ular loss. Suppose the risk under this policy to have commenced on the 2d of January, there would in that case, beyond all question, have been a loss of more than five per cent., and when we assume that this is a distinct loss, what is this but to assume that it is to be adjusted in the same way as if it had happened under a distinct policy? It would certainly be very unfair, as respects the assured, first to separate this loss from the preceding, so as to cut off his claim unless this loss should amount to five per cent., and then to connect it with a preceding loss or a preceding transaction, so as to reduce it below that rate. The assured ought to have all the advantages or disadvantages, either of its being a distinct loss, or only a part of an aggregate loss which had commenced nearly a month before. He ought not to be subjected to all the disadvantages of its being an entire and distinct loss, and also those of its being only a part of an aggregate loss. If, under the circumstances of the case, taking the whole history of the risk together, the underwriters are entitled, as between themselves and the assured, to consider the recovered anchor as equivalent in value to a new one, then the salvage on the first loss would be enhanced in proportion. This would be an advantage connected with, and growing out of, the first loss, and to be taken into consideration only in settling that loss, and not be made to affect a subsequent one, which we assume in the outset to have no connexion with it. The most favorable adjustment of these losses that can be claimed by the underwriters, seems to me to be the allowance, on the first loss, of the whole value of a new anchor as salvage, with the deduction of the expense of recovering the lost anchor. I doubt whether in strict right they are entitled to this allowance; but I am inclined to make it rather than to go into an elaborate investigation of a new question, in a case on which so many have already been raised; especially as the amount involved in this question is very inconsiderable. ART. V.-LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE. It is worthy of observation, that in proportion to the space which they occupy in the public eye whilst living, few persons leave behind them more scanty marks of their progress than lawyers whose pursuits and character have been purely professional. Posterity knows little of their career at the bar, unless they happen to possess literary qualifications, or other incidental means of distinction, or attain pre-eminently elevated rank as advocates or judges. Their usefulness, considered in the light of legal counsel only, lies within the narrow circle of the courts of justice. They expend, upon a technical argument of a law question that takes up a page, perhaps, in a blackletter book of reports, or which never reaches the press at all, a degree of industry, learning, talent, and intellectual vigor, which would earn them a cheap immortality, if exerted in the senate or in the walks of popular literature. It should be remembered that, of the juridical writers whose compilations fill our shelves, not all, nor the greater number, were in their day the most conspicuous members of their profession. A portion of them, it is true, like Sir Edward Coke, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Matthew Hale, whose works stand among the highest of our legal classics, retain a reputation at the present time commensurate with their professional importance among their cotemporaries. But these are the few, not the many; they constitute the exception, not the rule. A decided taste for, and successful cultivation of, letters; a long continued career of usefulness in a public station of a mixed judicial and political nature; the possession of popular talents devoted to active exercise in parliament;-these, and other causes which will readily suggest themselves to the reflecting mind, are sufficient to account for the existence of all such departures from the general principle. Take any single period, for example, in the juridical history of England, and search for the memorials of those who were the pride of Westminster Hall, the leading counsel in every cause of difficulty or magnitude, not the acute and laborious special pleaders merely, but the eloquent barristers of the times, applauded by the listening throng, and called upon continually for intellectual efforts of the most arduous and honorable character, yet as evanescent as the transitory hours that witnessed their exhibition. The period when Mansfield adjudicated, and Blackstone wrote,-certainly one of the most brilliant in our history,-is german to the matter. Open at random in Burrow, or any other of the cotemporary reporters, and hardly a case occurs in the King's Bench but Sir Fletcher Norton, or Mr. Wallace, or Mr. Morton spoke to it as counsel. Of their associates in practice many rose to the prominent judicial offices, which they declined; but of Yates, Aston, Eyre, De Grey, Gould,-nay, of Dunning, Wedderburne, Bathurst, the unfortunate Charles Yorke, and Serjeant Hill, the most learned lawyer of his age, as of Norton, Wallace, and Morton,-how few are the traces which survive, and how narrow the field of their fame. A brief abstract of the most admirable and the most admired forensic address graces a page or a paragraph in the reports. There is nothing to show for the eloquence of the orator and the genius of the lawyer, but the meagre abridgment of some pains-taking collector of legal cases, where the arguments of counsel are after all of but secondary consequence, and where indeed all the wisdom of the judge commends itself to the notice of a single profession alone. Yet these are the great lawyers who shed a lustre over the court in which the greater Lord Mansfield was proud to preside. Probably as a lawyer, certainly as an advocate and practising counsellor, Sir William Blackstone was inferior to all these; and but for the display of other qualities, of talents as an elegant, correct, and instructive writer, his reputation would be confined to the same restricted limits. Indeed his high standing at the bar and his judicial preferment were the consequence of the talent and erudition displayed in academical pursuits, his Commentaries, the foundation of his fortune, being simply the substance of lectures delivered in the University of Oxford. Sir William was the third son and youngest child of Charles Blackstone, a silkman of London. He was born in that city on the 10th of July, 1723, some months after the death of his father; and was indebted for his education to the affectionate care of his maternal uncle, Thomas Bigg, an eminent surgeon of London.* His two brothers, Charles and Edward, took orders, * Our authority for this account of Sir William Blackstone's life is a memoir prefixed to his Reports, and written by his kinsman and executor, James and lived in comparative obscurity as country clergymen. William was put to school at the Charter House in 1730, and applied himself to his studies with so much assiduity and success that at the early age of fifteen, he was at the head of the school, and qualified for admission into the University; and accordingly was entered a commoner at Pembroke College, in Oxford, November 30th, 1738, with distinguished marks of approbation from the governors of the Charter House. At the University his favorite studies were the classics and belles lettres; although he did not neglect abstruse and exact learning, having made a respectable proficiency in mathematics particularly, which he applied to the science of architecture, as the recreation of his leisure hours. But his decided turn for the cultivation of polite literature was indicated by his attention to composition in prose and verse; and at this period of his life he undoubtedly laid the foundation of that finished, pure, and elegant style of writing, which constitutes not the least excellence of the Commentaries. Notwithstanding his juvenile taste for poetry, and his success in occasional prize essays in verse, we do not believe that the Muses have lost much by his abandonment of them for the severer studies of active life. But his passion for poetry was laid aside with reluctance, when he came to decide upon the choice of a profession, and adopted the law; and his feelings on the occasion were expressed in a copy of verses published in Dodsley's Miscellanies, which may not be unacceptable to our readers. THE LAWYER'S FAREWELL TO HIS MUSE. As, by some tyrant's stern command, Clitherow; and a singularly eccentric, but learned work, published in 1782, of the following title: The Biographical History of Sir William Blackstone, late one of the Justices of both Benches; a Name as celebrated at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge as in Westminster Hall : And a Catalogue of all Sir William Blackstone's Works, manuscript as well as printed: With a Nomenclature of Westminster Hall: The whole illustrated with Notes, Observations, and References, &c. By a Gentleman of Lincoln's Inn.' There, melting at the well known view, Companion of my tender age, Then all was joyous, all was young, But now the pleasing dream is o'er, These scenes must charm me now no more; Me wrangling Courts and stubborn Law In frighted streets their orgies hold; Shakspeare, no more thy sylvan son, Pope's heaven-strung lyre, nor Waller's ease, In furs and coifs around me stand |