fully seen and appreciated when he became (in 1865) a Queen's Counsel,
and brought him with unusual speed to the front rank. He came into
Parliament at the general election of 1868 on the Liberal side, and
three years later was made Solicitor-General in Mr. Gladstone's first
Government, retaining, as was then usual, his private practice, which
had become so large that there was scarcely any case of first-rate
importance brought into the Chancery Courts in which he did not
appear. Although a decided Liberal, as the Jews mostly were until Lord
Beaconsfield's foreign policy had begun to lead them into other paths,
he had borne little part in politics till he took his seat in the
House of Commons; and when he spoke there, he obtained no great
success. Lawyers in the English Parliament are under the double
disadvantage of having had less leisure than most other members to
study and follow political questions, and of having contracted a
manner and style of speaking not suited to an assembly which, though
deliberative, is not deliberate, and which listens with impatience to
a technical or forensic method of treating the topics which come
before it.

Jessel's ability would have soon overcome the former difficulty, but
less easily the latter. Though he was lucid and powerful in his
treatment of legal topics, and made a quite admirable law officer in
the way of advising ministers and the public departments, he was never
popular with the House of Commons, for he presented his views in a
hard, dry, dogmatic form, with no graces of style or delivery.
However, he did not long remain in that arena, but on the retirement
of Lord Romilly from the office of Master of the Rolls, was in 1873
appointed to succeed him. In this post his extraordinary gifts found
their amplest sphere. The equity judges in England used always to sit,
and in nearly all cases do still sit, without a jury to hear causes,
with or without witnesses, and they despatch a great deal of the
heaviest business that is brought into the courts. Commercial causes
of the first importance come before them, no less than those which
relate to trusts or to real property; and the granting of injunctions,
a specially serious matter, rests chiefly in their hands. Each equity
judge sits alone, and the suitor may choose before which of them he
will bring his case. Among the four--a number subsequently increased
to five--equity judges of first instance, Jessel immediately rose to
th