self complete master of that book. At present lawyers are made good cheap, by learning law from Blackstone and less elegant compilers; depend upon it men so bred will never be lawyers, (though they may be barristers,) whatever they call themselves. I read Coke on Littleton through when I was the other day out of office, and when I was a student I abridged it. To a Chancery man, the knowledge to be obtained from it is peculiarly useful in matter of titles. If you promise me to read this, and tell me when you have begun upon it, I shall venture to hope that, at my recommendation, you will attack about half-a-dozen other very crabbed books, which our Westminster Hall lawyers never look at. Westminster Hall has its loungers as well as Bond-street. Before you allow yourself to think that you have learned equity pleading with your Chancery pleader, remember to make yourself a good conveyancer, in theory and practice. I venture to assure you, without qualification upon the positiveness with which I so assure you, that if you are such, you will feel yourself in the Court of Chancery vastly above your fellows. This I know, from my own personal experience, that being, by the accidents of life, thrown into a conveyancer's office, I have never known, in a long life in Chancery, how sufficiently to value the advantages that circumstance has given me. When you are learning to draw equity pleadings, you may be learning this also in your father's office. But you must labour at it till you can speak and dictate conveyances, of every species; and this can only be learned by going through the drudgery of copying. I wrote some folio books of conveyances, and I strongly advise you to do the same. The conveyancing precedents have been formed and modelled so as to make all their provisions square with the rules of law, as modified by decisions in equity; and, unless I deceive myself, after you have enabled yourself to dictate the different species of conveyances, and by that time have thought that it was a mere work of dull labour, with nothing of theory or science to recommend it to serious attention, you will find that from and after that moment you will read no Chancery case, nor hear any Chancery decision, which will not appear to illustrate and open the meaning of all the phraseology, dull and technical as it may seem, of the conveyancer's language."-Vol. ii. p. 51.

As the result of his industrious application of powers which naturally prepared him for eminence in his profession, Lord Eldon-to quote the language of a rival successor—

"Became one of the most thoroughly learned lawyers who ever appeared in Westminster Hall, if not the most learned; for, when it is recollected that the science has been more than doubled in bulk, and in variety of subjects has increased fourfold, since the time of Lord Coke, it is hardly possible to question his superiority to that great light of English jurisprudence, the only man in our legal history with whom this comparison can be instituted. A singular instance of his universality, and of the masterly readiness with which his extensive learning could be brought to bear upon any point, was once presented in the argument upon a writ of error in the House of Lords. The case had run the gauntlet of the courts, and the most skilful pleaders, as well as the most experienced judges, had all dealt with it in succession; when he, who had not for many years had the possibility of considering any such matters, and had never at any time been a special pleader, at once hit upon a point in pleading which appeared to have escaped the Holroyds, the Richardsons, the Bayleys, the Abbotts, the Littledales; and on that point the cause was decided."Brougham's Sketches, vol. ii. p. 65.

It is, however, a humiliating fact, that the professional success of this learned lord was not the pure result of the learning which he had

amassed, apart from other qualifications of inferior character. Indeed, all the law he had collected might have proved but so much "learned lumber in his head," had he not had that tact which enabled him at once to improve the opportunity of advancement, to compete with the acuteness and humour of his professional opponents, and to impart to the non-professional public some inkling of his superior learning and skill. Our meaning admits of easy illustration, by the story of the Clitheroe election case, which is thus related by Lord Eldon himself:

:

"One morning, about six o'clock, Mr. Curzon and four or five gentlemen came to my door and awoke me; and when I inquired what they wanted, they stated that the Clitheroe election case was to come on that morning at ten o'clock, before a committee of the House of Commons, that Mr. Cooper had written to say he was detained at Oxford by illness, and could not arrive to lead the cause, and that Mr. Hardinge, the next counsel, refused to do so because he was not prepared. Well, gentlemen,' said I, what do you expect me to do, that you are here?' They answered, they did not know what to expect or to do, for the cause must come on at ten o'clock, and they were totally unprepared, and had been recommended to me as a young and promising counsel.' I answered, I will tell you what I can do: I can undertake to make a dry statement of facts, if that will content you, gentlemen, but more I cannot do, for I have no time to make myself acquainted with the law.' They said that must do. So I begged they would go down stairs, and let me get up as fast as I could. Well, I did state the facts, and the cause went on for fifteen days. It found me poor enough, but I began to be rich before it was done: they left me fifty guineas at the beginning; then there were ten guineas every day, and five guineas every evening for a consultation-more money than I could count. But better still, the length of the cause gave me time to make myself thoroughly acquainted with the law.' The remainder of the story is more circumstantially related by Mr. Farrer, from Lord Eldon's own narrative to him, communicated in the course of the conversation before referred to.

"On the morning on which the counsel for the petitioner was to reply, Hardinge came into the committee-room, meaning to reply. I saw the members of the committee put their heads together, and then one of them said, 'Mr. Hardinge, Mr. Scott opened this case, and has attended it throughout, and the committee think that, if he likes to reply, he ought to do so. Mr. Scott, would you like to reply?' I answered, that I would do my best.' I began my speech with a very bad joke. You must know that the leading counsel on the other side, Douglas, afterwards Lord Glenbervie, had made one of the longest speeches ever known before a committee, and had argued that the borough of Clitheroe was not a borough by prescription, for it had its origin within the memory of man. I began by saying, 'I will prove to the committee by the best evidence that the borough of Clitheroe is a borough by prescription; that it had its origin before the memory of man. My learned friend will admit the commencement of this borough was before the commencement of his speech; but the commencement of his speech is beyond the memory of man-therefore the borough of Clitheroe must have commenced before the memory of man.' We were beaten in the committee by one vote. After this speech, Mansfield, afterwards Sir James Mansfield, came up to me in Westminster Hall, and said he heard that I was going to leave London, but strongly advised me to remain in London. I told him that I could not; that I had taken a house in Newcastle; that I had an increasing family; in short, that I was compelled to quit London. Afterwards

Wilson came to me, and pressed me in the same manner to remain in London; adding, what was very kind, that he would ensure me £400 the next year.' I gave him the same answer as I had given Mansfield. However, I did remain in London; and lived to make Mansfield chief justice of the Common Pleas, and Wilson a puisne judge. 'I can't understand,' said Mr. Farrer to Lord Eldon, 'why Hardinge refused to open the petition: do you know?' 'Because he had not read his brief, I suppose,' was the reply."

To show that Lord Eldon's rapid success was due not exclusively to his legal lore, we adduce the following anecdote :

"The following story is current at the bar, of Mr. Scott's first success on the circuit, in a civil action. The plaintiff was a Mrs. Fermor, who sought damages against the defendant, an elderly maiden lady, named Sanstern, for an assault committed at a whist-table. Mr. Scott was junior counsel for the plaintiff; and when the cause was called on, his leader was absent in the Crown court, conducting a government prosecution. Mr. Scott requested that his cause might be postponed till his leader should be at liberty; but the judge refusing, there was no help, and Mr. Scott addressed the jury for Mrs. Fermor, and called his witnesses. It was proved that at the whisttable some angry words arose between the ladies, which, at length, kindled to such heat, that Miss Sanstern was impelled to throw her cards at the head of Mrs. Fermor, who (probably in dodging to avoid these missiles) fell, or slipped from her chair to the ground. Upon this evidence the defendant's counsel objected that the case had not been proved as alleged; for that the declaration stated the defendant to have committed the assault with her hand, whereas the evidence proved it to have been committed by the cards. Mr. Scott, however, insisted that the facts were substantially proved, according to the averment in the declaration, of an assault committed with the hand; for that in the common parlance of the card-table, the hand means the hand of cards; and thus that Miss Sanstern, having thrown her cards in Mrs. Fermor's face, had clearly assaulted Mrs. Fermor with her hand. The court laughed; the jury, much diverted, found the plaintiff's allegations sufficiently proved; and the young counsel had the frolic and the fame of a verdict in his favour." -Vol. i. p. 124.

And this:

"I was about to join the Northern circuit in 1815, when the late Mr. Bell took me to one of Lord Eldon's levees. On my first introduction, Lord Eldon accosted me thus: So you are going to join my old circuit; you will, perhaps, be surprised to hear that I was first brought into notice on that circuit by breaking the Ten Commandments!' I should have supposed him to mean that he had read his briefs on Sunday; but there was that good-humoured gleam of the eye, which every one who recollects him will understand, and which puzzled me. He continued, 'I'll tell you how it was. I was counsel in a cause, the fate of which depended on our being able to make out who was the founder of an ancient chapel in the neighbourhood. I went to view it. There was nothing to be observed which gave any indication of its date or history; however, I observed that the Ten Commandments were written on some old plaster, which, from its position, I conjectured might cover an arch. Acting on this, I bribed the clerk with five shillings, to allow me to chip away a part of the plaster; and, after two or three attempts, I found the key-stone of an arch, on which were engraved the arms of an ancestor of one of the parties. This evidence decided the cause; and I ever afterwards had reason to remember, with some satisfaction, my having, on that occasion, broken the Commandments.'"-Vol. i. p. 126.

We must add the two following instances, which are really too good to be omitted :

"Once,' said he, I had a very handsome offer made to me. I was pleading for the rights of the inhabitants of the Isle of Man. Now I had been reading in Coke, and I found there that the people of the Isle of Man were no beggars ;* so in my speech I said, 'The people of the Isle of Man are no beggars; I therefore do not beg their rights, I demand them!' This so pleased an old smuggler, who was present, that, when the trial was over, he called me aside, and said, 'Young gentleman, I will tell you what; you shall have my daughter, if you will marry her, and one hundred thousand pounds for her fortune!' That was a very handsome offer; but I told him, that I happened to have a wife, who had nothing for her fortune, therefore I must stick to her.'

"In the December of this year, 1784, Dr. Johnson died. He was a good man,' said Lord Eldon to Mrs. Forster; he sent me a message, on his death-bed, to request that I would make a point of attending public worship every Sunday, and that the place should be the Church of England.'”—Vol. i. p. 168.

"Bearcroft came down to the assizes at Carlisle with a special retainer of three hundred guineas, in a salmon fishery cause. I led the cause on the other side; and, at our consultation on the preceding evening, we agreed never to ask a witness a question except in the language and dialect of Cumberland, which Bearcroft could not understand. Accordingly, when I began to cross-examine his first witness, who had said a great deal about the salmon, good and bad, which the fishery had produced in different seasons, I asked whether they were obliged to make 'ould souldiers' of any of them. These words, 'ould soldiers,' to be made out of salmon, puzzled Bearcroft, and he applied to me to give him an explanation of them. I told him that a counsel from London town, who had, as he had told us over-night, amused and instructed himself by reading Horne Tooke's ''ETEα Tтepóevra,' could not surely be at a loss for the meaning of language; and that, at any rate, it was not my business to assist, in the leading of a cause, my adversary, whose abilities and knowledge, &c., &c. He then applied to the judge for an explanation, who told him he could give him none, because he could not conceive what the words meant. After a squabble between the judge and myself, I explained; but throughout the whole cause there was hardly a question asked by us which did not produce a similar scene. The jury were astonished that neither judge nor Bearcroft had wisdom to understand what they all so well understood; and they inferred, from Bearcroft's extreme ignorance of what they all so well knew, that he had a rotten cause. We got a verdict, and Bearcroft swore that no fee should ever tempt him to come among such a set of barbarians as the Cumberland men again. N.B. An 'ould soldier' is made by hanging up in a chimney a salmon caught out of due season, when the fish is white, instead of red; and it acquires in the chimney a colour like a soldier's old red coat half worn out."-Vol. i. p. 176.

* Lord Coke's words are, "The inhabitants of this isle are religious, industrious, and true people, without begging or stealing."-4th Inst., ch. 69, concluding paragraph.

THE PERIODICAL PRESS.

TIME was when the members of the magazine family were but few, and their opinions and proceedings exerted but a feeble influence on the popular mind in England. They were, it is true, regarded with affection and awe by literary men, young authors, and those aspirants after letters, who love to try their pens without revealing their names. The first-born of their literary progeny were often protected and sheltered by these grave and erudite personages, and the fate of many an aspirant to the honours of Parnassus was determined by their decisions. Boswell informs us, that the mighty mind of Johnson was not free from the influence of the Gentleman's Magazine, so that its coarse, tasteless vignette of the ancient gate of St. John's Close in Clerkenwell, (the place where that work was first printed) was looked upon, by him, with a mysterious interest, and that when he first visited London, and saw the spot where "Mr. Urban" commenced his work, he "beheld it with reverence!"

Yes, those were the high and palmy days of Editors. The mysterious "WE" spoke like oracles, and their annunciations were listened to almost with religious deference. Literary censors then enjoyed a license most despotic, and "critics dared not criticise" the decrees of lettered infallibility.

Those days are gone, with the monopoly of the periodical press. Magazines are not now told by tens, but by scores and hundreds, weekly, monthly, and quarterly, of every colour, and of every sect in philosophy and letters, in politics and religion.

Such earnestness has taken hold of men of all parties and opinions, that they seek to give the public the full benefit of their respective sentiments in separate periodicals; and thus there issue from the press, at stated seasons, between two and three hundred publications of this now prolific and widely-spread family. It is impracticable and hopeless to be familiar with them all, unless indeed all the waking hours of each successive month be exclusively devoted to the perusal of their multifarious pages.

That portion of periodical publications devoted to theology, and questions of ecclesiastical polity and practice, is alone so extensive, as to forbid the hope that those who have only ordinary means and leisure should hear of their existence, much less become acquainted with their contents. Still, the intelligent observer of the "signs of the times," would desire to know something of the principles and proceedings of other bodies of Christians besides his own, as set forth in their respective organs, and of the character and contents of other periodicals, published by his own denomination, besides that for which he may happen to subscribe.