MR. GARROW.

THE father of this eminent barrister was a schoolmaster at Barnet in the county of Middlesex, and, as may be conjectured from his profession, added to his numerous offspring, in circumstances much removed from affluence. A character for learning, and great respectability in the neighbourhood, had, however, procured him the patronage of most of the gentlemen of the county, and his academy became so well filled that he was enabled to educate and support a large family in a style of decent and honourable competence. His brother, who lived at the same place, was first an apothecary and surgeon, and then a physician; he had indeed united the three branches of the profession with great advantage to bimself and patients, and, as he regularly possessed himself of the diploma, had nothing to apprehend from the jealousy and rivalry of his brethren. The circumstance of prescribing and mixing his own medicines, gave him a general monopoly about Barnet, and though often invited, he would never consent to remove to the metropolis. In the event he realised a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, which, on his death, devolved chiefly on his nephew, the subject of our present remarks.

Mr. Garrow was born about the year 1754, and received the first elements of education in his father's school. He was early destined to the profession of the law, and to occupy a much humbler sphere than thatin which he now moves. His father resolved to Ii2

place

place him with an attorney in the city, and articled him, accordingly, at the age of sixteen; but the ambition of the young man soared above the desk, and, in his hours of leisure, he devoted himself to the study of the law as a science abounding with principles and rational truths, and not as a series of precedents to be consulted on the file. It was, indeed, formerly one of the modes of legal education to place young men with attorneys and solicitors in order to teach the practice of the courts, but this has long given way to the present method of fixing them in the office of a special pleader, preparatory to their being called to the bar. Their employment in these offices is chiefly to copy precedents, and draw declarations and pleadings; they thus relieve the gentleman, with whom they are placed, of the most burthensome part of his business, and pay him infinitely better than his clients. A hundred pounds per annum is the stipend commonly received from every pupil, and scarcely is there a special pleader of any note but who has five or six of these legal clevés constantly copying at bis chambers. Indeed the emoluments of such gentlemen as are not dignified with a silk gown are principally derived from these academics, and, as it is a point of honour that no practising counsel within the bar should receive pupils, a very lucrative branch of business is thus monopolised by the younger barristers.

At this time Mr. Garrow had formed to himself

few presages of future greatness; the tissue of life was unfolded slowly, and with such faint promises as appeared to indicate nothing of that eminence to

which he has since arrived. A circumstance, however, occurred at this time which laid the foundation of his present fame, by throwing him, unexpectedly, into that branch of the profession to which he does so much honour. The attorney with whom he was placed in the city, retired from business with a good fortune, and Mr. Garrow's articles expired. This gentleman, who perceived and valued his talents, now advised his father to enter him of one of the inns of court, and place him for a year or two with a special pleader. The advice was followed, and Mr. Garrow now commenced a regular training for his profession: It is a matter of some astonishment to consider the many celebrated characters whom fortune, rather than self direction, has rendered eminent: men who had been lost in obscurity but for a happy concurrence of circumstances, which have taken them from the lumber room in which they have been long thrown by, and, almost in despite of themselves, in contradiction at least of all prognostics, have brightened and polished up into the objects of general admiration and utility. Sir Francis Drake entered the sea service in the fortysecond year of his age; Cromwell was as old when he became a soldier; and Coke, the oracle of the English law, was on the verge of forty when called to the bar. Of men who become eminent by accident, Mr. Garrow may be adduced as an example. It would be. useless to inquire his course of study, as this is a thing which modesty mostly keeps to itself, and vanity alone confesses. That he read with diligence and success may be conjectured from the progress he made, and

natural ambition of a young and powerful mind. Whether he had much of what is called genius, we pretend not to guess, but it is confessed on all sides, that powers of a bare mediocrity are sufficient to obtain eminence in this profession. It is, indeed, equally the excellence and evil of the law, that its dignities are not difficult of access; that the course of preparation is such as must qualify the most moderate abilities, and the mere habits of this necessary experience supply even the absence of natural talent. It is a scene of some humour in a French comedy, where a father is introduced consulting upon a plan of life for a hopeless son, and having rejected one profession as exacting intellectual, and another, as demanding pecuniary capital, he at length concludes upon the law, as that which appeared to him to demand least of either. It is not in any offensive sense that these observations are applied. Our English bar has long blossomed with the richest talents, and that ability, the first requisite of all governments, has been of late transplant, ed, with partial hand, from the benches of Westminster-hall to the chairs of both the senate-houses. If that vigour of natural powers, which we call genius, be not demanded of necessity as the sole means of forensic eminence, it would yet be absurd to deny that, even in this line, such genius is deprived of its natural prerogative. The powers of Bacon have long since given something of elegance to the monastic structure of our English code, and the liberal taste of Blackstone has concluded what his illustrious predecessor but commenced. The splendor, the illumi

nation,

nation, and the liberality of the belles lettres, have been thus grafted on the rough and knotted stock of jurisprudence, and the trec may now regard its own fruit with surprise.

-Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma.”

To return-In the intervals of reading Mr. Garrow thought necessary to exercise and encourage in himself a talent for which he was much noted when a boy; this talent is vulgarly called "spouting" the more polite call it the art of oratory; and, to the amazement of all foreigners, there is in England no institution to teach an art of so extensive and primary an use as elocution. It is thus that our English orators are every where remarked as aukward and ungraceful in their delivery, and as fixed and attentive only to the weight and cogency of their arguments, whilst they despise all the graces and the charms of speech. Although public speaking is so essential a part of legal education, the young student disdains to practise it, and thus seldom acquires, till late in life, that promp titude and collectedness of delivery, which oftentimes displays inferior talents to more advantage than those which, however deep, are in want of this attractive faculty. The writer of this article well remembers an anecdote of the late Lord Mansfield, which was told him by a gentleman of great practice at the bar, who was himself the occasion of it. He went one morning to Lord Mansfield with a letter of introduction, and after some enquiries, the veteran judge asked him if he were perfect in Coke upon Littleton. He replied that he was not altogether perfect, but intend