interest. True, the story of his early struggles with the difficulties of fortune, and of the slow and gradual steps by which he ascended the ladder of fame, is in many cases not unattractive; but when once he is fairly on the high-road to prosperity the interest is apt to fade away. The Law is proverbially a jealous mistress; and, though there are more exceptions to the rule than is popularly supposed, it is too often the case that a great lawyer is a great lawyer only, and not a great man -that his whole thoughts and energies and reading have been confined to his profession alone, and that the general and harmonious culture of his whole nature has been neglected. It is probably owing to this cause that it so rarely happens that a legal celebrity is a popular hero; and that the names of the forensic luminaries which are mentioned with the greatest respect within the charmed circle of the profession are all but unknown to the world at large. To both of these rules Sir Samuel Romilly forms an exception. The interest of his life does not stop when the record of his early labors is finished; indeed, it increases to the end; and, besides having the reputation of a profound lawyer among his legal brethren, he was, in his lifetime, honored and admired by the people. Nor has his reputation altogether faded away. There are few who have not heard something of "the good Sir Samuel Romilly," and of the distinguished part he acted in the reform of our Criminal Law.