possible, that when ordinary observers thought they perceived him sitting inactive and unoccupied, his mind was like that of Mr. Fox, who loved the like relaxation, both from work and from talk, could but the lovers of talk leave him to his enjoyment, and who certainly was not lost in a woolgathering reverie all the while, but generally occupying his great faculties with the exercise he most loved the pursuing trains of reasoning, and forging, as it were, chains of argumentation without any definite object on which to use

them a peculiarity which made Lord Brougham apply to him the lines in Homer upon the labours of Vulcan's forge. As an instance at once of Blair's industry as well as of his conscientious nature, the fact may be mentioned, that, upon being raised to the bench, he actually read through, with care and diligence, the whole of Erskine's and of Stair's Institutes. We recollect Sir V. Gibbs being very much edified when calling on Sir James Mansfield, and finding him in bed, to see that he was reading Coke Littleton.

The genius of Blair was eminently fitted for legal pursuits. Of a bold and masculine understanding, a penetrating sagacity, and profound reflection, without the subtlety of Matthew Ross, with little of the penetrating acuteness almost preternatural, of William Tait, who was occasionally the dupe of his own quickness,--with little fancy in inventing topics, and no great nimbleness in meeting or escaping objections,—he yet always brought to bear upon his subject a plain and homely vigour, to which almost all difficulties yielded, and before which almost all antagonists gave way. His style, too, both of reasoning and of diction, bore the impress of his nature; they were plainly suited to the man; they were racy and they were apposite. The hearer never for a moment doubted that the speaker thoroughly understood the whole matter in hand, and was perfect master of it. Despising the vulgar arts of ordinary advocates, he unfolded the subject to all exactly as he saw it

himself; and his comments had so much force, were so plain, yet so strong, and clothed with so much dignity of expression as well as presented with so much gravity and yet earnestness of manner, that his discourse seemed rather judicial than forensic, and he appeared to decide the cause he was pleading. So earnest a manner is generally an abatement of dignity; yet in this speaker it proved not so; his vehemence, even though sustained by little fluency, and set off by less felicity of diction, never for an instant led the hearers or the spectators to undervalue him, and withhold respect, as is wont to happen when, in the fervour of declamation, the orator, seeming to lose the command of himself, is nearly sure to lose the sway over his audience. We have spoken of his fluency as inconsiderable; but this had no bad effect; for, as you saw a mind struggling with the topic, you perceived that the ideas were too many to find easy utterance; there was none of the unpleasant anxiety attending a hesitating speaker, and which is unpleasing because it gives alarm. The thoughts were there, and struggling for birth, and, in one way or another, were sure to reach the audience. Occasionally he rose to a higher pitch than merely the height of argumentation — if indeed, any higher pitch there be. No one who had the advantage of hearing his noble speech in the case of Heriot, the descendant of the founder of the hospital, will easily forget the fine burst of impassioned and indignant eloquence with which he denounced the cruel injustice of disputing the founder's wish for his kindred. "What avails it, my lords, that a great benefactor of his species should generously devote the hard earnings of a long life to the sacred uses of charity, if no sooner he is laid in the grave than all he most fondly favoured are repudiated, all his cherished objects cast into oblivion, all his darling plans scorned?" &c. From what has been said of his manner of reasoning, it must not be supposed that the contrast with Matthew Ross and William Tait implies any admission of his having been either at all wanting in the quickness wherewith the latter was so singularly gifted, or in the capacity for handling the greatest subtleties of the law which so eminently distinguished the former of those great masters of legal dialectics. The reference was rather made

for there was no man of more clear and swift apprehension in dealing with a case, how obscure and complicated soever. This he owed to his extraordinary power of fixing his attention undivided on his subject. Nor was there any subtlety of the law, however refined and remote from ordinary apprehension, which he was not at all times prepared to embrace and to pursue. To say this of him is only saying what no one could doubt, that he had an eminently legal and logical understanding.

In one particular it might be, perhaps, expected that a person who, albeit of high poetical descent, had never cultivated the powers of imagination, should yet be no mean master of sarcasm, and even of ordinary ridicule. It is true he rarely indulged in this; and chiefly brought its force to bear upon the absurdity of an adverse position. But a most accurate observer, and who had long and closely watched him (Baron Hume), has said that he "was noted for a command of sarcastic wit and raillery, though he never left the case to seek for opportunities of indulging in this vein, his wit being ever to the point, and, as it were, wit and argument in one." The same excellent judge has also said, in praise as well of his honesty as his good sense and severe taste, that he “ was remarkable for never stooping to make use of a frivolous or futile argument."

At the advanced age of sixty-six he ascended the bench, and then was seen in all its great glory the first quality of his nature, an innate love of justice and abhorrence of iniquity; "without which," a celebrated writer, Professor Playfair, tells us, "the President was accustomed emphatically to declare all other qualities in a judge avail nothing, or rather are worse than nothing." This shone conspicuously through his whole life, but more especially when he sat on the bench. He had, indeed, intuitively (as Baron Hume has observed), "a generous contempt of any thing low or disingenuous. His patience was equally eminent; and as the same high authority has well said, extended "both to parties and their advocates; while his endowments were graced by an earnest and vivid elocution, and by a natural dignity of manner, and an animated majesty of countenance, which struck the evil

doer with awe, and gave assurance of the native worth and energy of the spirit that reigned within."

The same high authority has told us that he had a most admirable quality for a judge, proceeding from the manly and honest nature of his understanding. He took liberal and

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enlarged views of law, but abstained, as he disdained it, from hunting after novelties, and making discoveries in the law he was bound to administer. He was thus wholly free from the great vice of clever and ingenious men, what in Westminster Hall is termed a love of crotchets, a most fruitful parent of error and misdecision, and which thus makes judges unjust. In like manner was he slow to interrupt or anticipate counsel, a habit proceeding from petty conceit, and greatly to be repressed on the Bench. Quantum (says Lord Bacon, discoursing of this love of crotchets) ad advocatos qui causas agunt, patientia et gravitas in causis audiendis, justitiæ est pars essentialis ; et judex nimis interloquens minime est cymbalum bene sonans. Non laudi est judici si primus aliquid in causâ inveniat et arripiat quod ab advocatis, suo tempore, meliùs audiri potuisset; aut acumen ostentet in probationibus vel advocatorum perorationibus nimis cito interrumpendis; aut anticipet informationes quæstionibus, licet ad rem pertinentibus." (Fideles Sermones, Art. 54., De Officio Judicis.) We have already noticed his exemplary patience; and his reproofs, being most rarely administered, produced extraordinary effect. But it was in nowise for the sake of this effect that he proved so sparing of them; his mingled sense of justice and feeling of humanity induced him to keep in mind the same wise man's maxim: "Etiam reprehensiones de loco superiore graves esse debent non contumeliosa." (Ib. Art. 11., De Magistratibus.)

It is said that he was somewhat dilatory in the execution of the judicial office, and that an arrear was springing up in his court. But the advanced age at which he came to the chair may be one cause of this, and the novelty of the system he was called to administer, after the division of the Court, was another. Take him for all in all, it may be safely affirmed that he presented one of the most perfect examples of forensic and judicial capacity combined in the same person, which the annals of either bar affords. Therefore, before all

judges in all countries he is to be held constantly up to admiration and to imitation, and his memory by all lawyers must be borne in lasting remembrance.

ART. VIII.

THE RAILWAY BOARD.

We entered in our last number into this subject with the fulness which its great importance appeared to require, and we so amply discussed the principles which ought to guide private or personal legislation, as well as the incurable defects of the plan adopted by the Government for assisting the two Houses in the consideration of railway bills, that little remains now to be added beyond calling the reader's attention to the results of the system unfortunately adopted. The progress of the session has, indeed, woefully justified all our assertions, and must have woefully disappointed the able and worthy persons who had conceived hopes of the scheme working well. A more complete failure is not upon record.

It will be recollected that the professed design of the Board was to assist Parliament, and this desirable object was to be attained by instituting a previous inquiry into each case, and reporting to the two Houses whether one scheme or the other should be adopted, when there was a competition, and when only one was proposed, by deciding for or against that one. It is true no evidence was to be examined by the Board; they were merely to hear the statements of the parties. Nor were the contending parties to hear each other's objections, or remove or try to remove them; but, proceeding in the dark, the Board was to form an opinion in each case, and report it for the assistance of the Legislature. Any thing so manifestly absurd as this project of helping the clear-seeing by the guidance of the blind,—of assisting those who must see the whole with the opinion of those who could only see a part,-of saving the time of the body which was obliged to examine fully by reporting the opinion of the body which had hardly examined at all,-was certainly never before thought