the depredations of the Alabama, though on grounds different from those of the other arbitrators, but considered that in the case of the Florida want of due diligence was not sufficiently proved, and that in the case of the Shenandoah no blame attached to the British government at all. The English translation of the Act of Decision was prepared by him, with Mr. C. F. Adams, and after the decision of the majority had been read and signed, he presented his reason for dissenting. In a letter dated 4 Oct. 1872 to Lord Granville, expressing his gratitude for the queen's acknowledgment of his services, he said : 'When I undertook the office of arbitrator I believed that the only question would be whether her majesty's government had by any oversight or omission failed to fulfil the obligation admitted by the treaty of Washington to have been binding on it. When I found that, with a view to a favourable decision on this question, charges involving the honour and good faith of the queen's government and the country were put forward in the pleadings of the United States, and saw plainly that these charges were unfounded and unjust, I thought it my duty not to pass them over in silence.' In 1877 and 1878 he was chairman of the Cambridge University Commission, and he received at various times the degrees of D.C.L. and LL.D. In the summer of 1878, at the Exeter assizes, his health began to fail, and signs appeared of fatty degeneration of the heart. He took relaxation by means of a voyage in his yacht, the Zouave, an amusement of which he was very fond, and, having spent the autumn according to his custom at Spa, returned to his duty. In the summer of 1880 he went the south-eastern circuit, and again visited Spa in the autumn. On 18 and 19 Nov. he sat to try special jury causes, on the 20th presided with all his usual brilliancy in the court of crown cases reserved, walked home to his house, 40 Hertford Street, Mayfair, dined, was seized with an attack of angina pectoris near midnight, and died in fifteen minutes, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He was buried in his family vault at Kensal Green, attended by a great number of the bench and the bar, all the courts adjourning for the day. At the time of his death he had material in hand, very carefully prepared, for a work on the authorship of the 'Letters of Junius,' which was to have been published in the 'Academy,' and was writing a series of articles on the 'History of the Chase' in the 'Nineteenth Century.' He was at work upon these so late as the afternoon of the day on which he died. In private life he was very fond of society, was a good musician, an admirable host and raconteur, and an equally good listener. He was an intimate friend of Dickens, and a constant attendant at his readings in London. To him Dickens, it is said, used to direct all the best points in each piece (Dolby, Dickens as I knew him, p. 28). He was not a great judge like Parke or St. Leonard's, or an authority on mercantile usage like Willes; he had not a retentive legal memory, and got up his law very often for the occasion ; but his grasp of facts made him an admirable judge at nisi prius, and although he sat for twenty-four years on the bench he never lost interest in the cases before him. His best judgments are those in the Franconia case and in the newspaper libel case Campbell v. Spottiswoode, and the law of libel as now laid down is largely bis creation. He was a small man, but carried himself so well that he never looked small. Though always kind and courteous he was never garrulous or familiar in court, but stood up for the dignity of his office and took a wide view of the law of contempt of court. He entertained a particular prejudice against the Judicature Act, and restricted its operation as much as possible. The Cockburn baronetcy became extinct on his death.
[Law Magazine, 1851, p. 193, and 4th series, vi. 191 ; Solicitors' Journal, 27 Nov. 1880; Times, 22 Nov. 1880; Law Times, lxx. 68-88; Academy, 27 Nov. 1880, p. 383; Ballantine's Experiences of a Barrister, ii. 30, 113; Ashley's Life of Palmerston, i. 224; Greville Memoirs, 2nd series, ii. 251, iii. 346.]
COCKBURN, ALICIA or ALISON (1712?–1794), authoress of the exquisite Scottish lyric, 'I've seen the smiling of fortune beguiling' (printed in the 'Lark,' Edinburgh, 1765), one of the sets of the 'Flowers of the Forest,' was a daughter of Robert Rutherford of Fairnalee, Selkirkshire, and was born about 1710 or 1712. She was distantly related to the mother of Sir Walter Scott, with whom she lived on terms of intimate friendship. In her youth she is said to have been very beautiful, and in a book by Mr. Fairbairn, published at Edinburgh in 1727, entitled 'L'Eloge d'Ecosse et des Dames Ecossoises,' her name appears among a list of the most charming ladies of Edinburgh society. In 1731 she married Patrick Cockburn, advocate (son of Adam Cockburn of Ormiston, lord justice clerk of Scotland) [q. v.], commissioner of the Duke of Hamilton. He died 29 April 1753. She had an only son, a captain of dragoons, who died in 1780. In December 1777 Mrs. Cockburn spent an evening in George Square, the house of Sir Walter Scott's father, and, writing to Dr. Douglas of
