Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 1

[337] rotation it belonged to tend-out in this manner, were present in order to constitute the quorum. These happened to be, as Dr. Lushington explained to me, Lord Sudeley, who is quite skilled in architecture, and Lord Mostyn, who is a great fox-hunter. There they sat from ten o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon, with their legs stretched on the red benches, and endeavoring by all possible change of posture to wear away the time. The Attorney-General told me that ‘it would be thought quite indecorous in either of them to interfere by saying a word.’ You have asked about the characters of judges. I should not omit that of the Lord Chancellor.¹ He did not once open his lips, I think, from the beginning to the end of the hearing. I am astonished at the concurring expressions of praise which I hear from every quarter. He has been all his days a devoted student of the law; and, I believe, of nothing else. Clark, the reporter, also author of the book on Colonial Law, told me that he had ‘most magnificently disappointed the profession;’ and that Tories as well as Whigs would be sorry to see him obliged, by any political change, to abandon the great seal. Dr. Lushington also spoke of him in the highest terms, as did the Attorney-General. When I pressed Lushington into a comparison of Cottenham with Brougham, he evidently gave the former the preference. Lushington² himself is a great man; one of the ablest men in England. I owe his acquaintance to the Attorney-General. Dr. L. told me that Brougham, when Chancellor, nearly killed himself and all his bar; that, during the passage of the Reform Bill in the Commons, he sat in the Lords from ten o'clock in the forenoon till ten at night; and Lushington was in constant attendance here, and was obliged to repair from the Lords to the Commons, where he was kept nearly all night. The consequence was that Lushington did not recover from the effects of this over-exertion for fifteen months. Dr. L. told me that he had practised a great deal before Lord Stowell,³ and that he was the greatest judge he ever knew; that he was rapid as lightning,—more rapid even than Brougham, besides being more uniformly attentive, and of course safe; he comprehended the whole of an argument before it was half uttered. I incidentally mentioned your name to Dr. L., when he exclaimed: ‘Dear me! I have used his book constantly,—an admirable book, which we could not get along without.’ He said that you had raised some questions about marriage, which he did not