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of form. His genius is comprehensive and penetrating; and, when he judges it necessary, he pours forth sounds the most seductive, equally calculated to persuade and to convince. Among his rare qualifications may be added the external graces of his person, the piercing eye, the fine-toned voice, and harmonious elocution, and that happy arrangement which possesses all the accuracy and eloquence of the most laboured compositions."

Lord Monboddo, after pointing out the peculiar characteristics of the eloquence of Demosthenes, ob

serves:

By Lord

"Upon this, so perfect model of eloquence, Lord Mansfield formed a chaste and correct style of speaking, suitable to business, and particularly the business of a judge, Monboddo. to whose office it belongs not only to determine controversies betwixt man and man, but to satisfy the parties that they have got justice, and thereby give ease and contentment to their minds; which I hold to be one of the great uses of law. In this Lord Mansfield, as it is well known, was so successful, that even the losing party commonly acknowledged the justice of his decrees." Then the critic thus apostrophises the object of his praise: "Having spent so many years of your life—more, I believe, than any other man of this age-in the administration of justice, with so much applause and public satisfaction, I hope, my Lord, you will bear with patience and resignation the infirmities of old age; enjoying the pleasure of reflecting that you have employed so long a life so profitably in the service of your country. With such reflections, and a mind so entire as yours still is, you may be said to live over again your worthy life, according to the old saying:

'hoc est

Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.'"

Bishop Hurd, after a general panegyric on Lord Mansfield for "his shining talents, displayed in every department of the state, as well as in the supreme court of justice, his peculiar province, which would transmit his name to posterity with distinguished honour in the public records of the nation," thus proceeds:

"Of his conduct in the House of Lords I can speak with the more confidence because I speak from my own observation.

By Bishop
Hurd.

He was no forward or frequent speaker, but reserved himself, as was fit, for occasions worthy of him. In debate he was eloquent as well as wise; or, rather, he became eloquent by his wisdom. His countenance and tone of voice imprinted the ideas of penetration, probity, and candour; but what secured your attention and assent to all he said was his constant good sense, flowing in apt terms and in the clearest method. He affected no sallies of the imagination, or bursts of passion; much less would he condescend to personal abuse, or to petulant altercation. All was clear candid reason, letting itself so easily into the minds of his hearers as to carry information and conviction with it."

I shall conclude these extracts from English writers with the testimony of Bishop Newton, who had lived with him three quarters of a century:—

By Bishop
Newton.

"Lord Mansfield's is a character above all praise; the oracle of law, the standard of eloquence, and pattern of all virtue, both in public and private life. It was happy for the nation, as well as for himself, that at his age there appeared not the least symptom of decay in his bodily or in his mental faculties; but he had all the quickness and vivacity of youth, tempered with all the knowledge and experience of old age. He had almost an immediate intuition into the merits of every cause or question which came before him; and, comprehending it clearly himself, could readily explain it to others: persuasion flowed from his lips, conviction was wrought in all unprejudiced minds when he concluded, and, for many years, the House of Lords paid greater attention to his authority than to that of any man living.”

Beyond the Atlantic the reputation of Mansfield is as high as in his own country, and his decisions are regarded of as great authority in the courts at New York and Washington as in Westminster Hall. The following tribute to his memory is from Professor Story, one of the greatest jurists of modern times :

"England and America and the civilised world lie under the deepest obligations to him. Wherever commerce shall extend its social influences; wherever justice shall be administered by enlightened and liberal rules; wherever contracts shall be expounded upon the eternal principles of right and wrong; wherever moral

delicacy and judicial refinement shall be infused into the municipal code, at once to persuade men to be honest, and to keep them so; wherever the intercourse of mankind shall aim at something more elevated than that grovelling spirit of barter in which meanness and avarice and fraud strive for the mastery over ignorance, credulity, and folly ;-the name of Lord Mansfield will be held in reverence by the good and the wise, by the honest merchant, the enlightened lawyer, the just statesman, and the conscientious judge. The maxims of maritime jurisprudence, which he engrafted into the stock of the common law, are not the exclusive property of a single age or nation, but the common property of all times and all countries. They are built upon the most comprehensive principles and the most enlightened experience of mankind. He designed them to be of universal application, considering, as he himself has declared, the maritime law to be not the law of a particular country but the general law of nations. And such under his administration it became, as his prophetic spirit, in citing a passage from the most eloquent and polished orator of antiquity, seems gently to insinuate: 'Non erit alia lex Romæ alia Athenis; alia nunc, alia posthac; sed, et apud omnes gentes et omni tempore, una eademque lex obtinebit.' He was ambitious of this noble fame, and studied deeply and diligently and honestly to acquire it. He surveyed the commercial law of the Continent, drawing from thence what was most just, useful, and rational; and left to the world, as the fruit of his researches, a collection of general principles, unexampled in extent and unequalled in excellence. The proudest monument of his fame is in the volumes of Burrow and Cowper and Douglas, which we may fondly hope will endure as long as the language in which they are written shall continue to instruct mankind. His judgments should not be merely referred to and read on the spur of particular occasions, but should be studied as models of juridical reasoning and eloquence."*

of his

I have often in my youth conversed with men who had practised under Lord Mansfield, and who Imitations gave imitations of him. Erskine's were par- manner of ticularly fine, and, avoiding everything of speaking. caricature and exaggeration, came up to the highest notion which could be formed of dignity, suavity, and impressiveness.† But the generation who witnessed

* Story's Miscellaneous Works, 411, 412.

+ Erskine's Mansfield was said to be as good as the late Lord Holland's Thur

low; to the excellence of which I can testify, having once seen and heard the original,

Likenesses of him.

the tones and the manner of Lord Mansfield is gone, and that which listened to his imitators is fast passing away. With his features and personal appearance all must be familiar, for there were innumerable portraits of him, from the time when he was habited as a King's Scholar at Westminster, and his countenance was illumined by the purple light of youth, till he was changed "into the lean and slippered pantaloon."* Fortunately, before reaching the seventh age of man, his strange eventful history was brought to a close. The two best representations of him are supposed to be a full-length, in judicial robes, by Reynolds, in the Guildhall of the city of London,—the scene of his greatest glory; and another, by Martin, in the hall of Christ Church College, Oxford, where he appears in an Earl's robes, sitting at a table, his right hand resting on a volume of Cicero, and a bust of Homer placed before him. There is likewise an admirable marble statue of him, by Nollekens, to be seen in Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Engravings and casts from these were formerly to be found almost in every cottage in Great Britain. But they will soon moulder into dust. I have striven in this memoir to enable his admirers to follow the counsel given by Tacitus in concluding the life of Agricola: "ut omnia facta dictaque ejus secum revolvant, famamque ac figuram animi magis quam corporis complectantur." I wish I could venture to add, “Quicquid ex eo amavimus, quicquid mirati sumus, manet mansurumque est in animis hominum, in æternitate temporum, famâ rerum."+

Aspiration of the

Author.

*The first extant is by Vanloo; and the last by Copley, a few weeks before his death.

That mankind should continue to contemplate all that he said and did, and that, cultivating his fame, they should cherish the qualities of his mind rather

than the lineaments of his person.

All that was amiable in him, all that was admirable, remains, and will for ever remain; being narrated in the annals of his country, and embalmed in the remembrance of a grateful posterity.

CHAPTER XLI.

LIFE OF LORD KENYON, FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HE WAS APPOINTED CHIEF JUSTICE OF CHESTER.

Composition

unpleasant

biographer.

I BEGIN this memoir at a time when I have the near prospect of being myself a CHIEF JUSTICE, and when I may calculate upon being subjected in my turn to the criticism of some future biographer.* On every account I wish to speak of Lord Chief of this Justice Kenyon in a spirit of moderation and memoir an indulgence. But I am afraid that my esti- task for the mate of his character and judicial qualifications may call forth against me a charge of prejudice and detraction. Although till raised to the bench he was considered only "leguleius quidam, cautus et acutus," he was afterwards celebrated by dependents and flatterers as a GREAT MAGISTRATE, to be more honoured than the all-accomplished MANSFIELD. And from the stout resistance which then continued to be offered in Westminster Hall to all attempts to relieve the administration of justice from wretched technicalities, Lord Chief Justice Kenyon was long hailed as the Restorer of the rigid doctrines to be deduced from the YEARBooks.

He was indeed a man of wonderful quickness of perception, of considerable intellectual nimbleness, of much energy of purpose, and of unwearied industry; le became very familiarly acquainted with the muni

*12 October, 1849.-It had then been intimated to me by the Prime Minister that upon the resignation of Lord Den

man, which, from his severe attack of paralysis, was daily expected, I should be appointed his successor.

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