collect to have seen in print a
fragment of a letter from his elder brother (afterwards Lord Stowell) to
a friend, in these words--"Have you seen what my foolish brother has
done? He has made a runaway match; he is utterly ruined." The opinion of
Moises, his schoolmaster, was equally decided. "Jack Scott has run off
with Bessy Surtees, and the poor lad is undone."

Scott entered as a student of the Middle Temple in January 1773. In six
years after, what was his progress? We have this letter from Lord
Stowell about 1779. "Business is very dull with poor Jack, very dull
indeed, and of consequence he is not very lively. I heartily wish that
business may brighten a little, or he will be heartily sick of his
profession. I do all I can to keep up his spirits, but he is very
gloomy. But mum, not a word of this to the wife of your bosom."

At length, however, day began to dawn, and his powerful understanding
and solid knowledge found the opportunity, which to such means is
generally all that is wanting. A conversation with an old friend lets us
into a curious trait of Lord Mansfield. "Was the Court of Chancery your
object when you first came to the bar?" asked Farrar. "Certainly not,"
answered Lord Eldon. "I first took my seat in the King's Bench; but I
soon perceived, or thought I perceived, a preference in Lord Mansfield
(the Chief Justice) for young lawyers who had been bred at Westminster
School and Christ Church; and so, as I had belonged to neither, I
thought I could not have fair chance with my fellows, and therefore I
crossed over to the other side of the hall. (The Courts of King's Bench
and Chancery were at that time on the opposite sides of Westminster
Hall.) Lord Mansfield, I believe, was not conscious of the bias; he was
a good man." Mansfield's goodness was sufficiently questioned by his
contemporaries; yet if he exhibited this bias, he could not have been a
just man. The cause which first made Scott known was Acroyd v. Smithson.
The question was--whether, in a property willed in fifteen shares to
fifteen people, one of them dying in the testator's lifetime, the lapsed
share did not belong to the heir at law. He argued the case before the
Master of the Rolls, Sir Thomas Sewell. "He has argued it very well,"
said Sewell. But he gave it against Scott. An appeal came before Lord
Thurlow. Scott argued his point. Thurlow took three days to consider,
and then gave his decision in favour of the heir-at-law--a decision
w