asant gratitude how Fitzjames courteously came down from the bench to
sit beside him and so enabled him to spare a voice which had been
weakened by illness. His comment is that Fitzjames concealed 'the
gentleness of a woman' under a stern exterior. So Mr. Henry Dickens
tells me of an action for slander in which he was engaged when a young
barrister. Both slanderer and slandered were employed in Billingsgate.
The counsel for the defence naturally made a joke of sensibility to
strong language in that region. Mr. Dickens was in despair when he saw
that the judge and jury were being carried away by the humorous view of
the case. Knowing the facts, he tried to bring out the serious injury
which had been inflicted. Fitzjames followed him closely, became more
serious, and summed up in his favour. When a verdict had been returned
accordingly, he sent a note to this effect:--'Dear Dickens, I am very
grateful to you for preventing me from doing a great act of injustice.'
'He was,' says Mr. Dickens, 'one of the fairest-minded men I ever knew.'
His younger son has described to me the kindness with which he
encouraged a young barrister--the only one who happened to be
present--to undertake the defence of a prisoner, and helped him through
a difficult case which ended by an acquittal upon a point of law. 'I
only once,' says my nephew, 'heard him interrupt counsel defending a
prisoner,' except in correcting statements of fact. The solitary
exception was in a case when palpably improper matter was being
introduced.

In spite of his patience, he occasionally gave an impression of
irritability, for a simple reason. He was thoroughly determined to
suppress both unfairness and want of courtesy or disrespect to the
court. When a witness or a lawyer, as might sometimes happen, was
insolent, he could speak his mind very curtly and sharply. A powerful
voice and a countenance which could express stern resentment very
forcibly gave a weight to such rebukes, not likely to be forgotten by
the offender. He had one quaint fancy, which occasionally strengthened
this impression. Witnesses are often exhorted to 'watch his lordship's
pen' in order that they may not outrun his speed in taking notes. Now
Fitzjames was proud of his power of rapid writing (which, I may remark,
did not include a power of writing legibly). He was therefore nervously
irritable when a witness received the customary exhortation: 'If you
watch my pen,' he said to a witness, 'I wi