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ledge of the classics; a knowledge much more highly valued in those days than it seems to be in ours.

Having chosen the law as his road to fortune, Thurlow became a member of the Inner Temple, where he studied with more persistency and punctuality than he had at the university.

"It was generally supposed," says one of his contemporaries, "that Thurlow in early life was idle; but I always found him close at study in a morning, when I have called at the Temple; and he frequently went no farther in an evening than to Nando's (a noted oyster-shop), and then only in his déshabillé. At the age of twenty-two he was called to the bar (1758). Like most aspirants in the legal profession, he remained for some time without practice; and as his father was unable to afford him much pecuniary assistance, he suffered much of the wretchedness and humiliation of debt. He sometimes began his circuit without the means of paying the necessary travelling expenses; and on one occasion could reach the town where the assizes were held only by the ingenious but not altogether honourable expedient of taking a horse on trial. At length he was employed in a case of some importance, and which afforded him an opportunity of exhibiting his intellectual acumen and legal knowledge. He rose at once into celebrity, and being afterwards retained in the celebrated Douglas case, his success was fully established. In 1770 he was appointed solicitor-general; in the following year attorney-general; and in 1778 reached the summit of a lawyer's ambition by being promoted to the woolsack. He was immediately raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Thurlow, of Ashfield."

Upon this occasion Cowper, the poet, who had been his fellow-student in the Temple, addressed him in some verses, from which a deduction must be made on the score of friendly enthusiasm and poetical license. We have seen that it is hardly accurate to say that

"Round Thurlow's head in early youth,
And in his sportive days,

Fair Science poured the light of truth,
And Genius shed his rays."

And it must be owned that his career failed to justify so strong a panegyric as the following:

"See!' with united wonder cried

666

Th' experienced and the sage,
'Ambition in a boy supplied
With all the skill of age!

Discernment, eloquence, and grace *
Proclaim him born to sway

The balance in the highest place,
And bear the palm away!'

"The praise bestowed was just and wise;
He sprung impetuous forth,
Secure of conquest, where the prize
Attends superior worth.

"So the best courser on the plain,
Ere yet he starts, is known,
And does but at the goal obtain

What all had deemed his own."

Of the early life of the great orator and lawyer, John Dunning (born at Ashburton, 10th October, 1730), few reminiscences have been preserved. He came of a respectable family, and received a good education, but, his father being unable to give him much assistance, he was compelled as a student to go through that experience of rigid economy which seems so often to strengthen the character and develop all that is best in a young man's nature. His two most intimate friends were Kenyon (afterwards Lord Kenyon), and Horne Tooke, and all

"Grace" is about the last epithet that could fairly be applied to the elephantine Thurlow !

three lived with a frugality that was hardly distinguishable from poverty.

"I have been frequently assured," says Horne Tooke's biographer, "that they were accustomed to dine together, during the vacation, at a little eating-house in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, for the sum of sevenpence halfpenny each.” . . . "As to Dunning and myself," added he, "we were generous, for we gave the girl who waited upon us a penny a piece; but Kenyon, who always knew the value of money, sometimes rewarded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes with a promise."

Lord Campbell, speaking of the famous Lord ChiefJustice Ellenborough, says :-" He was a man of gigantic intellect; he had the advantage of the very best education which England could bestow; he was not only a consummate master of his own profession, but well initiated in mathematical science, and one of the best classical scholars of his day. He had great faults, but they were consistent with the qualities essentially required to make him to fill his high office with applause."

This illustrious judge was an exception to the rule which has so generally prevailed with respect to great lawyers. He did not come of low birth, nor in his early career was he impeded by the restraints of circumstance. His ancestors had long been "statesmen" in Westmoreland, that is, substantial farmers cultivating their own property. His father was Dr. Edmund Law, Bishop of Carlisle. He himself was born in 1750, at the parsonage of Salkeld, before his father's elevation to the episcopal bench. Until eight years old he was kept at home, acquiring that strong Cumbrian pronunciation and accent which marked his speech down to the day of his death. After spending a few months in a school at

Bury St. Edmunds, he was admitted a scholar of the Charterhouse in London, in 1761, and there laid the solid foundation of his vast classical and mathematical knowledge. He remained there six years, and rose to be captain of the school. He was wont to say that, while holding this dignified position, he felt himself of much more importance than when he rose to be ChiefJustice of England and a Cabinet Minister. This was

no doubt the case, for at eighteen we have not learned how little we know !

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From the Charterhouse he went to Cambridge, where he took his degree of M.A. His father was anxious for him to enter the Church, but he himself felt that it was not his vocation, and at last obtained leave to enter himself of Lincoln's Inn, on the understanding that he was not to begin the study of the law till he obtained a fellowship, so that he might have the certainty of at least a moderate subsistence, that if he failed, he should take holy orders. "It was," as Lord Campbell says, "a fortunate circumstance for him that he embraced the profession of the law against the earnest wishes of a father whom he sincerely respected and loved. He thus took a tremendous responsibility upon himself, and had the most powerful motives for exertion, that he might justify his own opinion and soothe the feelings of him whose latter days he hoped to see tranquil and happy. He spurned the idea of retreating upon the Church after a repulse of the law, and he started with the dogged resolution to overcome every difficulty which he might encounter in his progress." Here an important subject of discussion opens upon us: How far is a young man fitted to decide upon his own career? Our parents and guardians will not allow that it is one on which a second

opinion is possible, and are always solicitous to shape the future lives of the young according to their own perception of what is best and most desirable. But in choosing a pursuit it is surely necessary that the natural instinct should be carefully studied, that we should satisfy ourselves of the eligibility of the plant for the soil in which we intend to set it. And when we know that the parents of Claude Lorraine would have made him a pastrycook, that Hogarth's father placed him under a silversmith, that the father of Sir Joshua Reynolds was intent that he should be a physician, that Jackson the artist was started in life as a tailor, that Chantry the sculptor lingered for awhile in a small grocer's shop in Sheffield, and that the mother of William Etty apprenticed him to a printer-we cannot but feel some doubt whether the choice of a young man's vocation is always safe in the hands of his "natural guardians; " and in Law's case, it is tolerably certain that he who became so great a lawyer would have made but an indifferent divine.

Obtaining a small set of chambers in Lincoln's Inn, Law addressed himself to his work with all the determination of his nature. In his time a student intended for the common-law courts was expected to toil for at least a couple of years in a special pleader's office, copying musty precedents, drawing up pleas and declarations, and studying practice and precedents rather than principles. After duly submitting to this drudgery for the conventional period, he began his independent career as "special pleader under the bar," and in this vocation met with very considerable success. He was called to the bar in 1780, joined the circuit at York, and, by his eloquence and knowledge, almost immediately leapt into reputation. In 1787 he obtained the silk gown of a K.C., and in

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