The next circuit, which only one judge then went, afforded him an opportunity of witnessing the knowledge and quickness Mr. Justice Buller. "There were eighty-six causes to be tried at York- - one of which was a boundary cause that lasted sixteen hours, thirty-six at Lancaster, and forty to fifty prisoners at each place; but Mr. Justice Buller concluded the whole circuit in three weeks. It was not the fashion of the Bar to make long speeches, or to occupy any time in resisting the opinion of the judge once declared." At Romilly's recommendation he attended the Lancashire Sessions, held at Preston, Wigan, and Manchester, first going to them in the summer of 1792, and to this he ascribed his success in the profession. "The business was so great, that when in a few years I came to be the decided leader at these places, the profits of these sessions were as great to me as those of the Home Circuit to Mr. Garrow or Serjeant Best, and I found the immediate effect of that connection between these places and the assizes in Lancashire in the quantity of business which poured in upon me then, and which from that time to the year 1827 continued a source of abundant profit to me. "My third circuit, .in the summer of 1792, gave me courage to make a further struggle for success in this country. More especially at the October sessions I found that I was really gaining ground.1 "On the twenty-second day of that month, in the same year, I was married to Miss Louise Henrietta Campbell, the third daughter of Peter Campbell, Esq., of Kilmory, in Argyllshire. She had been the object of my early and constant attachment, and had from the first acquaintance with her exercised a strong influence over my conduct. "Her children, for whom these memories are intended, lived to witness her sweet disposition, her divine temper and consummate discretion. I lived with her in uninterrupted comfort and happiness from the time of our marriage to the month of March, 1829, and have lived ever since to lament her loss." They had five children: three sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Robert, followed, for some years before he succeeded to the peerage, his father's profession. The second son, Sir 1 His name first appears in the King's Bench Reports at Trinity term, 1794: The King v. Inhabitants of Clayton le Moors, 5 T. R. 704. He argued his last case in that court, forty years after, — The King v. Adams, 2 A. & E. 409, Michaelmas term, 1834. James Yorke Scarlett, G. C. B., was a distinguished officer who attained the rank of general; and the third, the author of the book before us, entered the diplomatic service, and has been the English Minister successively at Florence, Athens, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico. The eldest daughter married, in 1821, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Campbell. "Upon this event of my marriage, I made up my mind to remain in England, and try my fortune, at least as long as my father was willing to continue the very liberal allowance he had hitherto made me. He had left this matter very much to my own discretion, and I had not abused his confidence. But upon my marriage, I determined on no account to exceed what I had taken from him before, and to this resolution I could the more easily adhere as my professional income was gradually increasing. In the year 1798, when my father died, it actually exceeded my expenditure, and has done so from that period to the time of my quitting the bar. I must however own that my expenses have grown with my income (though they have never exceeded it) in so great a proportion, that what I shall leave at my death will fall far short of the accumulations of many who have not experienced half the course of prosperity that has fallen to my lot." At times, however, he was discouraged. Thus, Aug. 8, 1796, he writes to his wife from Lancaster: "Would you believe it? here, at Lancaster, where I have been accustomed to receive upwards of 60%., I have not yet had a single brief, and do not know of one which I am likely to have! I told you there were others more fortunate in their friends than I am. dearest: we can but go to Jamaica at last. where you are with me and happy." But do not be uneasy, my His marriage compelled him to narrow very much the circle of his acquaintance. It "I for some years avoided the society I had lived in, and became an obscure plodding lawyer, seeking by severe industry no other reputation or fame than that which was to break out upon me in Westminster Hall. was not until the year 1800 that I found myself in a condition to re-emerge into the world, and to travel out of the circle of the law. I had great reason, however, to be gratified by my position in those circles. Perceval, Erskine, Romilly, Dallas, Jekyll, Lens, and George Wilson, with some others, who were considered amongst the élite of the law, were my intimate friends, and continued so to the last. . . . But of all the friends whom I cultivated in the profession of the law, I must put Romilly the foremost." His description of Romilly is very interesting: : "He was a man of reserved habits and cold demeanor; but under that exterior were covered the warmest heart and most generous emotions. When excited by controversy, his temper was too easily provoked, and his opponent felt that he was very intolerant and sometimes too severe upon bad reasoning. As a speaker, though he was often led by the force of his feeling into something like declamation, yet he was not successful in affecting the passions. He did not persuade by his rhetoric, but convinced by his logic. His reasoning was acute and perspicuous. His sagacity in detecting, and felicity in exposing, the sophistry of his antagonist, were among the first of his oratorical merits. These always made him happy and terrible in reply. His application to study, and his quickness in understanding what he studied, were never surpassed. His reading of all sorts was immense. I never met with a man who was so universally acquainted with ancient and modern literature, and history. In the midst of his immense business he found time to read every book that had any real value. Even upon the subject of the last romance he was the best man to consult. There was something extraordinary in his facility of reading which enabled him to wade through a book in an hour, which would have occupied most men a day. He did not stop at words or sentences, but took in almost a page at a glance." "Romilly was a great walker. It was our constant habit to walk together for some hours every day, when the weather would permit, immediately after the court rose, which, in those times, was generally about two o'clock." Would that those times might return! His father died in 1798, the first year when his professional income was sufficient to defray the whole of his expenses. His practice both on the Circuit and in London now steadily increased. Speaking of his sessions practice he says:— "I may ascribe to the practice I was obliged to adopt at Manchester, the great facility with which I was able to conduct the mass of business that afterwards passed through my hands, on the Circuit and at Westminster, and at Guildhall. The counsel were accustomed to arrive late in the evening before the sessions, the attorneys on the next day. The magistrates commenced their business at half-past eleven. It was only during the few hours that elapsed from eight to that time, that I had to prepare the day's work. It sometimes occurred that I had fifteen or twenty briefs in settlement cases which were always taken the first day. To make my self master of the points in each by reading them was impossible. As to the law and decided authorities, I came well prepared, and required no study. The mode then which I adopted to obtain the facts, was to interrogate the attorney, when he came with his brief, what was the fact in his own case on which he mainly relied. Next, what he supposed his adversary's case to depend upon. Having made a short note of his statement on the back of the brief, I proceeded to discuss the appeal without further instruction or meditation, and I believe I may safely say that I did not read one brief in ten in the most important cases in which I was concerned at quarter sessions." He, in like manner, after he became a leader, used to squeeze the brains of his junior counsel, in his practice in the higher courts; and in defence of his system he says that, if he had attempted to read the masses of paper delivered in each case, he should not have been able to read one in five, even by applying all his time to it. "Undoubtedly the case would be very different at present. The number of causes tried in a day seldom amount to half a dozen of all sorts on an average. But Lord Kenyon and Mr. Justice Buller disposed with ease of twenty-six in a day, and Lord Ellenborough's average was twenty. I do not pretend to assign the causes of this difference." In 1799, Mr. Chambrè,1 "a gentleman of the highest eminence and popularity on the Northern Circuit," being promoted to the bench, a silk gown was given to James Allan Park, of the same Circuit, who was afterwards a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Mr. Law urged Scarlett to apply for one too, as being more entitled to it than Park was. He did not get it till 1816; "for many years before which," he says, "I was leading almost every cause on the Northern Circuit, and dividing the lead of Guildhall and Westminster with Garrow and Park." "It may be asked what was the reason of this delay? I can assign no other reason for Lord Eldon not giving it to me than the supposition that I was attached to the Whigs." He says, he knows not why the Whigs did not give it him in 1806, when they knew he desired it; but he does not think this 1 This name is always spelt Chambers in the memoirs, and the name of Park, the nisi prius leader and author of the work on Insurance, is spelt Parke; a most misleading error, as it confounds him with Baron Parke (afterwards Lord Wensleydale), who was never a leader, as he accepted a judgeship very early. 30 D =2 1 was Lord Erskine's fault. The conduct of Lord Eldon was habitual. Gurney, Brougham, Denman-in short, every Whig barrister were punished for their politics during that Chancellor's time, by having to wait for this promotion, on an average, about ten years longer than a Tory barrister did; and this, too, when, for a wonder, the bulk of the very able men at the Bar were Whigs. Scarlett quitted the Sessions in 1807, and found himself in command of every variety of business; and from 1810 he was one of the unquestioned leaders of the Bar both in London and on Circuit. At first he went the round of the various courts; but finally, finding it impossible to get through the business that came to him, he confined himself to the King's Bench and the Northern Circuit, declining, as a rule, all other retainers. In 1807, he specially applied to Lord Eldon for a patent of King's Counsel, but for nine years received no answer, although his application was supported by Lord Ellenborough. At length in March, 1816, he received it so suddenly and unexpectedly that it was somewhat inconvenient. He was then in his forty-seventh year, and had been twenty-five years at the Bar. "In the course of that year, Garrow, who was then Attorney-General, became a Baron of the Exchequer. Park had before become a Judge of the Common Pleas; Gibbs, a Chief Baron; Topping soon after quitted the profession. I was therefore placed by business, if not by rank, at the head of the King's Bench Bar and the Northern Circuit, and I remained so without interruption from that time to the year 1827, when I became Attorney-General, witnessing in the mean time some of my juniors, but who had never been my competitors, promoted to professional honors and offices. Indeed, I may say, from the year 1816 to the close of 1834, when I was appointed Chief Baron, I had a longer series of success than has ever fallen to the lot of any other man in the law; and if my economy and prudence had equalled my good fortune, I think none of my predecessors, in that line, would have laid such a foundation for his posterity. But though I have never spent the whole of my professional income since the year 1798, I am sorry to say that I have saved but little of it; and so much of that comparatively little has been invested in land, and that so injudiciously, that what I leave behind me will scarcely be worth having." We imagine this last statement must be taken with some allowance; for he left sufficient to feel justified in entailing on his heirs the burden of a peerage. We have seen it stated that |