Lord Justice Thesiger died on Wednesday, at the early age
of 42, after having held his office of Judge of Appeal for only three years,—years long enough, however, to show his eminent qualification for the place into which he was put, over the heads of many accomplished and eminent Judges. He died from an unusual and distressing cause, the extension of an inflam-
mation of the ear into the brain. The late Lord Justice was born in 1838, and was educated at the Common-Law Bar, but had gained so wide a knowledge of Equity, that he was as much trusted in relation to Equity cases as to cases of Common Law. He was only called to the Bar in 1862, and became a Queen's Counsel in 1873, and a Bencher of the Inner Temple in the following year. He was made a Judge of Appeal in 1877, when he was but thirty-nine years of age. A career of more wonderful success, and yet more devoid of any sensational element except that of success itself, has hardly ever been known. In part, no doubt, his early promotion was meant as compensation for his father's loss in not returning to the Lord Chancellorship, on Mr. Disraeli's accession to power in 1868. But his success could not have been what it was, had it not been in great part earned. To lose so young a Judge of Appeal is a double loss to the public,—a loss to be measured by our reasonable expectations, even more than by our past experience.
