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not strictly regular, were delicate-the nose aquiline-the eyes (we quote the words of one who well remembers him on the woolsack) deep set, and in general darkly tranquil, but now and then of an unbearable brightness-like burning brass;' the contour and complexion oval and Italian. He might have made a good study for a General of the Jesuits. He early overcame most perfectly his northern dialect and accent; and we can well believe that during several winters his chief study had been Garrick. No more finished elocutionist ever appeared in Parliament. It is said by Lord Brougham that in his latter years, when strength was oozing away at all points, the original Doric began to be again perceptible; but this is stoutly denied by a surviving niece, who lived in his house. The changes in his temper, or at least his demeanour, appear to have been almost as remarkable as those he went through in his political capacity. The violence and presumption of his younger days had disappeared before he reached any prominent position here—he was the blandest of Chancellors, the most courteous of gentlemen. His bearing was as noble as that of any man born to the highest hereditary station—and amidst all the vicissitudes of a busy career he maintained scholar-like tastes-such as might entitle him to share the better social hours of a Fox. It is creditable to him that in a very angry time he overlooked all party feelings in behalf of the struggling Mackintosh. Both Lord Brougham and Lord Campbell say expressly that the English lawyers as a body were proud of having a man of such accomplishments at their head.

We do not pretend to have any deep reverence for this Chancellor; but, after all, there is something to be said for him in those of his political turns which his biographer regards as the most lamentable. As to one of them, indeed, Lord Campbell admits frankly that it was made in company with many men of the most spotless honour-Portland, Spencer, &c., &c.-and with the brightest and loftiest genius of the time-Burke; and in the presence of such names he is modest enough to confine his wrath to Loughborough, whom he assumes to have been, unlike the others, insincere. However, it must be owned that even Loughborough might express warm approbation of the French Revolution in its early period, and yet denounce it as the most hideous of iniquities when it had reached a fuller development, without ex facie meriting Lord Campbell's severity. In the other case, the Catholic question, there is also a point of some consequence that may be taken in his favour. When he advocated the Emancipation principle Ireland was a separate kingdom, with her own legislature and her own established church. A member of the English House of Commons might then consider the safety of the

Protestant

Protestant establishment in Ireland as a secondary question, and yet take a very different view when the Union was on the carpet -still more after the Union was a fact. Lord Loughborough's opposition to the Catholic claims was grounded, primarily, on the danger to the Church of England-secondly, on the fixedness of the King's conscientious objections to the measure. This latter point was not within his sphere until he was Chancellor. From the time when he as Chancellor was first consulted on the subject, the Union was in contemplation also, and in every deliberation on the general case it was assumed, as the clearest result of all the preliminary inquiries, that the union of the kingdoms could never be effected unless the Irish Protestants were to be tranquillized by the inclusion in the Act itself of the complete union and incorporation of the two established churches. Before Mr. Pitt's first government was imperilled by the Catholic question, that incorporation had been solemnly completed. Loughborough always argued that Catholic Emancipation must by-and-bye destroy the Irish Establishment, and that after a Union of Church and State that Establishment could not be destroyed without the gravest ultimate peril to the Church in England itself. And it is perhaps even now too soon to assume that the Chancellor's view was erroneous.

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To conclude the Earl of Rosslyn did nothing to protract the consideration of Lord Loughborough. He spent much of his time at a villa which he rented near Windsor, in the sole view, according to both Lord Brougham and Lord Campbell, of keeping himself before the royal eye, and greatly delighting in occasional admissions to the Castle, which inferred, however, no abatement of the royal prejudice. At the age of seventy-two the forgotten Earl died-January 1, 1805—and the present biographer tells, as if he believed it, that on hearing he was gone King George, who was shaving himself, observed, Then he has not left a greater knave behind him in my dominions'-with the addition that when Thurlow heard of this gracious saying he muttered, I perceive that his Majesty is at present sane.' Lord Brougham says that his stock of law was extremely slender, and Lord Campbell seems to adopt this view pretty nearly. We suppose he was of Talleyrand's opinion, that no wise man will ever do for himself what he can get another to do for him.' It seems certain that both at the bar and on the bench he contrived to make uncommonly liberal use of the endowments and industry of obscurer persons. Both his recent critics fully admit his surpassing eminence both as an advocate and in parliamentary debate. Of the Chancellor our present author kindly observes that he was ́ at least free from faults and follies that have made others in that station odious or ridiculous.' He discredits the popular notion

of

of his infidelity, with some story of his having been converted in his last years by reading 'Burgh on the Divinity,' which book, he says, might have benefited a heretic, but would never have been prescribed for a disciple of Hume.' This story is in Mr. Wilberforce's very gossiping correspondence, where no one could expect to find a man of Loughborough's stamp considered as having much claim to the name of a Christian. In his private morals he was unimpeached: this irregular enough Beauty' affords Lord Campbell no pretext for an Ovidian chapter. We are only told that he was the decorous husband of two rich and barren wives.

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In his mode of living he was generous and magnificent; with him the grandeur of the Cancellarian pomp and circumstance seems to have ceased and determined. The regal dignity of the two coaches was too costly for Lord or Lady Eldon's calculations; and the judicial dinners of the old régime, after dwindling into breakfasts, are now, as we understand, only shadowed by bows. Lord Campbell seems to dwell regretfully on the stately hospitalities of Loughborough; and for the rest, though surrendering him to severe censure as a politician,' the biographer says, 'It will be found that he not only uniformly conformed to the manners and rules supposed to distinguish a gentleman, but that in his changes of party he was never guilty of private treachery, and never attempted to traduce those he had deserted.' There are two or three more drops of sweetness at the bottom of the flask: Although his occupations after his fall were not very dignified, perhaps he was as harmlessly employed in trying at Windsor to cultivate the personal favour of the old King, as if he had gone into hot opposition, or had coquetted with all parties. in the House of Lords in the vain hope of recovering his office.' We have perhaps dwelt too long on Loughborough-but that case is the one in which Lord Campbell has added most to the previous stock of biographical details, and also in which he has made his most valuable contribution to our national history. Neither of the remaining essays claims any historical importance; and the longer one of the two, by much the longest in the whole work, has really added almost nothing to our materials for estimating Lord Eldon.

The Life of Erskine has a great deal of novelty, and very interesting novelty, in its personal anecdotes; for the family appear to have been exceedingly liberal in the communication of letters; and Lord Campbell could draw largely on the floating anec. dotes of Whig and legal society-above all, on his own recollections of the rich and terse table-talk of his father-in-law, Lord Abinger. But he has only filled up the outline of Lord Brougham; and we could not hope to offer any abridgment of the story that would be acceptable after that masterly Sketch.

Lord

Lord Campbell has executed his task con amore-with a keener delight, probably, than any other article in the collection. The Scotchman who, though of noble birth, to which he himself always attached the highest importance, owed his success as purely to his own talents and energies as any poor parson's or attorney's son among his predecessors-the illustrious advocate, the greatest master of forensic eloquence that Britain ever produced '—was also without spot or blemish as a Whig. His career could not be studied without the liveliest curiosity, or commented on without overflowing enthusiasm. His failure both in Parliament and on the Woolsack was too notorious not to be admitted; and it was the same as to all the vanities, imprudences, and whimsical vagaries of his life and conversation. The character was transparent-and with whatever pain and wonder certain specks must be contemplated, it was as a whole a very loveable character. The task, for one who must have lived much in the same society with Lord Erskine's surviving family, could not be altogether an easy one: but the author has acquitted himself with skill. Perhaps he evades some of the most difficult steps-passi dolorosiby a rather too bold affectation of ignorance. Let this pass. We cannot bear to dwell with any harshness of thought on the frank, chivalrous, kindhearted Erskine.

The most valuable novelties respect the early struggles with poverty. Perhaps the highest-born man in the whole series of Chancellors, we question if any one among them had that mischief to contend with in more humiliating and tormenting extremity. His father, the Earl, never had more than 2007. a-year from his deeply encumbered estate. To support himself, his lady, and his eldest son in the most frugal decency, and educate the second son, Henry, for the Edinburgh bar, completely exhausted his means. Thomas from childhood delighted in his book: he would fain have been sent to college, and, like Henry, followed some learned profession in his native kingdom-but there was no money to pay even the very modest charges of a Scotch university. Most tenderly feeling for his parents' difficulties, he suggested the army-but they had no interest, and could not buy a pair of colours; therefore, though with a particular dislike to the sea, he became a midshipman-and by and bye his delightful temperament reconciled itself to every circumstance of that existence in those rough days-except only the idleness in which most of it was wasted. He resumed his reading-spent every spare sixpence at the bookstalls of seaports-by degrees made himself a fair adept in English Belles Lettres. When the old Earl at last died in the richest odour of Lady-Huntingdonism, he received a small sum as his patrimony, and he spent every shilling of it in the purchase of an ensigncy-for he had still been hankering after that, as he thought, less irksome and confined course of service.

But

But he was as poor as an ensign could be-and there was a very slight chance of promotion for him. He might have crept up by slow steps to command a battalion when his hair was grey. Luckily he had the gay audacity to fall in love with and espouse instantly a garrison-town beauty, who had not a farthing, but well deserved to be the heroine of a romance, with a genius for its hero. Then indeed his poverty became a serious matter. His fond young wife brought him child after child in the barrackroom. He literally could hardly feed and clothe them—his own red coat was the barest in the regiment. But he had still kept to his studies-he was now a very accomplished man. One day the assizes were held in a neighbouring town; and he had a curiosity to witness the scene, especially because Mansfield presided. His great countryman invited him to dinner. The honourable subaltern delighted the Chief Justice. In the course of the evening he said it had struck him that he could make as fair a speech as any of that day's barristers-examine a witness, too, as adroitly. Lord Mansfield, struck with his buoyant spirit, his neat and fluent language, and the easy abundance of his humorous illustrations, encouraged him. This was the turning point. Hence-after a few earnest, laborious years-the Advocate whom no jury could resist—he, whom, if he had never been more than an advocate, his biographer might have, with more justice than we can now concede to him, styled Erskine the Great.'

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One question naturally starts up-how did the Honourable Thomas contrive to find means for his however careful family expenditure during the years between his dropping of the epaulette and his participation in the profits of the bar? To this question we find no answer in Lord Campbell's book. We venture to say there never was any doubt that the needful assistance was derived from Henry Erskine, his immediately elder brother, who was rising by that time into considerable employment at the Edinburgh bar. This gentleman appeared in the House of Commons somewhat late in life as Lord Advocate, and did not in that sphere quite sustain the expectations drawn by the English public from his eminent northern success. But his failure in Parliament was, after all, by no means so marked as that of his younger brother—and, coming after his habitudes were fixed for another scene, it in nowise shook the opinion of adequate observers. He appears to have had very much of the tact in conducting a case which so distinguished Thomas, and, in fact, to have rivalled him as a barrister, excepting only that he never did. reach the very highest flight of his declamation. It might be said of Erskine the Great' that he never said or did a foolish thing for a client-very rarely a wise one in his own private capacity. The Lord Advocate seems to have escaped almost entirely the eccentricity of the blood.

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