ship appeared on the ground at the head of his regiment, and was afterwards appointed to communicate the thanks of the commander in chief to all the officers of yeoman cavalry in West Kent.†

Lord Camden upon this occasion commanded the first corps of West Kent yeomanry, consisting of those of Seven-oaks, Tunbridge, Chislehurst, Greenwich and Woolwich, Queenborough and Sheppy, Tunbridge-wells and Deptford, Farningham, Cox. heath, and Cobham.

+ "SIR,

Wilderness, Augus' 2, 1799.

"I have the honour to enclose to you, by command of Lieutenant-general Sir Robert Lawrie, the general orders of Field-marshal the Duke of York, and also the general orders of General Sir Charles Grey, which I request you will communicate to the squadron which you command.

"It affords me the highest gratification to become the channel through which this marked and well-deserved applause is communicated to you, Sir, and to those who are serving with you; and I shall ever esteem it among the most honourable circumstances of my life, to have been united with the yeomanry cavalry of West Kent, in that cause in which they have so efficiently and so gloziously embarked.

"I have the honour to remain, Sir,

"Your obedient servant,

"CAMDEN."

"Mote Park, August 1, 1799.

"GENERAL ORDERS.

"Though his Majesty has already directed Mr. Secretary Dundas to express to the lord-lieutenant of Kent, and lord-warden of the Cinque Ports, his thanks for the zeal and loyalty of the gentlemen, yeomanry, and volunteers of the county of Kent, yet his Majesty cannot leave the field without ordering the commander in chief to take this opportunity of conveying to them the heartfelt satisfaction which his Majesty has received from the appearance and conduct which he has witnessed this day.

(Signed)

"FREDERICK, F. M."

His lordship was busily employed in military affairs, as colonel of the West Kent regiment of volunteers, when, in consequence of a late revolution in the ministry, he was once more called upon to act along with his former colleague Mr. Pitt. He must be allowed during the short period of his administration to have been peculiarly fortunate, for the first act, as minister at war, announced the capture of the valu able settlement of Surinam; while in his first official attempt in the house of peers he found means to carry the defence bill, which had so agitated the house of commons, without difficulty, and almost without a struggle.

SIR JAMES MANSFIELD,

CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE COMMON PLEAS.

IT is an observation of Addison's in the Freeholder, that since the reign of Henry the Seventh, the chief posts of honour and trust in the state have been filled by men below the rank of nobility, who have almost uniformly been chosen from the profes sion of the law. To the particular epoch in which that great writer first ventured this remark, we must impute what he has alledged to be the grounds of this preference with the Sovereign; a disinclination on the part of men of high birth and honour to be depen. dent on his caprice, or instrumental to his tyranny, which necessarily compelled him to seek his ministers among such as were ambitious of no other rewards but royal favour, and who, as tools of his own mak

ing, he might use or lay aside at pleasure. It is highly creditable to the profession that this satire is no longer just, though the observation of Addison is strengthened by daily experience, and become more applicable to the present than to any former æra. The business of government is now more scientific; it requires a kind of regular training, and the first elements of its knowledge must be studied in the profession of the law. As governments grow older they become more intricate in their system of action; the features of infancy are scarcely discernible; the traces of simplicity which once characterised them are worn away by the lapse of time, and such is the accumulation of statute law, that to those whose business it is to enact it, the original principles are no less an object of study than to the lawyer himself. This profession, therefore, is now the only path to eminence in the state, and is, indeed, a kind of focus which draws to itself, as a centre, the brightest flashes of intellectual strength, and the scattered rays of a thousand minds.

James Mansfield was born at Ringwood, in Hampshire, about the year 1738: his father was a provincial attorney, in very extensive and respectable business. Of the origin of his family very little is known. The elder Mr. Mansfield had, however, acquired a very considerable independent fortune by his business, and he seems to have had no intention of educating his son James for the law, being persuaded that he could leave him in sufficient affluence without the necessity of a profession. At an early age he was removed to Eton, and went through the usual course

of

of academical studies with a proficiency that may be easily guessed. Some time after he had been at school, his father, who had retired from business, removed to the neighbourhood of Windsor, with a view of superintending the education of his son during the numerous vacations of that seminary. Old Mr. Mansfield, though a country attorney, was a man of more enlargement of mind and skill in business than commonly belongs to this class: he himself was, in the true sense of the word, a polite and liberal scholar, and perhaps the benefits which his son received under his superintendance were greater than any which he owed to his alma mater. The original name of the family, we are informed, was Manfield; but the old gentleman, on his retiring from business, and quitting his former circle of friends and acquaintances in Hampshire, resolved to add an s after the first syllable; this was accordingly effected, and both he and his posterity were denominated Mansfield.

The incidents of the life of a school-boy are of little importance, but as they throw a lustre and a character upon his future fortune. The friendships which are formed at a great seminary are said to be remarkable for their stability and ardour; but this notion is too widely received, and the reverse is too often exhibited. When two boys, of an equality of birth and for tune, are educated together at a public school, transplanted to the same university, and again shuffled together in the walks of life, their original intimacy is rendered more intense, and becomes more closely cemented; but when, from whatever cause, any link

in this chain of connection is broken; if that disparity of rank and fortune, which was not perceptible at school or at college, should at length be manifest when they are acting on a more mature scene, it ope rates, like all other unequal intimacies, to the certain mortification of the poorer student, and is seldom encouraged but to gratify the pride of patronage, or the insolence of protection.

Foote, who was an excellent judge of human life, very admirably ridicules this extravagant notion in parents, when he introduces Cadwallader deliberating with his wife whether he should send his boy Dickey to Westminster, in order to contract an intimacy with the son of an eminent stock-jobber, who was to buy him a borough and put him into parliament when he was old enough to sit; or whether he should send him to Eton, with a view of his forming a close friendship with the son of a noble peer, who should afterwards advance him in the state. Among the intimacies of the early life of Mr. Mansfield, the most distinguished and memorable was that which was contracted with the celebrated Charles Townshend, the wonder and the meteor of his day. This gentleman was a true genius in politics, and had powers of eloquence and humour which were never before equalled in the scnate. Mr. Mansfield was a contemporary of this cele brated man at the university of Cambridge, to which he removed on the completion of his studies at Eton. Here they were, in a degree, matched against each other; the different estimations which were formed of their talents divided their acquaintances into parties,