and the incidents and characteristics which submit to our readers a short specimen of the present paper is designed to record are Lord Cockburn's eloquence. The following more truly a narrative of the life of the are the terms in which he commented upon Lord Chief-Justice than any recital, how the evidence of an eminent medical man, ever accurate or detailed, of his academic still alive, whose cross-examination the Court distinctions, his professional contests, his would not permit him to postpone : — parliamentary achievements, or the other "That gentleman who came here at the last mo minutiae in which legal biography ordina ment and talked about angina pectoris would not rily delights. It may, however, be stated have escaped so easily if I had had with me the once for all that Lord Coleridge was care books to which he referred, and had been able to fully educated at Eton and Oxford, where expose, as I would have done, the ignorance and he gained even more than the usual honors, presumption of the assertion which he dared, to was duly admitted to the Middle Temple, make. I say ignorance and presumption, or what went through the long course of dinners is worse, an intention to deceive. I assert it in which was then supposed to be the best the face of the whole medical profession, and I am satisfied that I shall have their verdict in my qualification for forensic success, in the ful ness of time was called to the bar, rose favor." steadily into lucrative practice, became the Now, it is fair to Lord Coleridge to say Liberal Solicitor and Attorney-General, was that a distinguished foreign observer of Eng appointed Chief-Justice of the Common lish society 1 gives to him a forensic charac Pleas, and upon the death of Sir A. E. ter quite as high as that which we have Cockburn, attained to his present position attributed to Lord Cockburn. Partly be of Lord Chief-Justice of England. He is cause of its intrinsic interest, and partly in every point a striking contrast to his because we mean to challenge its accu distinguished predecessor. Lord Cockburn racy, we shall quote this writer's opinion was, in his faults and in his virtues, a typi in full :— cal Englishman. In his boisterous life, his intellectual strength, and his almost feudal "I have often, years ago, heard his lordship examine or cross-examine witnesses in court; and chivalry he resembled one of our old Nor man kings; while Lord Coleridge may, not if ever any individual assumed with perfect success unfitly, be compared to one of the polished, the manner of the heathen Chinee, which, accord suave, and yet resolute ecclesiastics who ing to Mr. Bret Harte, was childlike and bland, stood beside them and frowned paternally that individual was the present Lord Chief-Justice upon their unruly passions. " Nature," said of England. Other counsel, when they found the man or woman before them in the witness-box a hostile critic, speaking of the present Lord stubbornly stupid or reticent, would attempt to Chief-Justice, "intended him for a bishop; browbeat and bully. Sir John Coleridge, as he but accident has made him a judge." Again, was then, would shake his head with a seraphic Lord Cockburn was every inch an advocate; smile, in disapproval of so inhuman a proceeding, his forensic career had its own failures, of and would wait his turn. He went upon an en course, but these were relieved by triumphs tirely different tack. He never bullied, never hur which only genius of a high order could ried or flustered any one; but he got out of every have accomplished. His reply in the Palmer one the exact thing he wanted, and by dint of case is superior to anything that can be sheer suavity inveigled those whom he interro found in the published speeches of Erskine; gated into making the most suicidal admissions. and his cross-examination of the medical The way in which he accomplished it was this. witnesses for the defence in the same cause He treated the witness before him not merely as a ce'libre could hardly be surpassed. At the 1 " Society in London," by " A Foreign Resident," risk of a charge of irrelevancy we venture to pp. 66, 67.
