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The Green Bag

served, and law and justice made the basis of all. As we approach more modern days, few, if any, of the figures in the forefront are more attractive than that of Lord Lyndhurst. Born in Boston, though brought up and living all his life in Lon don, he is one of the two native Ameri can lawyers who have won great dis tinction in the law in England, the other being Judah P. Benjamin. He possessed the acutest of intellects, and was able, on occasion, to master and apply the law at the bar with singular skill and to administer it on the bench with equal force and clearness. But he was more of a statesman than a lawyer, and it has been questioned whether he was really great as a judge. Whatever his deficiency, however, in completeness of legal learning, there can be no question, perhaps, that, as became the successor of Lord Eldon, he was as well fitted by nature to hold high judicial office as any who preceded or followed him. His clear head, his ready perception, his willingness to hear argument, his open mind, his thorough self-command, made a fortunate combination of qualities that resulted in his admirable manner on the bench and in the sound and satis factory judgments that he rendered. It is probably true that many surpassed him in technical learning, and it may be, as some have asserted, that his heart was not in the law. He has at least given an example of judicial propriety and fitness that suffers in comparison with none. Lord Westbury, whose searching intellect and bitter tongue made him the keenest and least favorable of critics, expressed the opinion, near the close of his long life, that Lord Lyndhurst's was the finest judicial intellect that he had known. Few can reach the heights won by the great names so briefly touched on here,

because, in truth, there is not room there. Many must be content to find the end of their journey on the slopes below. Opportunity is not impartial of her favors, and lends her aid to only a few. But all may hope to rest upon the heights; for it is a lesson of judicial history, not only in this country of supposedly greater opportunity, but in England as well, that from the smallest beginnings have come names forever great in the records of Westminster Hall and Lincoln's Inn. Lord Tenterden's rise to greatness from the humble posi tion of the son of a barber of Canterbury has been recorded. The great Sugden began life under the same conditions. But he who reads the latter's life in the spirit of emulation will find little of encouragement except in the fact of his humble origin and small prospects; for Sugden was no ordinary being carried to the front merely by determination and strict application, aided, as is usual in such cases, by good fortune. No doubt he had his full share of these qual ities and exerted them to his advantage; but he must have been gifted with powers of mind which not the most patient and intelligent cultivation will develop in most men. What lawyer within the experience of any of us could in an even ing examine and digest for appropriate action on the morrow no less than thirtyfive briefs; and then, regardless of the rest that most would seek after such labors and in view of those to come, would proceed to a late sitting of the House of Commons for a contest of wits with those who were shaping the course of a great nation? Our wonder increases when we learn that he lived to the age of ninety-four. Upon the bench he car ried the same extraordinary powers. His "piercing intelligence," as one of his biographers has called it, penetrated to every nook and corner of the case and