In his 82d year, having been absent scarcely a day from court, Lord Mansfield retired to Tunbridge Wells for the benefit of his health. The year following he resigned his office. For six years longer he lived in dignified retirement, occupying himself in his garden, or refreshing his mind with the works that had charmed and instructed his youth. To the last he retained his memory, and, dying without a pain at the close of the century, the man who had spent his happiest evenings with Pope was destined to listen to all the horrors of the French Revolution, in common with thousands living at the present hour. Lord Mansfield's death was mourned as a national calamity; his remains were deposited in Westminster Abbey, and they lie close to those of the Earl of Chatham. After the stormy conflict of a glorious life, the two schoolboy rivals lie side by side in silent and everlasting repose.
We have freely stated the one great deformity of Lord Mansfield's character; his quailing before Lord Camden is but a solitary instance of the fault that tarnished his otherwise brilliant career. When we have said that the Chief Justice acted unconstitutionally in continuing in the Cabinet whilst he held the Judicial office, and that, admitted to the friendship and confidence of his sovereign, he did not scruple to exercise power without official responsibility, we have confessed to the most serious offenses with which he is chargeable. It is not, however, to dwell upon these blemishes of true greatness, or to indulge in idle panegyric, that we have occupied so large a portion of valuable space, and intermixed with the living doings of today one striking record of the buried past. The life of Lord Mansfield is nothing to us if it yields no profitable instruction and contains no element of usefulness for the generation to whom our labors are addressed. Is it wholly unnecessary to place at this moment before the bar of England so noble a model for imitation so sublime an ideal for serious contemplation as that offered in the person of the Earl of Mansfield? Is it impertinent to warn our lawyers, that, without confirmed habits of industry, temperance, self-subjugation, unsullied honor, vast knowledge, enlightened and lofty views of their difficult yet fascinating profession, and a love of the eternal principles of truth and justice, incompatible with meanness and degrading practice, true eminence is impossible, and imperishable renown not to be obtained? Never, at any other period of our history, has it been so necessary to urge upon the students of the law the example of their worthiest predecessors. The tendency of the age is to lower, not to elevate, the standard set up by our ancestors for the attainment of preeminence. That our giants may not be stunted in their growth—that the legal stock may not hopelessly degenerate—Chief Justice Campbell does well to impress upon his brethren the patient and laborious course—the high and admirable qualities—by which Chief Justice Mansfield secured his greatness and his fame.
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[From Blackwood's Magazine.]
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.
BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.
BOOK 1.—INITIAL CHAPTER; SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE WRITTEN.
SCENE, The Hall in Uncle Roland's Tower. TIME,Night—SEASON, Winter.
Mr. Caxton is seated before a great geographical globe, which he is turning round leisurely, and "for his own recreation," as, according to Sir Thomas Browne, a philosopher should turn round the orb, of which that globe professes to be the representation and effigies. My mother having just adorned a very small frock with a very smart braid, is holding it out at arm's length, the more to admire the effect. Blanche, though leaning both hands on my mother's shoulder, is not regarding the frock, but glances toward Pisistratus, who, seated near the fire leaning back in his chair, and his head bent over his breast, seems in a very bad humor. Uncle Roland, who has become a great novel reader, is deep in the mysteries of some fascinating Third Volume. Mr. Squills has brought The Times in his pocket for his own especial profit and delectation, and is now bending his brows over "the state of the money market," in great doubt whether railway shares can possibly fall lower. For Mr. Squills, happy man! has large savings, and does not know what to do with his money; or, to use his own phrase, "how to buy in at the cheapest, in order to sell out at the dearest."
Mr. Caxton, musingly.—"It must have been a monstrous long journey. It would be somewhere hereabouts I take it, that they would split off."