close remains to be told. Lady Villiers looked on her husband
as the hateful object of a forced union, and nearly drove him mad; while
she disgraced herself by such loose conduct as to be condemned to stand
in a white sheet, and I believe at length obtained a divorce. Thus a
marriage, projected by ambition, and prosecuted by violent means,
closed with that utter misery to the parties with which it had
commenced; and for our present purpose has served to show, that when a
lawyer like Coke holds his "high-handed tyrannical courses," the law of
nature, as well as the law of which he is "the oracle," will be alike
violated under his roof. Wife and daughter were plaintiffs or defendants
on whom this lord chief-justice closed his ear: he had blocked up the
avenues to his heart with "Law! Law! Law!" his "old song!"

Beyond his eightieth year, in the last parliament of Charles the First,
the extraordinary vigour of Coke's intellect flamed clear under the
snows of age. No reconciliation ever took place between the parties. On
a strong report of his death, her ladyship, accompanied by her brother,
Lord Wimbledon, posted down to Stoke-Pogis to take possession of his
mansion; but beyond Colebrook they met with one of his physicians coming
from him with the mortifying intelligence of Sir Edward's amendment, on
which they returned at their leisure. This happened in June, 1634, and
on the following September the venerable sage was no more!

OF COKE'S STYLE, AND HIS CONDUCT.

This great lawyer, perhaps, set the example of that style of railing and
invective in the courts, which the egotism and craven insolence of some
of our lawyers include in their practice at the bar. It may be useful to
bring to recollection Coke's vituperative style in the following
dialogue, so beautiful in its contrast with that of the great victim
before him! The attorney-general had not sufficient evidence to bring
the obscure conspiracy home to Rawleigh, with which, I believe, however,
he had cautiously tampered. But Coke well knew that James the First had
reason to dislike the hero of his age, who was early engaged against the
Scottish interests, and betrayed by the ambidexterous policy of Cecil.
Coke struck at Rawleigh as a sacrifice to his own political ambition, as
we have seen he afterwards immolated his daughter; but his personal
hatred was now sharpened by the fine genius and elegant literature of
the man; faculties and acquisitions the lawyer