the foundation of all excellence was to be laid in an early application to general knowledge," he added, "that professional eminence can only be attained by entering betimes into the lowest drudgery the most repulsive labors, of the profession. Even a year in an attorney's office, as the law is now practised, I should not hold too severe a task, nor too high a price to pay, for the benefit it must surely lead to; but at all events, the life of a special pleader, I am quite convinced, is the thing before being called to the bar." 1

Too much of his youth had been engrossed in the alluring pursuit of "general knowledge," to the neglect, as he himself intimates, of wholesome professional drudgery. He could not submit to a vigorous application to those tiresome technicalities of the law, an acquaintance with which he affected to despise so much in other lawyers. It would seem that he failed in that other half of an advocate, which comprises a thorough preparation of his cases, a careful study of the facts, a critical survey and arrangement of the authorities, and a dexterous presentation of such as are favorable; a skilful examination in chief, and a penetrating and judicious cross-examination. Such is the foundation upon which alone can be reared the elegant superstructure of brilliant oratory and dazzling rhetoric. These arduous but essential preliminaries afford few opportunities for display, and go for little with the outer world; without a close attention to them, however, no enduring fame as a lawyer can be secured. Although Lord Brougham had a ready memory, unusual resources of knowledge from which to draw; although he was indomitably persevering and indefatigably industrious, and had, in addition, a powerful constitution, enabling him to undergo untold labor, yet he had no moderation. He was impetuous and impatient of detail. He jumped at inferences; and, seizing and dwelling upon a prominent argument, one apparently sufficient to cover the whole case, he would exhaust that to the neglect of other equally, if not more, important features of his subject. There was thus a lack of finish, a want of thoroughness, an incompleteness about all that he did. He had an uncommon amount of energy and industry, but he was destitute of judgment; a most needful requisite in a lawyer, having in view, not only his own personal benefit and reputation, but also the interests of his clients. As a politician, he was likened to the "bellua anceps," the elephant

1 Letter to Mr. Macaulay, March 10, 1823.

T

in battle, often more formidable to his friends than to his foes.1 His deficiency in tact, good judgment, and sound sense, characterized all his actions, while his inaccuracy materially impairs the value of his writings.

It must be borne in mind that he was never heart and soul a lawyer; that law was little else than the thread upon which he hung his various fancies and his dearer pursuits. A great man he assuredly was; a great philanthropist, an earnest reformer of abuses, but not by any means worthy to be classed with the greatest lawyers of the age.

One last word from Mr. G. A. Sala as to Lord Brougham's personal appearance:

"From 1830 to 1866,- the period between his brightest glow of fame and his mental eclipse, he was always the same gaunt, angular, rawboned figure, with the high cheek bones, the great flexible nose, the mobile mouth, the shock head of hair, the uncouthly cut coat with the velvet collar, the high black stock, the bulging shirt front, the dangling bunch of seals at his fob, and the immortal pantaloons of checked tweed."

The same writer says,

"In later life Lord Brougham, though his dress was odd, was as neat and trim an old gentleman as you would wish to see; but in his days of political power, and parliamentary and legal labor, he was said to have been a terrible sloven. An old lady I knew many years since in Westmoreland—she had been the proprietor of a newspaper at Kendal, and helped Brougham materially in one of his great electioneering contests, in return for which he made her the practical present of a horse and gigtold me that he just 'chucked t' clouse upon him like hay on to th' tynes of a fork;' that it was easier to get him to drink a bowl of punch than to shave himself, and that when he left his lodgings in the morning for the assize court, his servant had frequently to run after him with the white neckerchief he had forgotten to don.” 2

We cannot do better than accept the kindly summing up of the noble acts of his protracted and well-spent life, by his old enemy "Punch," 8

"The ninety-year-old man was part of all,

Great part of most that's worthiest and best:

Through that long race the oar he scarce let fall,

Scarce through that long day's work paused once to rest.

"Count all the triumphs in these fifty years,

By Right and Truth o'er Wrong and Falsehood won; Of the Good Cause's Paladins and Peers,

A faithfuller than HENRY BROUGHAM is none.

"He lived through all these fights, and seemed to grow Tenser and tougher with their wear and tear;

And when the strife was done, and the sun low,
And 'age brought honor and the silver hair,'-

"He could look o'er his life, and say, at last,
'No cause for which I fought now finds a foe;
No goal I aimed for but is reached and past;
No ill I aimed a blow at but lies low.'

"A fighter born, with fighter's work in hand,
He had the fighter's weak points with the strong:

Hot, vehement to rashness, never bland,

In hates, as loves, too sudden oft and wrong;

"Vain, quick of temper, proud of all he knew,

As who, that knew so much, but might be proud?

By all he had done, and all he hoped to do,

Lifted, his great head's height, above the crowd.

"Why note what flaws may be in such a fame?
Freer of flaws than his the fames are few;
Sum up the gains to which he linked his name,
What nobler work did ever statesman do?

"The senate purged; charity's stream strained pure; Slaves freed; chicane and bigotry put down; Knowledge on ignorance gaining, slow but sure,

This was his life's work, is his memory's crown!"

THE ERIE RAILROAD ROW.

"MAN and boy," said old John Adams, "I have known New York politics for sixty years, and to me they have always been the devil's own incomprehensible." The element of incomprehensibility, noticed by the second President, without disappearing from the politics of the Empire State, has since extended to her law, which puzzles and confounds the mind of the foreign advocate now, as did her politics the instinct of the statesman then. This paper has been entitled the Erie railroad "Row," simply because the litigations which disgraced the New York courts in the spring of 1868, and which arose out of the operations of those contending for the control of that road, are deserving of no other

name.

Such an extraordinary perversion of the process of law; such an utter absence of respect for the bench; such contempt for the forms and courts of justice as was then exhibited, ought not to pass unnoticed. There is in it that which should give pause to the community, and challenge an instant of reflection. It illustrates several things; it may, in one point of view, be regarded as a significant indication of the spirit of the times; or, in another, as a development of the moral condition of our greatest city; or, again, as a picture of prevailing morals and manners; or, perhaps, it might throw some light on the practical working and tendencies of an elective judiciary. Possibly, from a severe study of the proceedings in their various forms, the patient student at the New York bar might arrive at some insight into the principles of practice under the Code, or of the New York law as it emanates from the successors of Kent. As, however, the Code is a mystery of little interest to the outer world, and as the successors of Kent are such only in form, it would hardly be worth while to go far below the surface of this extraordinary legal episode in search of any erudite legal principles which may there be concealed.

On Monday, the 17th of February last, Mr. Frank Work, a director of the Erie Railroad, appeared, by Messrs. Rapallo and Spencer, his attorneys, before George G. Barnard, a justice of

the Supreme Court of New York, then sitting in Chambers, and petitioned that a writ of injunction might issue, against the Board of Directors of the Erie Railroad, to forbid the settlement by them of certain outstanding accounts between Mr. Daniel Drew, the treasurer of that corporation, and the corporation itself. It then became publicly known that a bitter feud had broken out between the two railroad kings, Daniel Drew, commonly known upon Wall Street as the " Speculative Director," and Cornelius Vanderbilt, familiarly known as "The Commodore." The immediate cause of the quarrel was to be sought among the mysteries of Wall Street, among the Bulls and the Bears, the longs and the shorts, the pools, corners, and combinations of the railroad world. With all of these this paper will deal as little as possible. A few words, however, are necessary to a statement of the case.

Commodore Vanderbilt, some years previous to the occurrences here referred to, had transferred the scene of his operations from the sea to dry land, and had become the great railroad, as before he had been the steamboat, king. He was, at this time, rapidly obtaining control of all the great thoroughfares leading from New York to the West. Beginning with the Harlem road, he had then taken possession of the Hudson River, and, finally, of the New York Central, and was now stretching out his hands to grasp the Erie, the peculiar property of Mr. Drew. In September, 1867, Mr. Drew had been rudely shaken on his throne as autocrat of the Erie, and even defeated at the annual election of the directors of the road. An entirely new board was then elected, which knew Vanderbilt, but knew not Drew. The Commodore, however, not foreseeing the future, did not press his advantage; and it was arranged that a member of the new board should resign his position, and, Mr. Drew, having been elected in his place, was reinstated in his old position of treasurer. Now Mr. Drew, it appears, had long been concerned in operations, sometimes looking to a rise, but more usually to a fall, in the value of the securities of the Erie road. Under his skilful manipulation "Erie " had, for years, fluctuated widely; but, while in it many fortunes had been made and lost in a single day, the particular fortune of Daniel Drew had prospered greatly. The brokers and operators of Wall Street, as the result of long observation, had finally concluded that the ways of the "Speculative Director" were past finding out. In April, 1861, Erie had sold at 17, and in March,