ters at the Bejant Arms, where he hired permanent lodgings. About two months after the scene at the church he received a letter from Mr. Willoughby couched in conciliatory terms, and informing him that the writer was prepared entirely to forget the past, and to accept Mr. Santal as his son-in-law, on receiving from him an assurance that there was no truth in the odious charge which had been brought against him. Mr. Willoughby was convinced, the letter said, that the person who had interrupted the marriage was an impostor. He had caused the fullest inquiries to be made, and had referred the matter to the chief authorities of the Roman Catholic Church in England. They agreed that there was in their orders no priest of the name of Theodore Brady, and that so far from the man being the present vicar-apostolic, he had impudently assumed the style of a former vicar, who had suffered martyrdom under Queen Elizabeth. The address which he had given was also proved to be false, for the Fermor family with whom he had represented himself to be living at Arlaston, had moved from that seat many years ago, and the house itself was so completely a thing of the past, that even its site could no longer be identified. Mr. Willoughby had also discovered that the chapel at Bejant Place, where the marriage was alleged to have taken place, was a ruin, and that the Bejants themselves were extinct. This being so, the writer believed the whole story to be false, and was anxious to accept Mr. Santal's assurance to that effect. There would have been, he added, no room at any time for even the slightest suspicion had not color been lent to the accusation by Mr. Santal's own unfortunate admission, an admission which he was now convinced must be attributed solely to the sudden shock having bewildered him. His daughter had been ailing ever since the rupture, and he earnestly begged that for her sake, as much as his own, Mr. Santal would give the assurance that he sought, and in this case their marriage could at once be celebrated. The perusal of this letter occasioned Mr. Santal much pain, and his sorrow was immeasurably increased by a note which was enclosed from Miss Willoughby, in which she assured him in the warmest terms of her unaltered love and confidence. He wrote to Mr. Willoughby in reply, thanking him for his courtesy, but regretting that it was not in his power to give the assurance asked for, as the priest's statements were in substance true. He expressed the greatest remorse that he should be the cause of so much suffering to Mr. Willoughby's family, but begged them to believe that the facts, if fully understood, would show him to be perhaps less guilty than now appeared. He could not explain further, but Mr. Willoughby would understand that he was quite ready to afford the only satisfaction which a gentleman could offer, either to Mr. Willoughby himself or to any other person nominated by him. So the matter unhappily ended, and neither side ever held any further communication with the other. Two years elapsed, and Mr. Santal was still at the Bejant Arms, but sadly changed. His once robust health had completely given way, and his state was such as to cause the greatest anxiety to those few friends who saw him from time to time. He felt most keenly the terrible strain which rested upon his honor, and the breaking off of his marriage seemed to have entirely crushed his spirits. He grew thin and weak, and would sit the greater part of the day in a listless attitude with his hands before him. If he went out, it was generally only to visit the ruins of Bejant Place, where, if reports spoke truly, he not unfrequently passed the entire night; indeed, his chief solace consisted in haunting that spot. The image of Cecilia Bejant was ever present with him, and grew at length so beloved that he looked forward with longing to his end, believing that in death he would be permitted to rejoin his lost bride. His eccentric habits gained him among the lower classes the reputation of being a harmless madman, while those of his own rank avoided all contact with him as one about whom hung some dishonorable mystery. In June of the third year of his residence at Winterbourne he fell ill. A severe cold, contracted, it was said, by a night spent in the ruined chapel of Bejant Place, took such effect upon a frame already reduced to great weakness that the doctor who was called in at once pronounced his case to be serious, if not hopeless. It was the same general practitioner who had visited Santal eight years before at Winterbourne. He was quite familiar with the story of the interrupted wedding, and had seen in it confirmation of his previous theories as to Santal's adventure at Bejant Place. He had talked the matter over continually with his village cronies, and always averred that Santal had been drugged on that night and decoyed into illicit company. The man who had interrupted the wedding with Miss Willoughby and afterwards disappeared, might have been, he thought, a hedgepriest who had actually assisted at some mock marriage of Santal on that very night. He found in his patient's own mental attitude the greatest obstacle to his recovery, for Santal seemed to have already abandoned his hold on life. The issue justified the worst apprehensions, and on the 20th of June, near the date on which he had first visited Winterbourne, Mr. Santal breathed his last. Shortly before his death he had been received into the communion of the Church of Rome, a proceeding which was considered by those who were aware of it as a further proof of his eccentricity. He left strict instructions with his servant that he should be buried on the south side of the church, and as near the Bejant Aisle as might be; but the clergyman of the parish objected to this being done, as Mr. Santal had died a Roman Catholic. On finding, however, that Santal had left a substantial benefaction to the parish, he eventually consented to the burial being made in that position; but only on the understanding that the body should not be taken into the church, and that the Protestant form of service should be read at the grave-side. To this the servant readily agreed, having, indeed, no reason to make any opposition. This man was sincerely attached to his master, and would not leave the dead body. But he had come to regard with superstitious fear the strange habits and especially the nocturnal visits to Bejant Place which Santal had affected towards the close of his life. On the night before the burial he did not remain with the corpse, saying it was St. John's eve, and the night on which those spirits walked who had undone his master. He lit candles round the body and persuaded the landlord to sit up with him below stairs, and they kept watch together through the night as they had done on that same date ten years before. Both dozed off, however, towards morning, but woke together imagining that they heard a monotonous murmur as of low chanting proceeding from the room above. must, however, have been a dream, for on going upstairs they found the candles still burning and the body undisturbed. It When the time of the funeral arrived there were gathered at the grave-side a group of sympathizing villagers who wished to pay a last token of respect to Mr. Santal's memory; for though they deemed him mad, they had always found him will ing to listen to their complaints and anxious to use his wealth in helping them in time of need. The coffin had been carried from the inn to the graveside, and there rested on trestles; and the little crowd about it waited patiently for the appearance of the minister. After a time a report spread that the minister was ill; and this was shortly confirmed by the arrival of a female servant from the rectory, who said that her master had been seized with faintness, and would not be able to perform the service. Those in charge of the funeral were at a loss what to do, when a stranger who had joined the group of spectators stepped forward and offered to take the minister's place. He was, he said, a Roman Catholic priest, as indeed his black habit showed, and as he understood that Mr. Santal had died in the True Faith, he would read over him the service for the burial of the dead according to the Roman rite. No objection was raised by the onlookers, and the priest, a tall and ascetic-looking man in the prime of life, stood on the heap of earth which had been removed from the grave, and performed the service. The spectators listened with wonder, but with reverence, to the monotonous Latin prayers which he recited until all was complete. At the conclusion of the ceremony he gave no benediction, but merely ejaculated in a fervent tone the versicle from the burial service-"Subvenite Sancti Dei, occurite Angeli Domini." He looked round as though expecting a response, but the spectators, who understood nothing, remained silent. Only a little man at the back of the group, with shaggy eyebrows and bright eyes, whom no one had hitherto observed, but who was no doubt a Catholic, replied in a thin voice with the antiphon -"Suscipientes animam ejus." MEADE FALKNER. From Temple Bar. LORD BRAMWELL. A SKETCH. In one of the early chapters of the "Worthies of England," Fuller refers to the difficulty in finding information as to the judges of the land, "time having almost outworn the traces thereof." "I perceive," he adds, "though judges have more land than bishops, they have less memorials behind them, of the time, place and manner, when and where they were born and died, and how they demeaned themselves." This still holds good. Even a distinguished judge is quickly forgotten. His reputation is as fugitive as that of an actor or a singer. To-day his name is in all newspapers; he is the central figure of a trial universally talked about; what "my lord" has said is recorded and discussed. To-morrow, his resignation once in the hands of the lord chancellor, he passes out of sight, and a year hence it may be a question, even among lawyers, whether he is alive or vegetating at Cannes. Some years ago, Lord Bramwell, then a member of the Court of Appeal, thought of retiring, and was talking the matter over with a friend. "Some one seeing you in the streets the week after you resign," said the latter, "will remark, 'I think I know that man's face.' 'Oh,' the reply will be, 'his name is Bramwell, the brother of the famous engineer.'" "Then I will not resign," was Lord Bramwell's comment on this remark as to the fleeting character of judicial fame; and he did not. It might have been supposed that there would have been at least one exception to this rule, and that Lord Bramwell's memory would have esHis strong, caped swift oblivion. vigorous, and simple character impressed his contemporaries. For nearly thirty years he was the best known of English judges. He had been on the Bench a longer time than any judge of the century. All his life he had been much more than a lawyer. When he resigned the office of lord justice, it was only to extend his activity into many new directions. In America he was known almost as well as in England. There his judgments were read with as much respect as here. "I wish to see Westminster Hall and Lord Bramwell," said an American lawyer, explaining the object of his visit to Europe. To many persons Lord Bramwell had become the impersonation of English justice. And yet I fear that the fate that seems to overtake all judges has befallen my friend's memory. I have looked in vain for some sketch of a remarkable life by some who knew him better than I did. Lord Bramwell was the eldest of three distinguished brothers; one being the eminent engineer still living, and the other a brilliant lad, a universal favorite, who gave to society gifts meant for mankind, and who died in the United States without having fulfilled the promise of his early years. The father was, at first, a clerk in the banking house of Dorrien & Co. of Birchin Lane, a firm in the end absorbed by the Curries, who were themselves swallowed up in Glyn, Mills, Currie & Co. A silent, amiable, capable, upright man, he became in due time junior partner. Dorrien's was not a bank of the modern type. There were no palatial buildings, no regiment of clerks, no partners possessed of fine estates and with seats in the House of Lords or Commons. The junior partner lived over the bank; he was always to be found in the bank parlor; and he knew the face, credit, and fortune of every man whose bills he discounted. Lord Bramwell's mother, by all accounts, was endowed with rarer parts than her husband. She lived to the age of ninety-six. To her he owed the vigor and vivacity of his intellect. He went to no public school or university. He was educated at Dr. May's school at Enfield, where he received what used to be called a "plain schooling." We get a glimpse into the household life in a letter written in the stiff, formal style of the time-a style compatible with true kindliness-by the father to the lad in his thirteenth year. He sends his son a watch, with the remark in Mrs. Trimmer's best style, "I wish you many years of health and happiness to wear the same. I hope you will carefully mark the ebb of time, so that you may turn out an honest and a clever man." His schooldays ended at sixteen, by which time he was Dr. May's head boy. It would be a mistake to suppose, as Lord Bramwell's rugged originality might tempt one to infer, that his culture was limited. He knew Latin fairly well. He took delight, though in a desultory fashion, in mathematics. In some early papers which have been preserved are to be found calculations and solutions of problems. In the correspondence which he and his friend, Chief Baron Pollock, never failed to keep up when they were on different circuits, are many references to such matters. French, German, and Italian, Bramwell knew; all three languages he spoke fluently, though his accent was far from perfect. Spanish he learned late in life sufficiently to enable him to read with ease any book in that language. He was no mean musician; he sang with taste; he delighted to play on the piano indeed, a piano was always to be found in his chambers; and if he had not followed the modern developments of music, few knew better the great classical operas. From his early letters and note-books, it is clear that, as a young man, he had read Hume, Bentham and Adam Smith. In his notebooks are many references to Voltaire. Altogether it is plain that he was more conversant with literature than he appeared to be or sometimes cared to show. "I did not read much," he once said with reference to his youth, "but I thought a great deal," and, as his notebooks show, on matters most diverse ethics, metaphysics, philosophy, politics, and even theology. The notion that a lawyer should be a sort of secular monk, with his mind running only on "cases" and "points," was at all times wholly repugnant to him. He had, on going to the Bar, the supreme advantage of a business training. In his father's bank he acquired a knowledge of business ways and forms which enabled him to argue cogently and lucidly before a City special jury an action involving complicated bill transactions. To hear him discussing the points in dispute in Vagliano v. The Bank of England, for example, was to a banker or merchant an intellectual pleasure. Bills of lading and marine policies were not merely documents which he had read of in books; he had actually fingered them, and had seen money staked, lost, and won upon them. After many fluctuations of intention, and forming vague plans for seeking his fortune in America, Mr. Bramwell decided to go to the Bar, which was then a very different profession from what it now is. In 1830 the Law List was a slim volume of three or four hundred pages; now it is four times as bulky. Counsel of all kinds then numbered only about one thousand; now they are about eight times as many. It was then common to practise several years as a certificated special pleader below the Bar, until the young aspirant had made good his footing, and gathered round him a group of clients. When special pleaders came into existence is not clear; the most plausible surmise is that they made their appearance at a time when, under the Penal Laws, Roman Catholics were excluded from the Bar. Under the complicated system of special pleading which existed before the Common Law Procedure Acts they flourished. By 1830 there were about forty special pleaders not members of the Bar, and they included several men destined to eminence; among others, Byles, afterwards Mr. Justice Byles, Hugh Hill, afterwards Mr. Justice Hill, Platt, Barnes Peacock, Samuel Warren, Unthank, Dodgson, Hayward, and last, but probably then best known, the two Chittys. By 1845 the special pleaders were strong enough to form a Pleaders' Club. It kept a Black Book, wherein were written the names of solicitors who did not pay their fees. Each sufferer put his initials against the name of the defaulter; and you might estimate the risk run in taking papers by noting the number of the initials. I divulge no secret in saying that the VOL. XII. 575 LIVING AGE. black list, which still exists, was very long, and, in fact, included hundreds of names. Mr. Bramwell became a pupil of Mr. Fitzroy Kelly, then the foremost junior at the Common Law Bar. Those who recall him as chief baron can scarcely understand what he was in 1830. There was the same tedious copiousness, relentless redundancy, the same labored, old-fashioned, formal monotony of speech, the same fearless reiteration, the same confident, naïve egotism, the same dallying over details, the same lack of humor which had marked him as an advocate; what had vanished, or was impaired, was the grasp of complicated facts, the cogent logic which made his legal arguments almost unequalled. Mr. Bramwell thus found himself, to quote Anstey's lines: Among the blest, the chosen few, By drawing pleas, from ten till four, To earn him twice three hundred more; And, after dinner, may repair Kelly was quick to detect the unusual parts of his pupil. "Ask Mr. Bramwell to look at the papers," was a fre quent remark to clients when the master was busy. And yet Bramwell did not, as a special pleader, meet at once with great success. He never in one year made three hundred guineas, and in his last year as a special pleader bis fees fell to two hundred guineas. Almost in despair he resolved to be called to the Bar. Common though it was in those days to begin practice as a special pleader, there was a little jealousy, not very substantial or lasting, of those who entered the profession in this way; and the feeling is expressed in an "Installation Ode on the Advent of the Last New Pleader on the Home Circuit," by Arnould, afterwards a judge of the High Court of Bombay, and then poet |