merely a _dilettanti_, fanciful judge, who played at my Lord
Chancellor, and busied himself with quibbles and punctilios as an idle
hobby and harmless illusion. The phlegm of the Chancellor's disposition
gives one almost a surfeit of impartiality and candour: we are sick
of the eternal poise of childish dilatoriness; and would wish law and
justice to be decided at once by a cast of the dice (as they were in
Rabelais) rather than be kept in frivolous and tormenting suspense. But
there is a limit even to this extreme refinement and scrupulousness
of the Chancellor. The understanding acts only in the absence of the
passions. At the approach of the loadstone, the needle trembles, and
points to it. The air of a political question has a wonderful tendency
to brace and quicken the learned Lord's faculties. The breath of a court
speedily oversets a thousand objections, and scatters the cobwebs of his
brain. The secret wish of power is a thumping _make-weight,_ where all
is so nicely-balanced beforehand. In the case of a celebrated beauty and
heiress, and the brother of a Noble Lord, the Chancellor hesitated long,
and went through the forms, as usual: but who ever doubted, where all
this indecision would end? No man in his senses, for a single instant!
We shall not press this point, which is rather a ticklish one. Some
persons thought that from entertaining a fellow-feeling on the subject,
the Chancellor would have been ready to favour the Poet-Laureat's
application to the Court of Chancery for an injunction against Wat
Tyler. His Lordship's sentiments on such points are not so variable, he
has too much at stake. He recollected the year 1794, though Mr. Southey
had forgotten it!--

The personal always prevails over the intellectual, where the latter is
not backed by strong feeling and principle. Where remote and speculative
objects do not excite a predominant interest and passion, gross and
immediate ones are sure to carry the day, even in ingenuous and
well-disposed minds. The will yields necessarily to some motive or
other; and where the public good or distant consequences excite no
sympathy in the breast, either from short-sightedness or an easiness of
temperament that shrinks from any violent effort or painful emotion,
self-interest, indolence, the opinion of others, a desire to please, the
sense of personal obligation, come in and fill up the void of public
spirit, patriotism, and humanity. The best men in the world in thei