THE LIFE AND CHARGES OF BARON ALDERSON.*

THIS volume is rather a memorial of filial piety, than an absolute requirement of the public. The late Baron Alderson was well known as a judge, and somewhat conspicuous as a judicial wit ; but he did not as a judge fill so great a space in the nation's eye as Ellenborough, Bayley, or Tenterden ; nor did he display (for he had) those personal qualities which made Denman so popular. It should be said in fairness that the professional estimate of Baron Alderson was higher than ours, perhaps owing to one rea- son that has influenced our judgement. His decisions (whatever his private opinion might be) struck us as leaning more to technical law than to substantial justice. He had too with some of his brethren an unconscious tendency to encroach upon the province of the jury ; deciding questions as points of law, which ultimately rested upon the conclusion drawn from facts, which it was not the business of the bench to determine. What was called his wit, appeared to us as being oddity of remark, owing its effect to man- ner, and the place of the utterer, rather than to mental qualities ; though beyond all doubt he intended jocularity, and often

joke. But a But the book if not absolutely wanted is very welcome. The late Baron Alderson was a remarkable man, a conscientious judge according to his own nature, and very estimable in the social and domestic relations. His career is an example of what good abili- ties combined with industry and method will effect towards ad- vancing a man in life ; for though his family was highly respect- able and his father sufficiently distinguished at the btu. to be Re- corder of Norwich, Yarmouth, and Ipswich, connection does not seem to have much influenced his own advancement. It was use- less in enabling him to carry off the three great Cambridge honours of Senior wrangler, First Smith's Prize, and First Medalist, 1809—a series of triumphs only once before united in one person, Mr. Brandish in 1773. Neither will connection, whatever it may do in the lower walks of legal business, sustain a man in the first rank, to which Alderson attained early. Still less will it make a stuff gown a judge at forty-three, which was Alderson's fortune, and without political or other notoriety, for he was never in Parliament ; neither was he a forward partizan in politics, or anything else. These portions of his oareer are sufficiently done in the volume before us, without being overdone. They challenge the aspirant's attention, as a worthy example of a youth and man steadily applying himself to the labours of learning and a profession, without losing sight of literature, and the true enjoyments of life. The application must, however, be made in- dividually, according to each one's case; for mere moiling will go but a little way, and every student, who is to excel, must adopt methods suited to his own nature. Mr. Alderson gives a glimpse of his father's ; but they were not his only advantage. They were united to abilities of a peculiar kind, though we do not think the judge had either great depth or great strength of character.

"That faculty [memory] was early strengthened and improved by artifi- cial means ; and by nothing more than by the two rules laid down in the following extract, in which, in after life, he is only recommending to an- other what he had long practised himself.

"'What we wish to remember we should attend to, so as to understand it perfectly, fixing our attention specially on its most important and dis- tinctive features. We should disengage our minds for the moment from other things, that we may attend effectually to that which is before us. No man will read with much advantage who cannot empty his mind at pleasure of other subjects, and does not bring to the author he reads an intellect neither troubled with care nor agitated with pleasure. If the mind bo filled with other matters, how can it receive new ideas? It is a good practice to improve the memory, and far better than making notes or transcribing pus- Selections from the Charges and other detached Pqpers of Pares Alderson. With an Introductory Notice of his Life, by Charles Alderson, M.A. Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. Published by Parker and Son.

sages at the time, to read carefully, and after the lapse of some days to write an abstract of what has been read. And this will give us the habit of stor- ing up for future use our immediate acquisitions in knowledge. Again, memory is assisted by an orderly arrangement of the thoughts. It is ob- vious that in recollecting a speech or discourse that is most easily recalled in which the argument proceeds from one step to another by regular induc- tion. So we ought to conduct our studies ; otherwise our knowledge being in confusion, our memory will be defective.' "But by far the most characteristic feature of his mind was the habit of picking up information at all times and on all points, the most varied and dissimilar. The 'observing faculty' was never asleep, being constantly exercised upon all that came in his way deserving of notice; and if know- ledge of some kind or other was to be acquired, the opportunity was never lost. From his boyhood, the habits of an animal, the structure of a plant, was in his eyes full of interest ; and thus early in life, from his personal observation, no less than from books, of which he was an indefatigable reader, he began to amass the fund of general information which distin- guished him as a man, and which embraced, to some extent, an infinity of subjects."

Baron Alderson's gradual but steady and early rise at the bar is distinctly exhibited in the biography. It was, however, so regularly continuous and so independent, save in one or two particular towns, of mere luck, or unexpected opportunity, that there is little of marked feature, nothing of startling incident to quote, though interesting to trace. His career as a judge was not distinguished by what may be termed beacon trials, or ruling eases. His charges excited attention less, we think, from great legal mastery or pro- foundness, than from their popular application to passing occur- enoes ; as the charge at Dorchester in 1831 upon the rioters : or that of 1848 upon the chartists; or in 1854 upon reformatory schools. Some of his judgments were on cases of importance, as in Miller versus Salomons, raised to try the legal import of the words "on the true faith of a Christian," which the advocates of the Jew Bill contended where not a substantial part of the oath. Another on a question of tithes, is popularly remarkable for the wasteful expenses to which the parties must have been put, and the enforcement of Boileau's moral, endorsed by Pope, of the oyster and the shells—" 'Twas a fat oyster, lire an peace, adieu." The note is by the Baron himself.

"This decree was reversed in the House of Lords by Lord Cottenham, on the ground that it was imperative to send it to law for determination. But Lord Ellesmere, in the time of James I., was more liberal. In Tomley v. Clinch, Cary's Reports, p. 23, he refused in a suit between Muller plume and Bastard Eigne to send it to law, and gave this reason—that it was a thing long past, and rested not properly in notice de pais, but was to be dis- cerned by books and deeds, of which the Court was better able to judge than a jury of ploughmen. In this case the result was, that being sent to law, there were two trials. On the first the defendant succeeded, on the ground that the plaintiff was barred by the Statute of Limitations. On motion a new trial was granted ; and on the second trial, and after a delay of four years, the Judge at Nisi Prins read my judgment to the jury, who adopted

It was, after all, compromised. E. H. A."

Although as a judge appearing somewhat disposed to rigid, not to say technical interpretation, and with a turn for science in general, particularly mathematics, Baron Alderson had yet a yearning for the belles lettres, and cultivated verse. Whether he would have excelled as a poet, had he devoted himself to poetry, we cannot tell; but we opine not. His subjects are various—" from grave to gay, from lively to severe " ; his exe- cution is that of the well-trained scholar, smooth versification, poetical imagery and diction, no limping lines, with a degree of animation not often found in social effusions, or even in published " poems." But we doubt if he had the fervid spirit, or perhaps the originality indispensable for the true disciple of Apollo ; and these no labour can give. The well selected pieces scattered through the life, as illustrating some incident or occasion of that life are always readable and mostly not without interest. But we prefer a translation from the appendix. It is a well known, subject from Anacreon.

"I'm often by the women told, 'Anacreon, you're growing old; Come, take a glass, yourself survey, Those hairs, the few still left, are grey ; Look at the wrinkles in your face, Your figure, too, has lost its grace.'

Now, truly, whether this be so, I neither know, nor care to know; But this I know, and will maintain, That if but few short years remain, If life so soon must take its flight, And I must bid the world good night, 'Tis time to catch each passing hour, To cull the sweets from every flower, And try, by frolic and by fun, To live at least ten years in one."

Lest these strains should be thought unseemly in a judge, we must say that there is a reply to them, written in a religious vein ; but many readers will prefer the judge as an interpreter, rather than as a preacher.

After all, the best aspect of Baron Alderson is that of a man ; and for that portraiture reference must be made to the volume. There will be found, partly under his own hand, partly in descrip- tions and anecdotes from the pen of his son, the picture of a con- scientious, pious, yet tolerant man' not always unchallengeable in his views, but always anxious to think as well as to do rightly. He comes before the reader laborious and persevering in his work, genial in his relaxations, simple in his tastes, with a well-spring of human feeling and domestic affections ever flowing. The re- spectable tone and good taste of the volume, as well as of the life it narrates, is a refreshing thing in these days of insignificant, canting, or flashy biographies. And the close was worthy of the career—a euthanasia.

"He had accepted an invitation to spend a few days at Beechwood Park, in Hertfordshire, the seat of Sir Thomas Sebright, and had left London on the 3d of January to fulfil his engagement. On the second evening of his visit he was attacked with sudden giddiness and unconsciousness, which, however alarming at the time, appeared, after an interval of considerable length, to yield to the remedies applied, and he was removed in what seemed a convalescent state to town. There, after a delusive rally, the affection of the brain, whatever its precise nature, proceeded with gradual, but rapidly gradual, strides—first taking the form of a strange quietude, and lack of in- terest in the scene passing around, and resulting finally in deep sleep, and total unconsciousness. Between these two stages of the disorder there were times when the stupor was apparently lightened, and he even spoke ; but its progress could never be seriously arrested. Once, at a comparatively early od of his illness, upon the conclusion of a chapter of the Bible which

been read aloud to him, after a long meditative silence, he broke forth, with something of his old earnestness of manner, with an exclamation on the absence of all sectarian spirit in the portions of the Bible inserted by the Reformers in the Prayer-Book ; and once again, a few days later, he opened his eyes to recognize, and address with the fondest affection, each in- dividual around his bed—to express, with something almost of rapture, but with perfect calmness, his joy in having those whom he most loved around him, and to join with them in receiving the Holy Communion. One ex- pression, and one only, throughout the whole course of his illness, bore any reference to his own state, when, in answer to the inquiry how he felt, ad- dressed to him on the latter of the two occasions which have been men- tioned, he exclaimed briefly, but characteristically, 'The worse, the better for me.' This was the last of these few transient intervals of revival ; the rest was all unbroken slumber, out bf which he had been only temporarily aroused, and into which be almost suddenly relapsed. For ten days more he lay with no material change in his condition, at the end of which time it became clear that he was rapidly sinking; and on the afternoon of January 27th, 1857, in the same perfect repose, with two gentle sighs, he breathed his last."

His biographer appears to think that the death was rather pre- mature, occasioned by incessant employment of the mind. And it may be so. But Baron Alderson had reached his threescore years and ten, having been born in 1787. The other leading dates of his life were his entrance to the University in 1805, and to the Middle Temple in 1809; his call to the bar in 1811: his marriage in 1823; and his appointment as a judge in 1830.