oup. The protest was
sufficient to prevent the contemplated attack being made, but the
Liberals returned to power in good time with a large majority behind
them in 1868. Coleridge was made, first solicitor-, and then
attorney-general.

As early as 1863 a small body of Oxford men in parliament had opened
fire against the legislation which kept their university bound by
ecclesiastical swaddling clothes. They had made a good deal of progress
in converting the House of Commons to their views before the general
election of 1865. That election having brought Coleridge into
parliament, he was hailed as a most valuable ally, whose great
university distinction, brilliant success as an orator at the bar, and
hereditary connexion with the High Church party, entitled him to take
the lead in a movement which, although gathering strength, was yet very
far from having achieved complete success. The clerically-minded section
of the Conservative party could not but listen to the son of Sir John
Coleridge, the godson of Keble, and the grand-nephew of the man who had
been an indirect cause of the Anglican revival of 1833,--for John Stuart
Mill was right when he said that the poet Coleridge and the philosopher
Bentham were, so far as England was concerned, the leaders of the two
chief movements of their times: "it was they who taught the teachers,
and who were the two great seminal minds."

Walking up one evening from the House of Commons to dine at the
Athenaeum with Henry Bruce (afterwards Lord Aberdare) and another
friend, Coleridge said: "There is a trial coming on which will be one of
the most remarkable _causes celebres_ that has ever been heard of." This
was the Tichborne case, which led to proceedings in the criminal courts
rising almost to the dignity of a political event. The Tichborne trial
was the most conspicuous feature of Coleridge's later years at the bar,
and tasked his powers as an advocate to the uttermost, though he was
assisted by the splendid abilities and industry of Charles (afterwards
Lord) Bowen. In November 1873 Coleridge succeeded Sir W. Bovill as chief
justice of the common pleas, and was immediately afterwards raised to
the peerage as Baron Coleridge of Ottery St Mary. In 1880 he was made
lord chief justice of England on the death of Sir Alexander Cockburn.

In jury cases his quickness in apprehending facts and his lucidity in
arranging them were very remarkable indeed. He was not one of the most
learned of