than the heartfelt sincerity which it throughout displayed in topic, in diction, in tone, in look, in gesture. His capacity was of the highest order. An extraordinary reach of thought; great powers of attention and close reasoning; a memory quick and retentive; a fancy eminently brilliant, but kept in perfect discipline by his judgment and his taste, which was nice, cultivated, and severe, without any of the squeamishness so fatal to vigor; these were the qualities which, under the guidance of the most persevering industry, and with the stimulus of a lofty ambition, rendered him unquestionably the first advocate, and the most profound lawyer, of the age he flourished in."

The line we have italicised is the only one for which we were not prepared-there is hardly a line of sarcasm in these pages. His standing at the bar is very evident from the familiar terms on which he appears to have been with such men as Eldon and Ellenborough, greatly above him in rank, and constantly opposed to him on all questions of policy.*

Romilly's devotion to business was undoubtedly intense. Wilberforce, writing to Stephens in 1822, (vol. v., p. 135,) says "I am strongly impressed by the recollection of your endeavors to prevail on the lawyers to give up Sunday consultations, in which poor Romilly would not concur. If he had suffered his mind to enjoy such occasional remissions, it is highly probable the strings would never have snapped as they did from over-tension." And yet Wilberforce also says, p. 341-" One of the most remarkable things about Romilly was, that though he had an immense quantity of business, he always seemed an idle man. If you had not known who and what he was, you would have said, 'He is a remarkably gentlemanlike, pleasant man, I suppose, poor fellow, he has no business;' for he would stand at the bar of the house, and chat with you, and talk over the last novel, with which he was as well acquainted as if he had nothing else to think about."

These are all the meager facts we can put together of this pre-eminently brilliant legal career-this is the language in which he speaks of his fortune and his wishes in 1817:

A little work entitled, "Criticisms on the Bar," by Amicus Curiæ, (1819,) a republication of several essays, originally appearing in the Examiner, contains a labored description of Sir Samuel: "With regard to personal aggrandizement he had left nothing to wish-title and office would have diminished instead of adding to his reputation; to be chancellor would have been less than to be ROMILLY.

"I have given a closer attendance in the house of commons, and have taken a greater part in the debates during this session, than I have done in any preceding one. The exertions I have made, to my own very great personal inconvenience, and to the great interruption of my professional occupations, and consequently with no small pecuniary sacrifices, will, I make no doubt, be ascribed by many persons, to an eager desire to turn out the present administration, and to obtain for myself the office of lord chancellor, to which, it may naturally enough be supposed, that I should, in such an event, aspire. How little do those who ascribe my conduct to such motives know me! With the utmost sincerity, I can declare that I have no such ambition. I am deeply impressed with the conviction that that high station would add nothing to my happiness, or even to my reputation. Already I have attained the very summit of my wishes. The happiness of my present condition cannot be increased it may be essentially impaired. I am at the present moment completely independent both of the favors and of the frowns of government. The large income which I enjoy, and which is equal to all my wishes, has been entirely produced by my own industry and exertion; for no portion of it am I indebted to the crown; of no particle of it is it in the power of the crown to deprive me. The labors of my profession, great as they are, yet leave me some leisure both for domestic and even for literary enjoyments. In those enjoyments-in the retirement of my studyin the bosom of my family-in the affection of my relations- in the kindness of my friends-in the good will of my fellow citizens —in the uncourted popularity which I know that I enjoy, I find all the good that human life can supply; and I am not, whatever others may think of me, so blinded by a preposterous ambition as to change, or even to risk,

'These sacred and homefelt delights

This sober certainty of waking bliss,'

for the pomp, and parade, and splendid restraints of office; for the homage and applause of devoted but interested dependants; for that admiration which the splendor of a high station, by whomsoever possessed, is always certain to command; and for a much larger, but precarious income, which must bring with it the necessity of a much larger expense. The highest office and the greatest dignity that the crown has to bestow might make me miserable: it is impossible that it could render me happier than I already am. One great source of misery to me in such a situation, the public, and even my most intimate friends, little suspect; it is the consciousness that I am not qualified to discharge properly its most important duties. I have neither that knowledge in my profession, nor those gifts of nature, which such duties demand. Destitute of all talents, I know that I am not. The faculties which I do possess, I believe

I fully and justly appreciate; but in those which are most essential to a judge-in strength of memory, and in the power of fixing the attention on one single object, and abstracting the mind from all other considerations, I know myself to be most lamentably and irremediably deficient. Often, in earlier life, when I was looking up to that eminent station, as that to which I might one day be raised, and when I was planning, and enjoying, by anticipation, essential reforms to be effected, and beneficial laws to be passed, I have been haunted by a deep sense of my disqualifications; and, contrasting these with the erroneous opinions which others entertained of me, I have thought how soon, if I were seated on the bench, I should undeceive my too partial friends and a mistaken public; and with what truth there might be said of me, something of the same kind as was observed of Galba-'Omnium consensu capax Imperii, nisi imperasset."— Vol. iii., p. 301.

While on this matter of law, we cannot help saying a word on Romilly's vacations:

"Hence sage, mysterious law,

That sittest with rugged brow and crabbed look
O'er thy black lettered book,

And the night-watching student killest with care
Away with thy dull train.

Slow-paced advice, surmise, and squint-eyed doubt,
Dwell with the noisy rout

Of busy men, 'mid cities and thronged halls,
Where clamor ceaseless brawls,

And enmity and strife thy state sustain;

But on me thy blessing pour

Sweet vacation."*

Sweet vacation, indeed it is, for an English barrister count up the holydays. At Christmas, a week or ten days; at Easter, a week; Whitsun, (June,) three days; and last, not least, "the long," from the twentieth of August to the first of November-bona fide holydays-school-boy holydays, spent here, there, any where—at the most delightful seats, in the most delightful country on the face of creation. The only one that unites all the luxuries of the rus et urbs together. Does it not make an American semi-attorney, semicounsellor, solicitor, advocate, and proctor, sigh for a more methodical arrangement of his Jack-of-all-trade employment. It is indeed true economy. It winds up the system for the rest

John Hall Stevenson.

of the year. It enables the lawyer, for awhile, at least, to recruit that wear and tear which sooner or later breaks him up. Our system of dragging on the same gait year after year, without at the best, more than a week or ten days at a time of recreation and renovation, is ruinous to the health and vigor of both body and mind.

Thus much for Romilly's career as a lawyer; the notice of it is necessarily brief and imperfect. All the means of achieving legal greatness are like the foundations which upraise the ponderous bridge-lost to sight beneath the tide; the laborious brief- the careful collation-the painful annotation-the hours of thought-the anxious consultation-all these are visible only in their results; the process of the work-shop, which, after toil, protracted through the best years of life, turns out the finished lawyer, are not to be followed, are not to be seen. "No admittance," is written

over the officina jurisconsulti.

But another, and the most important branch of Romilly's labors is before the world, and can be traced from day to day; it is that of legal reform.

The profession of the law aussi ancien que la magistrature aussi noble que la vertu, aussi necessaire que la justice, shall surely never be spoken of otherwise than with respect; but the mere lawyer, who only seeks to know the rule and to apply it, no matter what his learning or ability, whether a Coke or a Bridoison, an Eldon or a Chicaneau, is a very different person from him who is equally studious to know what the science is, but adds the farther ambition, to make it what it ought to be who has an object beyond his own aggrandizement-beyond the mere triumph of success- to make the rule of human life sure, plain, and just.

This was Romilly's great end and aim; no better lawyer, in the strictest technical sense of the wordno one more versed in that dark and abstruse study which has exercised the greatest minds of every age; but he had still an object beyond; with him, the law, written and unwritten, was only a means; the end, was the purifying and amendment of the law. To make the value of his services, both as a civil and criminal reformer, understood, it is absolutely necessary to recur, even at the risk of tedium, to the then state of English jurisprudence.

One chapter of the philosophy of mind yet remains to be

written the metaphysics of the law, and particularly of the English law.

There is no more curious vibration of the mental pendulum, than that which is told in the whole history of the common law.

The bare fact, that after a system so highly finished, so elaborate, and yet so simple, and, as far as regards the social rights and duties, so perfect, as the civil law, had existed"the most perfect structure that ever was formed of rules for classifying rights and marshalling the remedies for wrongs"*-that any portion of the human race should have reverted to, or originated any thing so complicated, so abstruse, so barbarous, as the old English law, statute and common-that any set of men should have been found with their Hunnish "nolumus leges Anglia mutare," to reject the entire wisdom and experience of a thousand years, is of itself, a proof, without any astronomical assistance, that other planets can retrograde as well as Venus-that it is only by slow and painful steps, and after, frequent relapses, that any thing of permanent wisdom and virtue is attained. Who knows that our descendants, ten centuries hence, shall not be struggling under the load of some incubus-half common and half statute-half scripta and half non scripta, and all nondescript-like that from which the Enceladus England, with many a painful throe, is just now liberating itself.

We begin with Sir Samuel Romilly's efforts to reform the civil law. He did not, either in this, or in the penal code, attempt any general and sweeping reform; he was a man practised in the law, and he went to work like a practical man; he took it up piecemeal, leaving it to his friend Bentham to form a general system, to lay down those fundamental and universal rules which it will take centuries, perhaps, to reduce to practice. In June, 1806, almost immediately after going into parliament, he brought in a bill to amend the bankrupt law, to prevent the evils which arose from the honest transactions of a bankrupt being set aside by secret prior acts of bankruptcy. The remedy he adopted, was to declare, that all contracts, dealings, etc., of the bankrupt should be valid, notwithstanding prior acts of bankruptcy, if the parties dealing with the bankrupt had not notice of such acts. He says:

* Brougham on Lord Mansfield.