great natural ability and still greater capacity for hard and unceasing work. While at Cambridge he took excellent rank among the scholars of his time, and upon beingcalled to the bar in 1868 soon began to get work, not from favor but through merit. One of his earliest cases was an action against the London and North Western Railway Company, one of the largest and most progressive railway lines in England. The skill he displayed and the manner in which he had worked up his law and his facts so impressed the law department' of the Company that he was soon afterward given a retainer for the Company, and thence forward until, through accepting the post of Attorney General, he was obliged to abandon his private practice, he represented that rail way in all its legal affairs. The honor of "silk"' was conferred upon him in 1878, when he had been only ten years at the bar, and seven years later, in 1885, he was appointed Attorney General, which post he filled, except for a brief interval, until 1890, when he was raised to the bench as Master of the Rolls. During most of the time he occupied that office the present rule which prevents its holder from engaging in private practice did not prevail, and he was therefore free to continue to serve his personal clients. It is doubtful if any advocate at the English bar, or at any bar, ever had the variety or even volume of business which was thrust upon Sir Richard Webster. He was equally at lióme in the common law and chancery courts, while there was hardly a case of prominence in admiralty, the ecclesiastical courts or divorce in which he did not appear. In the lucrative work of condemnation and compensation cases he was an acknowledged authority, while in patent law and in every thing requiring a special knowledge of science he was supreme. In fact he was in every thing which human ingenuity can find an exclise to fight about. The following clever lines were written upon him as an impromptu by Mr. La Vie, one of the Regis
trars of the Chancery Division, while he was making an argument in. a patent case which turned upon the various methods of the carbonization of thread: "'Twas no mean workman that devised A speech of such electric force; Successfully he carbonized The thread of his discourse. Logic and fact so close were packed That Webster to his purpose bent Even a cotton filament!"
The volume of work which he got through with was enormous, and as he was wanted by everybody and everywhere his fees were correspondingly high. Even the arbitrarily adding of a special fee to those ordinarily given made no diminution in his business, but rather increased it. To get through his work required an application which few men are capable of or have the physical stamina to endure. The story is told of a junior who was asked by Webster, who was leading him, to come to a consultation at Sir Richard's residence at half-past five o'clock in the morning. The junior to make sure of keep ing the appointment remained up all night. He found his leader, however, fresh from a good night's rest and having already got through with several sets of papers in an ticipation of the day's cause list. The physical strength and continued "fitness" of Lord Alverstone have always been a great factor in his success. At the University he gained his blue by winning the two-mile inter-university race, and through all his career, and no matter how hard pressed with work or social engagements he has kept up his athletic exercise. His country residence in Surrey has among the other attractions of its park a well kept cricket ground, and for years every summer he has taken great pleasure in getting up a match with the Old Carthusians, the team of "old boys" of Charter House, his public school. He is one of the most formidable of his own side, both at the bat and in the field. He is still an excellent player of the ancient
