Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/165

  Mr. Bell to the expected vacancy, and on Sir Archibald's death in 1867 he was made sheriff principal, with the unanimous approval of the profession. During thirty-four years' tenure of the two posts he found an arena well calculated to call forth his varied powers; his mental energy and physical strength enabled him to overtake the increasing work of the great commercial city, his discrimination and accuracy made his judgments generally final, and he came to be regarded as the best mercantile lawyer of his day in Scotland. A distinguished contemporary has said of him that ‘he realised the ideal of what a judge ought to be.’ Another writes as follows: ‘The older members of the legal profession hold the opinion that Sheriff Glassford Bell was the best judge that ever sat in the sheriff court of Glasgow. … Approaching every case without a shade of bias, he listened so quietly to the arguments on either side that it was only when his decisions, always remarkable for their clearness, were made that it was seen how carefully he had weighed the matters at issue; it was a common custom of procurators to agree beforehand to accept his ruling and carry the case no further. Early in his career he had to grapple with new and difficult questions under the Poor Law and Bankruptcy Acts, in relation to which many of his judgments have become leading cases. His popularity was increased by the absence of self-assertion, somewhat rare on the bench, the reticence on all irrelevant matters, and the invariable courtesy to witnesses, which were leading features of all his procedure. He always kept abreast of his work, and may be said to have died in harness.’

Outside his court, from which, till his last illness, he was never absent for a day, Mr. Bell took a lively interest in every matter affecting the welfare of Glasgow, advocating the interests of the city and promoting its institutions with an oratory at once genial and forcible, to the uniform success of which his commanding presence and impressive voice doubtless contributed; but the matter of his speeches was always valuable, and several of his addresses, as that to the Juridical Society 1850, and as president of the Athenæum 1851, have stood the test of publication. He was a constant patron of the fine arts, and while in Edinburgh, where he was one of the originators of the Royal Scotch Academy, had given a course of lectures on their history; those on Michael Angelo and Raphael, subsequently delivered before the Philosophical Institution and the Glasgow Architectural Society, attracted considerable attention. The only other prose work of those years of a thousand interlocutors was the long and able introduction to Bell and Bains's edition of ‘Shakespeare,’ published in 1865. During this period his few relaxations were angling, chess—in which game he was the champion of the west of Scotland—and occasional trips to the continent, memories of which he has preserved in his volume, 1866, entitled ‘Romances and Minor Poems,’ which showed that all that weight of law had not stifled the author's imagination. The best verses in this volume are, if somewhat less elastic than those of his youth, more mature and searching. They are the reflex of a mind that has seen more of life and become perplexed by mysteries, for which its former easy solutions have proved inadequate. Mr. Bell's first wife died in 1847; in 1872 he married Miss Sandeman, who survives him. Towards the close of 1873 a disease in the hand, which had for some time caused only trifling inconvenience, assumed so grave an aspect that an operation became imperative. This for a time appeared to have been successful, but early in the next year unfavourable symptoms set in, and he died on 7 Jan. 1874. The respect of his fellow-citizens was attested by the fact of his being—the first example of the century—interred in the nave of St. Mungo's Cathedral. Through life a staunch tory, Glassford Bell had better claim to the title of liberal than many of those who assume it, for he was generous almost to a fault, and took account of men by what they were rather than by what they professed to believe. He will be remembered in Scotland as the genial friend of Wilson, Hogg, and Lockhart, the worthy associate of the great legal race of which Jeffrey, Cockburn, Aytoun, and Burton were but slightly more distinguished representatives. He has been called ‘the last of the literary sheriffs.’

[Journal of Jurisprudence, February 1874; Glasgow Herald, 8 Jan. 1874; personal knowledge and information from Mr. Bell's family.]

 BELL, HENRY NUGENT (1792–1822), genealogist, was the eldest son of George Bell, Esq., of Belleview, county Fermanagh (Inner Temple Admission Register). He followed the profession of a legal antiquary, and, in order to obtain a recognised status, entered himself at the Inner Temple, 17 Nov. 1818. In the same year he acquired considerable distinction by his successful advocacy of the claim of Mr. Hans Francis Hastings to the long-dormant earldom of Huntingdon; the estates, however, with the exception, it is said, of a mill in Yorkshire, had passed away from the title, and were legally invested in the Earl of Moira's family. Bell published a detailed account of the 