that separation between class and class, which is the great curse of British society, and for which we all, in our respective spheres, are in some degree more or less responsible. This separation is more complete in this district, by its very necessities and condition, than in agricultural districts, where there is a resident gentry who are enabled to shower around them not only the blessings of their beneficence and active kindness, but to stimulate by their example. It is so much a part of our English character, that I fear we all of us keep too much aloof from those dependent upon us, and they are thus too much encouraged to look upon us with suspicion. Even to our servants, we think that we have done our duty in our sphere when we have performed our contracts with them -when we have paid them the wages we contracted to pay them-when we have treated them with that civility which our habits and feelings induce us to render, and when we curb our temper and refrain from any violent expression toward them. And yet how painful the thought, that we have men and women growing up around us, ministering to our comforts, supplying our wants, and continual inmates of our dwellings, with whose affections and tempers we are as little acquainted as if they were the inhabitants of some other sphere. This feeling arises from a kind of reserve, which is perhaps peculiar to the English character, and which greatly tends to prevent that mingling of class with class that reciprocation of kind words and gentle affections-those gracious admonitions and kind inquiries which, often more than any book education, tend to the cultivation of the affections of the heart and the elevation of the character of those of whom we are the trustees. And if I were asked what is the great want of English society, I would say that it is the mingling of class with class; I would say, in one word, that that want is the want of sympathy.

"No doubt that the exciting cause in the far larger number of these cases-the exciting cause that every judge has to deplore in every county of this land-is that which was justly called in the admirable discourse to which I listened yesterday from the sheriff's chaplain, the greatest English vice,' which makes us a by-word and a reproach among nations who in other respects are inferior to us, and have not the same noble principles of

Christianity to guide and direct them-I mean the vice of drunkenness. One great evil of this circumstance is, I think you will find, looking at the depositions one after another, that it is a mere repetition of the same story over again-of some man who has gone from public house to public house, spending his money and exhibiting his money, and is marked out by those who observe him as the fitting object for plunder, when his senses are obscured, and who is made the subject of an attack under those circumstances which enable the parties to escape from the consequences; because although the story may be perfectly true which the prosecutor in this case tells-although it may be vividly felt by him-yet he is obliged to confess-;"

As he spoke the last word, the judge fell forward with his face upon his book, and then swayed on one side toward Mr. Sansom, his senior clerk, and his second son, Mr. Thomas Talfourd, his marshal, who caught him in their arms. Dr. Holland and Dr. Knight, two magistrates on the bench, had rushed to his assistance; and these gentlemen with Lord Talbot and others carried him out, still wearing his scarlet robes. But medical assistance was useless; the attack had been so violent that in less than five minutes he was dead.

Sir Thomas Talfourd rose unaided to very high honors from the middle rank of life. He mastered by patient labor and incessant industry the desired vantage ground from which to exercise his various and remarkable powers. He was a brilliant advocate, an orator surpassed by few; he has connected his name as a legislator with two important acts of parliament; he was a liberal and earnest politician; he was a working man of letters, a subtle critic, a successful poet; he was a judge as competent to his high functions, and conscientious in discharging them, as any who has worn the ermine. Notwithstanding such varied successes, and the rank to which they bore him, there was that in the man himself which was far beyond them all. He never sank in his transitory vocation what in his nature was permanent and noblest. He did not forfeit what a man should live for, that he might the better succeed in life. In him it was not possible that mere worldly success or a selfish and satisfied ambition

should "freeze the genial currents of the soul." There remained with him to the last the great art of living happily by the great means of diffusing happiness. The variety of his own accomplishments qualified him to judge largely of those of others, and he never was more forward to praise than where he had himself gained distinc

tion.

To say that he had no self-love would be to place him above human weakness, for this is a quality which resides in all men, with the difference that while it inclines some to please others, it inclines others only to please themselves. But with no less truth than feeling has a brother judge remarked of him, that the ruling purpose of his life was to do good to his fellow-creatures in his generation; and that it was this which made him always courteous and kind, generous, simplehearted, of great modesty, of the strictest honor, and of spotless integrity.

What it was he left most impressed upon his listeners, in his displays as an advocate, was the grace, the charm, the interest with which his own character and temperament invested his subject, no matter how dull it might be, how dry and uninviting. Nor was he ever a slave to that kind of advocacy which merges all sense of right, and the reserves of personal honor, in the mere interest or the mere passions of his client. He never aspired to take rank among the bravoes of the bar. He did not hold that any sort of duty to his client could ever so absolve him from his duty to himself as to justify either the wicked perversion of truth or the solemn asseveration of falsehood. In common with the greatest ornaments of his profession he had a sense of its strict responsibilities, which entered into every part of his practice of it. Even while his own feelings and sympathies were in most eager unison with the hopes and fears he represented, the most susceptible feelings in an adversary might trust themselves to his delicacy and forbearance. And on those rare occasions in a professional life, of which he had his share, when a really high issue challenged him to corresponding exertion, his courage was as remarkable as his genius.

The world is seldom unjust to such a man as Talfourd. It welcomes freely what is so frankly and generously offered, and such qualities go far to inspire the

feelings in which themselves have originated. No man ever descended to the grave more widely honored and respected even by those who did not personally know him, or more tenderly beloved by those who did. Well was it said in the Times that the only pang he ever caused to those who had the happiness of his friendship was by his untimely death. Nor should we perhaps call that untimely which followed fifty-nine years of glad endeavor and high success; which was withheld till enough had been done for fame, and enough for at least the moderate wants of those most dear to him; and which came when he was solemnly engaged in his highest duties, and when words of mercy and peace were on his lips. The latest breath of one whose whole life was kindness, was spent in a solemn enforcement of the duty of kindness to others. He was urging upon his countrymen, on behalf of the fallen and the falling, the need in which we all stand of "a reciprocation of kind words and gentle affections," when, as we have said, his voice was hushed forever.

Noble indeed would such a doctrine have been, and most fit to be delivered, if it had been no more than it was meant to be, a voice of mercy from the judgment seat, a voice of justice perhaps more true than speaks in many a judicial sentence. But the lofty pleading of the judge was also the true and personal conviction of the man. He was discharging his official duty; but he was urging not less the lesson of his own generous life, when he attributed the frequency of crimes to the denial of that best education which is given by the sympathy that should exist between high and low, by the active kindnesses and the gracious admonitions that ought to bind us more nearly to classes from which habits of reserve keep us now too proudly aloof. He was speaking that which he knew, and his breath, were it to cease forever during his grave utterance of that warning, could not expire in a strain more sweetly accordant with the whole life's music that had gone before. That such should be the end was the will of God; and never did robed and ermined judge, dying thus in open court in the fulfillment of his duty, meet a death so like that of a hero. With Talfourd's name the memory of his last hour can never cease to live.