Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 11.pdf/353

 324

came rapidly to the front during the sixties, the craft of sailing in the course of a voyage and lived to sit on the bench of the court of to the Mediterranean, and knew as much appeals in chancer)', but died all too soon, about it as any of the elder brethren of the Sir John Holker, and young Thcsiger. The Trinity House, who sat on the bench to latter, if I am not mistaken, held his first await the judge (was it not proposed that brief in one of the actions arising out of the the judge of the divorce court should have . the assistance of elder sisters?) and Brett celebrated Roupell forgeries. But now you must go back with me to could always detect a sailor lying. For cool another part of Westminster courts not often circumstantial lying give me the nautical visited except by the initiated, in an odd witness, be his nationality what it may. In corner of the old building, at the top of some that court too a tall, bony, long-nosed man, crooked stairs. Here, after the admiralty Milward had a large practice, of whom it is and ecclesiastical courts (formerly the closely on record that in one case of a collision preserved coverts of the old doctors of civil somewhere off the Isle of Dogs, where law, for which consult the records of David witness after witness had sworn that Bill Copperfield) were opened to the general Hokes was keeping a bright lookout all the bar, thanks to Lord Westbury, sat a very time, Milward, without anything before him venerable judge, Sir Stephen Lushington, in his brief, elicited on cross-examination who, if he would, could have told you many that the collision happened the day following the prize-fight between Saycrs and Heenan, things worth hearing, for he had been coun sel to Queen Caroline, and to Lady Byron, that the hands on board had got a news and had practiced before Lord Stowell; a paper off Gravesend, that all hands were in man of fine presence and kindly manner, the forecastle hearing the account of the and, if Dickens drew a correct picture of fight read by the only man on board who Doctors Commons, one can only marvel could read, and that man was Bill Stokes. Let no man call hopeless any admiralty case how so great a judge could have been nur tured in such an atmosphere. I have brought which depends on the evidence of nautical you upstairs to this court to introduce you witnesses. to one man who held his own in the admir Four excellent men now come to my alty court through the sixties without peer memory as leading juniors in the sixties, all or rival, Mr. Brett, known later as Lord well-known in the old Guildhall courts as Esher. The only two of the D.C.L.'s who masters of mercantile and shipping law. competed with him were Dr. Deane and, Mellish, Honyman, Watkin Williams and though more rarely, Sir Robert Phillimore; I. C. Matthew, of whom the last named, only, the others found a more congenial sphere is alive now. Mellish was the greatest law in the new court of probate and divorce, yer of the four, and made an admirable where sat Sir Cresswell Cresswell the first Lord Justice of Appeal in Chancery; he judge ordinary; who earned the reputation was a terrible sufferer from gout, and his of being the least courteous judge on the face was often racked with pain as he sat on bench. I think if Brett's old fee books could the bench. Honyman was the brilliant wit be unearthed it would be found that the most of the bar; wherever he was there was sure lucrative part of his practice was made in to be laughter. Watkin Williams' sudden the admiralty court, and I think he liked it death came as a shock to his friends, and the best. There never was any man who they were many. And at the end of the could handle a nautical witness better, and sixties Charles Russell was beginning his make him swear the blue-light was the red one great career as a leader; up till then known than Brett could; but then Brett had learned as one of the ablest juniors on the northern