real disciples of Christ. Mere peace with such individuals, will by no means satisfy you; because your hearts will crave a deeper and more intimate union with them. Of all friendships, I am persuaded that none® is so strong as that cemented by the common love of a crucified Redeemer. There indeed is that thorough oneness of heart; that deep and lively sympathy; that intimate mingling of mind with mind; that quick sensibility to each other's honour, interest, and happiness; that tenderness to each other's faults; that homage to each other's excellencies; that mutual sacrifice of self, which the imagination of poets and orators have fancied in worldly friendships, but which never existed except in bosoms softened and sanctified by the influences of the Holy Spirit. With such persons you, if real Christians, will delight" to take sweet counsel," to "go up to the house of God as friends," to listen to their history of the mercies and tenderness of that Saviour who is the " joy of your own hearts.” very But the text calls you to a more difficult duty; the "following peace" with those who do not love God. You are to "follow it with all men.' And therefore, my Christian brethren, the vilest sinner and the bitterest enemy are not to be excluded from the sphere of your tenderness" bless them that curse you;" " pray for them which despitefully use you;" "if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink." Consider, again and again, the various circumstances which ought to dispose you to peace with such individuals. Perhaps you mistake them. Perhaps their irreligion is the consequence of disadvantages in connection, or station, or education; and it is therefore more a subject of pity than of anger. Perhaps your own Christian kindness to them is the very instrument by which God designs to draw them to himself. Perhaps your own prayers are appointed to bring down His pardon and grace upon their guilty heads. Perhaps their case is far from desperate; and, even now, the Saviour of the world is, as it were, gone to search for them in the "tombs," to rescue them from the grasp of their lusts and passions, and bring them to sit at his own feet. Or, should none of these mitigating circumstances enter into the case of particular individuals, what, let me ask, is there in the condition of a poor perishing sinner to excite any thing but compassion and grief in the soul of a servant of God? Suppose even,-which, however, you have no right to suppose, that his everlasting destiny is decided, and that he is a criminal hurrying onward to execution; is it on a person in such awful circumstances you would empty the vials of your indiguation? Pity the unconverted sinner; pray for him; weep for him; but do not be angry with him. Persuade him to peace with God; and do not aggravate the horrors of his situation by inflicting on him the additional penalties of your own unkindness, pp. 364-68. The concluding paragraphs of this sermon are not less striking; but we must not indulge in further quotations. The copious extracts we have given, are more than sufficient to recommend the publication to the attention of our readers, as one of the best volumes of sermons which have of late issued from " the press. Their very moderate length will render them particularly acceptable to families, while their plainness, seriousness, and practical character adapt them to general usefulness. They appear to want only one thing, the charm they must have derived from the Author's delivery. Art. V. Reminiscences of Charles Butler, Esq. of Lincoln's Inn. 8vo. pp. xii, 326. Price 8s. 6d. London, 1822. MR. R. Butler's name stands deservedly high as a literary. veteran, who has contrived, amid the professional engagements incident to an extensive practice as a conveyancer, to give the public ample proofs of his scholarship, his various information, his taste, and his industry. In these Reminiscences, he assumes the privilege of a sexagenarian, to talk of himself, and his works, and the acquaintance of his early days, and to give, not only his recollections, but his opinions on a multifarious variety of topics-law, politics, oratory, music, poetry,' and confessions of faith. These opinions are sometimes given in the tone of a person accustomed to expound the law, and to look for deference; but there is nothing offensive in a self-importance so free from spleen, while in the very garrulity of a man who has read so much, and mixed so much with the world, there will always be that which is worth listening to. From some of Mr. Butler's responses, we shall make free to dissent, but in few of his remarks do we find matter for censure. We shall, therefore, lay aside altogether the critic, and merely give our readers a few specimens of the amusing contents of the volume ;the farewell production, as it should seem, of one who can say with Dr. Johnson, that he has lived until most of those whom ⚫ he could have wished to please, have sunk into oblivion;' of one too, who, in expressing his hope that his pages will have the approbation of the good, the informed, and the candid, owns, ⚫ that their censure will afflict him, and that their praise will prove to him a source of high and abundant gratification." The work contains a fund of valuable bibliographical information, but this, though the most useful, is not the most entertaining feature of it. The historical anecdotes and recollections form the most interesting portion. The sketch of the character of Lord Mansfield has appeared in Seward's Anecdotes, but is with great propriety reprinted in this volume: it will be amusing to compare the Lord Mansfield of Mr. Butler, with the Lord Mansfield of Junius. For some time after his call to the bar, he was without any prac tice. A speech which he made as counsel at the bar of the house of Lords, first brought him into notice. Upon this, business poured in upon him at all sides; and he himself was heard to say, that he never knew the difference' (any medium) between a total want of employ. ment and a gain of 30007. a year. To this, Mr. Pope alludes in the following lines: "Graced as thou art, with all the power of words, So known, so honour'd at the house of Lords." The second of these lines has been considered as a great falling off from the first. They were thus parodied by Colley Cibber: "Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks, And he has chambers in the King's-bench walks." : His lordship confined his practice to the court of chancery. His command of words, and the gracefulness of his action, formed a striking contrast with the manner of some of his rivals, who were equally distinguished by the extent and depth of their legal knowledge, and their unpleasant enunciation. After he had filled with great applause, the offices of solicitor and attorney general, he was created chief justice of the King's Bench in May 1756, on the decease of Sir Dudley Ryder. He held that situation during two and thirty years. On every occasion, he was equally attentive to the bar and the suitors of the court. In all he said or did, there was a happy mixture of good-nature, good-humour, elegance, ease, and dignity. His countenance was indescribably beautiful; it was an assemblage of genius, dignity, and good nature, which none could behold without reverence and regard. An engraving by Bartolozzi of a portrait of his lordship by Sir Joshua Reynolds, presents a strong resemblance of him in a very advanced age. Nature had given him an eye of fire; its last lingering gleam is exquisitely exhibited in the engraving. His voice, till it was affected by the years which passed over him, was perhaps unrivalled in its sweetness and the mellifluous variety of its tones. There was a similitude' (similarity) between his action and Mr. Garrick's; and, in the latter part of his life, his voice discovered something of that gutturalness by which Mr. Garrick's was distinguished, He spoke slowly, sounding distinctly every letter of every word. In some instances he had a great peculiarity of pronunciation: authority and attachment, two words of frequent use in the law, he always pronounced awtawrity and attaichment. His expressions were sometimes low; he did not always observe the rules of grammar; there was great confusion in his periods, very often beginning without ending them, and involving his sentences in endless parentheses: yet, such was the charm of his voice and action, and such the general beauty, propriety, and force of his expressions, that, while he spoke, all these defects passed unnoticed. No one ever remarked them, who did not obstinately confine his attention and observation to them. Among his contemporaries, he had some superiors in force, and some equals in persuasion; but in insinuation, he was without a rival or a second. This was particularly distinguishable in his speeches from the bench. He excelled in the statement of a case; Mr. Burke said of t," that it was, of itself, worth the argument of any other man." He divested it of all unnecessary circumstances; brought together, all that were of importance; placed them in so striking a point of view, and connected them by observations so powerful, but which appeared to arise so naturally from the facts themselves, that frequently the hearer was convinced before he began to argue. When he argued, he shewed equal ability, but it was a mode of argument always peculiar to himself. His statement of the case predisposed the hearers to fall into the very train of thought he wished them to take, when they should come to consider his arguments. Through these he accompanied them, leading them insensibly to every observation favourable to the conclusion he wished them to draw, and diverting every objection to it; but, all the time, still keeping himself concealed; so that the hearers thought they formed their opinions in consequence of the powers and workings of their own minds, when, in fact, it was the effect of the most subtle argumentation and the most refined dialectic. In the fundamental principles either of the constitution or the jurisprudence of this country, no one dreaded innovation more than he did. His speech on the case of Eltham Allen shews his notions on the great subject of toleration. He was the first judge who openly discountenanced prosecutions on the popery laws. It has been argued, that his knowledge of law was by no means profound, and that his great professional eminence was owing more to his oratory than to his knowledge. This was an early charge against him: Mr. Pope alludes to it in these lines: "The temple late two brother serjeants saw, Who deemed each other oracles of law; To decide on his lordship's knowledge of the law, a serious perusal. of his arguments as counsel, in Mr. Atkyns's Reports, and of his speeches as judge, in Sir James Burrows's, Mr. Douglas's, and Mr. Cowper's, is absolutely necessary. If the former be compared with the arguments of his contemporaries, many of whom were men of the profoundest knowledge that ever appeared at the chancery bar, it will not be discovered, that, in learning or research, in application of principles, or in recollection of cases, his arguments are in any wise inferior to those of the most eminent among them. Nor will he suffer by the comparison, if his speeches in giving his judgements from the bench, are compared with those of the counsel at the bar. It was not on great occasions only, that his lordship's talents were conspicuous: they were equally discoverable in the common business of the courts. Par negotiis neque supra, was never more applicable than to the discernment, perseverance, abilities, and good humour with which he conducted himself in this part of his office. The late Earl of Sandwich said of him, that his talents were more for common use, and more at his finger-ends, than those of any other person he had known. But his highest praise is, that his private virtues were allowed by all, and his personal integrity was never called in question.' VOL. XVIII. N.S. T Junius terms Lord Mansfield a bad man and a worse judge,' calling in question both his private virtues and his personal integrity; but Junius, Mr. Butler probably thinks to be, in this case, nobody. Even in his own sketch of his Lordship's portrait, it is not difficult, however, to recognise, veiled under the language of panegyric, the traits of the same character which employed the caustic pen of the mighty Censor. Of such a person as Mr. Butler has described, it would be risking nothing to affirm, that if not a good man, he must have been a very dangerous one. The wily Scotchman, the political lawyer, is betrayed in the very terms of the eulogy. It is the portrait of a great man, (and such, unquestionably, Lord Mansfield was,) but not of a man of the highest style of greatness. His Lordship is said by Horace Walpole to have been naturally timid, and, like most timid men, inclined to severity, if not to cruelty. He was for a long time the parliamentary champion of the Newcastle administration in the Commons' House; but, ashamed, it may be, of his coadjutors, or distrustful of their being able to stand their ground, nothing could induce him to waive, even for a few months, securing the rich remuneration for his political services, afforded by the death of Lord Chief Justice Ryder. At a critical moment, when all his oratory was wanted in the House on behalf of his friends, that high office became vacant; he demanded it, and his demand was reluctantly acceded to. Lord Hardwicke is spoken of in very high terms. At the period when the Reminiscent engaged in the profession of the law, the talents displayed by lord Hardwicke in the senate and on the bench, were the universal theme of panegyric. Some,but faintly,-blamed him for too frequently permitting principles of equity to control rules of law, and this charge was occasionally insinuated by lord Northington, his immediate successor. But, the eminent merit of his lordship's general administration of justice in his court was admitted by all,' Lord Mansfield is said to have mentioned him in terms of admiration and of the warmest friendship. When his Lordship pronounced his decrees, wisdom herself,' he said, ' might be supposed to speak.' Both Burke and Wilkes also are stated to have described lord Hardwicke's oratory to the Author in these very words. Our readers will have in recollection Lord Waldegrave's pithy remark, that he was undoubtedly an excellent Chancellor,' and that had he been less avaricious, less proud, less unlike a gentleman, and not so great a poli * The very charge brought against Lord Mansfield by Junius. Rev. |