ued to display
upon the bench, as heretofore, the keenest perception, a resolute
obedience to the dictates of justice, high incorruptibility, great
learning, and thorough self-devotion to his beloved and chosen
occupation. He has been largely accused of favoring, in his early
manhood, the designs of the Pretender, yet, from the beginning to the
close of his public life, his fidelity to the reigning family could not
be called in question. He has been charged with gratifying prerogative at
the expense of law, yet the liberty of the law was never more perfect,
the rights of the subject were never more secure, than during his long
tenure of the judicial office. He has been stigmatized by Junius as an
oppressor of men's consciences, yet no man of his time regulated his
conduct with a stricter regard to the humanizing principle of religious
toleration. Had Lord Mansfield been faithless to the people his death
would never have been regarded as an irreparable loss by the whole
country; had he been a bigot, the world would never have lost the
treasures which it is said were consumed in the house burnt to the ground
by zealous Protestants eager to take the life as well as to destroy the
goods of Lord Mansfield, for no other reason than that he chose to hold
the scales of justice fairly and steadily between Protestant and
Catholic.

In his 82d year, having been absent scarcely a day from court, Lord
Mansfield retired to Tunbridge Wells for the benefit of his health. The
year following he resigned his office. For six years longer he lived in
dignified retirement, occupying himself in his garden, or refreshing his
mind with the works that had charmed and instructed his youth. To the
last he retained his memory, and, dying without a pain at the close of
the century, the man who had spent his happiest evenings with Pope was
destined to listen to all the horrors of the French Revolution, in common
with thousands living at the present hour. Lord Mansfield's death was
mourned as a national calamity; his remains were deposited in Westminster
Abbey, and they lie close to those of the Earl of Chatham. After the
stormy conflict of a glorious life, the two schoolboy rivals lie side by
side in silent and everlasting repose.

We have freely stated the one great deformity of Lord Mansfield's
character; his quailing before Lord Camden is but a solitary instance of
the fault that tarnished his otherwise brilliant career. When we have
said that