Last Days of Wilberforce.

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one had said.' Though Mr. Croker in this extract characteristically puts his statements in the most offensive manner possible, it appears from other sources that they are substantially correct.

On his retirement from Parliament, Wilberforce withdrew into the bosom of his family, there to pass the calm and peaceful evening of his days. His last years were chequered by the loss of a large part of his fortune. His eldest son had entered upon a speculation in a Milk Company which proved a failure, and Wilberforce, who had become guarantee for him, had to pay at very large sum-between £40,000 and £50,000 it is stated. Such a disaster, however, in no serious degree troubled him. He had never cared for money except as a means to do good with, and he bore the calamity with unclouded serenity. A great triumph gladdened the closing days of his life. The last public information he received was that the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery had been read for the second time in the House of Commons. 'Thank God,' said he, 'that I should have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the Abolition of Slavery! During his closing illness, his sunny cheerfulness never deserted him for a moment. Talking of his being kept from exercise, he said: 'What cause for thankfulness have I, that I am not lying in pain, and in a suffering posture, as so many people are! Certainly it is a great privation to me, from my habits, not to be able to walk about, and to lie still as much as I do; but then, how many there are who are lying in severe pain! On July 29, 1833, he expired, aged 73 years and 11 months.

Wilberforce had desired to be buried beside his sister and his daughter in a vault at Stoke Newington; but it was felt that such a man should lie amid the honoured dead of England in Westminster Abbey, and a requisition to that effect was addressed to his relatives by many of the most distinguished men of both parties. There, accordingly, he was laid in the north transept, close to the graves of Pitt, Fox, and Canning. No one of more noble and gentler nature lies buried there; no one of whom we think with more kindly and loving feelings,

THE life of a great lawyer does not in general possess much popular interest. True, the story of his early struggles with the difficulties of fortune, and of the slow and gradual steps by which he ascended the ladder of fame, is in many cases not unattractive; but when once he is fairly on the high road to prosperity, the interest is apt to fade away. The Law is proverbially a jealous mistress, and, though there are more exceptions to the rule than is popularly supposed, it is too often the case that a great lawyer is a great lawyer only and not a great man-that his whole thoughts and energies and reading have been confined to his profession alone, and that the general and harmonious culture of his whole nature has been neglected. It is probably owing to this cause that it so rarely happens that a legal celebrity is a popular hero; and that the names of the forensic luminaries which are mentioned with the greatest respect within the charmed circle of the profession are all but unknown to the world at large. To both of these rules Sir Samuel Romilly forms an exception. The interest of his life does not stop when the record of his early labours is finished, indeed it increases to the end; and beside having the reputation of a profound lawyer among his legal brethren, he was, in his lifetime, honoured and admired by the people. Nor has his reputation altogether faded away. There are few who have not heard something of 'the good Sir Samuel Romilly,' and of

Romilly's Parentage.

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the distinguished part he acted in the reform of our Criminal Law.

The 'Memoirs' of Romilly, published by his sons, interesting as they are, are not so complete, nor, in several parts of his life, so copious as could have been desired. They comprise a narrative by himself of his birth, parentage, education, and life to 1789-a delightful specimen of a delightful class of literature, a series of letters to friends, and the diary of his parliamentary career from 1806 to 1818, from which mainly is drawn our information, often vexatiously meagre and incomplete, of his labours in the amelioration of the Criminal Code. His work in this field may be compared to that of Howard in Prison Reform. Both had in view the welfare of a degraded, and miserable, and sin-stained class of the community. Both had to fight against traditionalism and prejudice. Both, but particularly Romilly, have earned the gratitude of posterity, not so much by what they themselves actually accomplished—though that was far from inconsiderable as by the impetus their enthusiasm gave to other workers.

Among the many French Protestants whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes compelled to abandon their native soil and to seek a home and freedom in England, was the grandfather of our hero. Having only his own exertions to support himself, he embarked in trade; he educated his sons to useful trades; and was content, at his death, to leave them, instead of his original patrimony, no other inheritance than the habits of industry he had given them, the example of his own virtuous life, an hereditary detestation of tyranny and injustice, and an ardent zeal in the cause of civil and religious liberty. Of his sons, the youngest became eminent as a jeweller, and married Miss Gurnault, by whom he had a numerous family, of which the youngest, with whom we have to deal, was born March 1, 1757.

Though Romilly's father had a very extensive business, yielding a gross return of over £20,000 per annum, his profits do not appear to have been large, and he brought up his children in a very unostentatious style. He was a man of spotless