with Caroline, Princess of Wales, on the subject of the charges brought against her. In 1807 the Whig ministry was dismissed, and he again took the Great Seal: he bought the Encombe estate, in Dorsetshire, of Mr. Morton Pitt, for 53,000l. thinking that its size and character suited him well. In the session of 1808 we find him defending the Orders in Council, and the somewhat difficult point of the seizure of the Danish fleet. What the King thought of the act may be seen in a conversation he had with our ambassador, Mr. Jackson, who waited on the Prince Royal to demand the ships. "Was he up stairs or down when he received you?" asked the King. "He was on the ground-floor, please your Majesty." "I am glad of it, for your sake," said the King, "for, if he had half the spirit of George the Third, he would infallibly have kicked you down stairs." In 1809 the Chancellor was engaged in defending his friend the Duke of York against Col. Wardle's charges. After this came the serious misunderstanding between Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning, which ended in their mutual resignation and the consequent confusion of the Cabinet. In October the Duke of Portland died, and the Marquess Wellesley and Mr. Perceval formed the new administration. At the close of the year Lord Eldon stood for the Chancellorship of Oxford against Lord Grenville and the Duke of Beaufort, and the reasons for his want of success are detailed in Mr. Twiss's volume. He again in 1810 opposed the petition of the Catholics: next year the illness of the King took a character of decided permanence, and the Regency question, with its powers and limitations, became the subject of long deliberation and violent dispute. When that was settled other difficulties disappeared, as the Prince Regent continued Mr. Perceval's administration. The only material change that took place was the retirement of the Marquess Wellesley, who was succeeded by Lord Castlereagh. In May 1812 Mr. Perceval was shot in the lobby of the House; he was the principal adviser of the Government, and his loss was deeply felt; his character is fairly drawn, we think, in the book, and we shall give it at the close of our article, together with some others. After much fruitless negotiation to form a stronger administration from the junction of Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning, and subsequently of the Whig leaders, Lord Liverpool took the place of Mr. Perceval, and this administration, which it was said at the time would not weather the Session, lasted fifteen years afterwards, without any material change of policy except the recognition of the Roman Catholic question, and without any important additions except the return of Mr. Canning in 1816, the entrance of the Duke of Wellington in 1818, and of Sir R. Peel in 1822. We must pass over the next two years, in which nothing very important took place, although the long and fatal war was terminated, and the Bourbons were replaced on the throne of France; but in these great events Lord Eldon of course did not appear as a prominent person, for the country was now taken out of Chancery, and he was in it. In 1815 Lord Eldon's house was forcibly entered and taken possession of by a violent and angry mob, infuriated with the Corn Bill; his family took refuge in the British Museum gardens, and the arrival of the foot soldiers and horse-guards alone preserved the dwelling of the Chancellor from destruction. Under the date of this year, 1815, will be found an interesting correspondence between Lord Eldon and his brother relating to the grounds on which the captivity of Bonaparte should be founded. Mr. Twiss says, "It is a great evidence of Lord Eldon's extraordinary powers, that he should have been able, out of a mass of perplexities which had baffled Lord Ellenborough, Sir William Grant, and Sir W. Scott, to deduce a solid, comprehensive judgment of his own-reconciling the multifarious difficulties of the law of nations, and setting the sanction of justice to the tranquillity of the world." Lord Eldon's wish for retirement, which he had for some time entertained, appears to have been increased by a long illness, which attacked him in the autumn of the year 1816. He was soon, however, restored to health by medical treatment; but it unfortunately was only to witness an event that much displeased him, the marriage of his eldest daughter with Mr. George Repton. This he never forgave; no doubt that to him it appeared at once imprudent and unkind; imprudent as forfeiting all the advantage of her rank and station and fortune, and unkind to him who had always treated her not only as his daughter, but his friend ;-he who has daughters must not be surprised sometimes at such amiable weaknesses appearing ;-but it appears to us that the only true ground of a father's alienation must be when a step of folly destroys every feeling of that respect on which even affection itself reposes. In June 1819 he again opposed further concession to the Catholics; he appears, however, in this session to have been overpowered by labour: he writes to his brother, "Town, or this world, I must leave-such is my state: and I hope, when I do leave it, to return no more to labour without ceasing from seven in the morning of the 28th October to nine at night of the 31st August. I can't bear it longer-it's impossible." Before he went into Dorsetshire he quitted Bedford Square for Hamilton Place, which he occupied till his death. In 1820 his youngest daughter married Mr. Edward Bankes. Lord Eldon kept up a correspondence with her, very minute and unreserved, which has enriched the pages of this biography with some of its most valuable matter. The Chancellor was not to be happy in his daughters' marriages. She and her husband disagreed and separated. These things all depend on whether Juno or the Eumenides attend the marriage feast.* The parent's love, however, was altogether undiminished. From this time his attention was almost entirely engrossed, together with that of King, ministers, people, and parliament, by the claims and conduct of Queen Caroline. It was a sad subject for the Ministry: we well remember the then first Lady Liverpool, when she witnessed the dreadful anxiety and constant distress of the Earl, used to repeat, “Oh ! that woman!" for she believed in her guilt, and therefore in her conduct saw nothing but the grossness of personal audacity and the exasperation of party feeling. George the Fourth, in acknowledgment of Lord Eldon's great services, conferred the dignity of an Earldom upon him. In August the Queen died of internal inflammation;† had she lived she intended in a few days to have left the country for the continent, and all preparation was made for the expedition. In 1822 a section of the Grenville party gained the Ministry, and Mr. Peel accepted the office of Home Secretary †The Queen, after retiring from the play, mixed and drank a tumbler of magnesia and water, upon that she swallowed another of diluted laudanum; this occasioned a complete stoppage in the bowels. We had this from a lady who was living with her at the time.-REV. * in the room of Lord Sidmouth. Lord Erskine, alluding to Charles Wynn's voice, said, " Ministers are hard run, but they still have a squeak for it." Lord Eldon opposed the Roman Catholic Peers' Bill, which had passed the Commons, but was negatived in the Lords by a majority of 171 against 129. He was defeated, however, in his opposition to the Marriage Act Amendment Bill. In the August of this year he was much affected by the death of Lord Londonderry; whose vacant place was supplied by Mr. Canning, an appointment which we recollect gave a general satisfaction, and much advantage was anticipated from his commanding talents and enlarged and liberal policy. In 1824 he had to sustain a renewed attack of Mr. Williams on the proceedings of Chancery and the profits of the Chancellorship. Mr. Peel, on this occasion, said the Chancellor's income was hardly more than a third of what the Members thought it was, and the Chancellor himself said he detested being influenced by sordid motives and feelings. It does not appear in the Life what it was, but sufficient, we believe, to have accumulated at Lord Eldon's death to somewhere about eight hundred thousand pounds. In May he resisted the Bill of Lord Lansdowne for the relief of the English Catholics. Mr. Canning called his speech that of a "pettifogging lawyer," on which Lord Eldon observes, "Politicians are fond of representing lawyers as most ignorant politicians they are pleased, however, to represent politicians as not being ignorant lawyers, which they, most undoubtedly, generally are-and this was never more clearly demonstrated than by Mr. Canning's speeches on the Roman Catholic question." Most of this session of 1825 was passed in debate on the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, which passed the Commons by a majority of 21, but was lost in the Lords. The session of 1826-7 terminated the official, though not the public, life of Lord Eldon. In February Lord Liverpool was seized with that attack which destroyed his mental powers, and subsequently his life. In April the formation of a Government was entrusted to Mr. Canning, and Lord Eldon was succeeded as Chancellor by the present Lord Lyndhurst. He resigned the Seals on the 30th April 1827. "I have now," he said, "taken my farewell of office; the King behaved to me with kindness and feeling;" and, we may also add, from knowing the Chancellor's habits of life, he gave him a tankard for his potations, parcel-gilt. His high office he had held about a quarter of a century. Lord Eldon's life was prolonged for ten years after this period; but we have no room left to record the events, though, as his biographer says, "He still faithfully served his country-opposing the weight of his years, of his abilities, and his character, against the rash delusions of the time-and, with steadfast and calm disregard to all the odds of passion and power, defending to his latest strength the institu : It is, we tions which his manhood had been devoted to maintain." think, principally seen in his opposition to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts; in 1828 also against the Catholic Claims, proposed by Lord Lansdowne; and again in 1829, at which time the account he gives of the state of vacillation in which he found the King in his interviews with him, is very curious; he talked of going to the baths abroad-flung * Vol. ii. p. 556, Lord Eldon says, in a letter to his daughter, that the profits of the Chancellorship are a little more than 9,000l. his receipts in bankruptcy 4,000l. more. If so, the Law is not so well paid as the Church, for the bishoprick of London is at this time worth 40,000l. per annum !! But see vol. iii. p. 315, where it appears, from a fuller statement, that his profits from the Chancellorship for the whole period were 14,7001. per annum. his arms around Lord Eldon's neck-asked what he was to fall back upon, and seems never to have prepared himself for meeting the most important question agitated in his reign. Probably, when Lord Eldon left him, he fell back on a paté of foie gras and a bottle of Burgundy: but the venerable and strong-minded statesman was attached to Georget he Fourth, and with cause, for he had distinguished him by political favour and personal friendship. Once, he told him, he hated no man so much. The last great question which occupied the attention of a man now in his 80th year was the Reform Bill; to this he vainly opposed all his remaining strength. In 1831 he lost the old and faithful companion of his life. Lady Eldon expired on the 29th June, and from this affliction he never wholly recovered. Almost sixty years had elapsed since he received the fair burthen in his arms, as she descended from the window of her father's house, and for this long period she had faithfully shared in all his fortunes --with cheerfulness to the privations of early life, and with modest retirement during the splendour of his later. We know few things more discordant to our minds than the laborious lawyer and his dashing, fashionable, and expensive wife. If women wish to be gay, they should eschew a marriage into the learned professions. Lord Eldon's medical adviser had come to an opinion that his health would be benefited by frequent movements through long columns of air. From this time therefore, through the remainder of his life, he travelled a good deal, and sometimes with no other object than the journey itself. He visited his friends and estates in the North-looked on the scenes and surviving companions of his youthful days, and occasionally went to Encombe. In 1832 he lost his second son, who died in July of that year. In this year he had so much recovered his health as to be able to walk to the top of the Encombe Hills, a favourite spot, commanding extensive views of land and sea. He also dined at the Bench table, in the Middle Temple Hall, with the members of the Society. The 8th of June was the last day he ever sat judicially as a Privy Councillor. In the autumn of 1834 he was subpoenaed on a trial by an attorney; when he appeared to take his seat the whole Bar respectfully rose, and again when he stood up to be sworn. Mr. Twiss says, "That was probably the only case where a Lord Chancellor was defendant (Brougham), an ex-Lord Chancellor witness (Eldon), and another ex-Lord Chancellor the judge (Lyndhurst)." In this year he was received with great honours at the Installation at Oxford. He was particularly pleased when leaving the theatre some one cried out, "There is old Eldon-cheer him, for he never ratted." was much delighted, for I never did rat. I will not say I have been right through life: I may have been wrong-but I will say that I have been consistent." In the formation of Sir R. Peel's government in 1835, from Lord Eldon's great age and growing infirmities, no tender of office was made to him; but the minister conveyed to him an outline of his political views, and Lord Eldon still continued to interest himself in the political measures of the country, acting himself according to the advice he gave to the landlord at Rushyford, "Busy people are apt to think a life of leisure a life of happiness; but when a man who has been much occupied arrives at having nothing to do, he is very apt not to know what to do with himself." In 1836 he lived to witness the death of Lord Stowell's only son, and shortly after of the father himself; whose infirmity of mind had spared him the painful knowledge of the great affliction that had befallen him. In September 1836 we find his medical adviser, Mr. Pen "I nington, at Encombe, and Lord Eldon suffering under some disease, which is not named, but which was pronounced fatal. In March 1837 he announced by letter to each member of the family the separation between Mr. Bankes and Lady Frances. In June he had a small family party to celebrate his birthday, and his cheerful manner and pleasant conversation was noticed by his friends. He spent the autumn of the year 1837 partly at Encombe and partly in another journey to the North, Mr. Pennington describing him as never more cheerful or more abundant in anecdote and other pleasant conversation. In November he went to the House of Lords, and paid personally a handsome compliment to Lord Cottenham, on the high reputation he had acquired in his office. From this time his strength rapidly decayed-he was affected by the cold of the severe winter that was then commencing; and, after being confined for some days to his room and bed, he expired in the afternoon of January 13th, at a quarter past four. On the 26th he was buried in the chapel of Kingston, near Encombe. The biographer, at the conclusion of his narrative, has added the testimonials given by the highest authorities of the law to Lord Eldon's qualifications for the station he held; testimonials coming not from personal friends but from those opposed to him, and that constantly and conscientiously in political life and general policy,-from Sir Samuel Romilly, from Lord Brougham ;-he also has given much information worthy of attention on the one accusation which alone seemed to be justly founded, viz. his delay in giving judgment. We must, however, on these points refer to the work itself, and must content ourselves with recording in these pages the opinion of an eminent civilian and well-known writer, who was well acquainted with Lord Eldon's acquirements and the practice of his court. "In profound, extensive, and accurate knowledge of the principles of his court," says Mr. C. Butler, "and the rules of practice which regulate its proceedings, in complete recollection and just appreciation of former decisions,-in discerning the inferences to be justly drawn from them, in the power of instantaneously applying this immense theoretical and practical knowledge to the business immediately before the court,--in per ceiving almost with intuitive readiness, on the first opening of the case, its real state, and the ultimate conclusion of equity upon it, yet investigating it with the most conscienticus, most minute, and most edifying industry,-in all or in any of these requisites for a due discharge of his high office, Lord Eldon, if he has been equalled, has assuredly never been surpassed, by any of his predecessors," &c. When Lord Eldon read this just and handsome eulogy by one who had knowledge to estimate his merits correctly, and taste to describe them elegantly, he observed to him, "I have ventured to think that my life exhibits a remarkable proof of what may be done in a free country by moderate talents and never-ceasing industry; but I never presumed to think that I had the merits you have pleased to think it good to ascribe to me. I have felt more consolation than I can express in reading in a part of your work what a considerable person * stated in answer to the imputation of being *This passage, as it is the declaration of one eminent man which applies to another, we give. When his son told him that the public accused him of dilatoriness, he answered, " My child, when you shall have read what I have read, seen what I have seen, and heard what I have heard, you will feel that if, on any subject, you know much there may be also much that you do not know; and that something even of what you know may not, at the moment, be in your recollection :-you will then too be sensible of the mischievous and often ruinous consequences of even a small error |