LORD ELDON'S LAW MAXIM.

13

in all subsequent life. Their effect was heightened by circumstances during and immediately after the journey. Upon the journey, a quaker, who was a fellow-traveller, stopped the coach at the inn at Tuxford, desired the chambermaid to come to the coachdoor, and gave her a sixpence, telling her that he forgot to give it her when he slept there two years before. I was a very saucy boy, and said to him, 'Friend, have you seen the motto on this coach ?' 'No.' 'Then look at it: for I think giving her only sixpence now is neither sat cito nor sat bene. After I got to town, my brother, now Lord Stowell, met me at the White Horse, in Fetter-lane, Holborn, then the great Oxford house, as I was told. He took me to see the play at Drury-lane. Love played Jobson in the farce, and Miss Pope played Nell. When we came out of the house, it rained hard. There were then few hackneycoaches, and we got both into one sedan-chair. Turning out of Fleet-street into Fetter-lane, there was a sort of contest between our chairmen and some persons who were coming up Fleet-street, whether they should first pass Fleet-street, or we in our chair first get out of Fleet-street into Fetter-lane. In the struggle, the sedan-chair was overset, with us in it. This, thought I, is more than sat cito, and certainly it is not sat bene. In short, in all that I have had to do in my future life, professional and judicial, I have always felt the effect of this early admonition, on the panels of the vehicle which conveyed me from school-'Sat cito, si sat bene.' It was the impression of this which made me that deliberative judge—as some have said, too deliberative,—

and reflection upon all that is past will not authorize me to deny that, whilst I have been thinking, sat cito, si sat bene, I may not have sufficiently recollected whether sat bene, si sat cito has had its due influence."

THE GREATER INCLUDES THE LESS.

CURRAN, whose diminutive stature is well known, and was the subject of many jokes by him and at him, once had an animated dispute with a large stout brother at the bar, and called him out. The large man objected, on the ground that the match was unfair. "You are so little," said the objecting counsel, "that I might fire at you a dozen times without ever touching you once; whereas the chance is that you shoot me at the first fire." "To convince you," said Curran," that I have no wish to take any advantage of you, you shall chalk my size upon your body, and all hits beyond the ring shall go for nothing."

THE LAW'S DELAY.

Ir is well known, upon one of the English circuits, that a leading barrister once undertook to speak while an express went twenty miles to bring back a witness, whom it was necessary to produce on the trial. But what is this to the performance of an American counsellor, who, upon a like emergency, held the judge and the jury by their ears for three mortal days! He was, indeed, put to his wit's-end for words wherewith to fill up the time; and he introduced so many truisms, and argued at the utmost length so many indisputable points, and expatiated so profusely upon so many trite ones, that Judge Marshal, the most patient

LORD ELLENBOROUGH.

15

of listeners, at last said, "Mr. Such-a-one, (addressing him by his name, in a deliberate tone of the mildest reprehension,) there are some things with which the court should be supposed to be acquainted."-Sydney Smith.

Lord Kenyon was once so indignant at the artifice of a party desiring to gain time, that he exclaimed"This is the last hair to the tail of procrastination."

66

KENYON, DUNNING, AND HORNE TOOKE. THESE three legal luminaries used generally to dine together, in vacation, at a mean little eating-house, near Chancery-lane, at sevenpence-halfpenny each. "As to Dunning and myself,” Tooke would say, we were generous, for we gave the girl who waited a penny a piece; but Kenyon, who always knew the value of money, sometimes rewarded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes with a promise."

LORD ELLENBOROUGH'S POWER OF SARCASM. LORD ELLENBOROUGH had no mean power of ridicule -as playful as a mind more strong than refined, could make it; while of sarcasm he was an eminent professor, but of the kind which hacks, and tears, and flays its victims, rather than destroys by cutting keenly. His interrogative exclamation in Lord Melville's case, when the party's ignorance of having taken accommodation out of the public fund was alleged-indeed, was proved-may be remembered as very picturesque, though perhaps more pungent than dignified: “Not

know money! Did he see it when it glittered? Did he hear it when it chinked ?" On the bench, he had the very well-known, though not very eloquent, Henry Hunt before him, who, in mitigation of some expected sentence, spoke of some who "complained of his dangerous eloquence." "They do you great injustice, Sir," said the considerate and merciful Chief-Justice, kindly wanting to relieve him from all anxiety on this charge. After he had been listening to two conveyancers for a whole day of a long and most technical argument in silence, and with a wholesome fear of lengthening it by any interruption whatever, one of them, in reply to a remark from another judge, said, "If it is the pleasure of your lordship that I go into that matter." "We, Sir," said the Chief-Justice, "have no pleasure in it any way." When a favourite special pleader was making an excursion, somewhat unexpected by his hearers, as unwonted in him, into a pathetic topic"An't we, Sir, rather getting into the high sentimental latitudes now ?"-Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review.

MELTING DELAY.

Nor very many years ago, the first cargo of ice was imported into England, from Norway. There not being such an article in the Custom-House schedules, application was made to the Treasury and to the Board of Trade; and, after some little delay, it was decided that the ice should be entered as "dry goods;" but the whole cargo had melted before the cargo was cleared up!

A COOL HAND.

MUSICAL COMPARISON.

17

THE infamous Jefferies being retained in an action brought to recover the wages of some musicians, who had officiated at a wedding party, he annoyed one of the plaintiffs with exclaiming frequently: "I say, fiddler; here, you fiddler." Shortly afterwards, this person called himself a musicianer; on which Jefferies asked what difference there was between a musicianer and a fiddler. "As much, sir," replied the plaintiff, "as between a pair of bagpipes and a recorder."

A COOL HAND.

WHEN Mr. John Clerk (afterwards Lord Eldin) was at the bar, he was remarkable for the sang-froid with which he treated the judges. On one occasion, a junior counsel, on hearing their lordships give judgment against his client, exclaimed that he was “surprised at such a decision." This was construed into a contempt of court, and he was ordered to attend at the bar next morning. Fearful of the consequences, he consulted his friend, John Clerk, who told him to be perfectly at ease, for he would apologise for him in a way that would avert any unpleasant result. Accordingly, when the name of the delinquent was called, John Clerk rose, and coolly addressed the assembled tribunal: "I am very sorry, my lords, that my young friend has so far forgotten himself as to treat your honourable bench with disrespect; he is extremely penitent, and you will kindly ascribe his unintentional insult to his ignorance. You must see at once that

B