THE LATE MR. JUSTICE TALFOURD

THE readers of these pages will have
known, many days before the present number
can come into their hands, that on
Monday the thirteenth of March, this
upright judge and good man died suddenly
at Stafford in the discharge of his duties.
Mercifully spared protracted pain and mental
decay, he passed away in a moment, with
words of Christian eloquence, of brotherly
tenderness and kindness towards all men, yet
unfinished on his lips.

As he died, he had always lived. So
amiable a man, so gentle, so sweet-tempered,
of such a noble simplicity, so perfectly
unspoiled by his labors and their rewards, is very
rare indeed upon this earth. These lines are
traced by the faltering hand of a friend; but
none can so fully know how true they are, as
those who knew him under all circumstances,
and found him ever the same.

In his public aspects; in his poems, in
his speeches, on the bench, at the bar, in
Parliament; he was widely appreciated,
honoured, and beloved. Inseparable as his great
and varied abilities were from himself in life,
it is yet to himself and not to them, that
affection in its first grief naturally turns.
They remain, but he is lost.

The chief delight of his life was to give
delight to others. His nature was so
exquisitely kind, that to be kind was its highest
happiness. Those who had the privilege of
seeing him in his own home when his
public successes were greatest,—so modest,
so contented with little things, so
interested in humble persons and humble
efforts, so surrounded by children and young
people, so adored in remembrance of a
domestic generosity and greatness of heart too
sacred to be unveiled here, can never forget
the pleasure of that sight.

If ever there were a house, in England
justly celebrated for the reverse of the
picture, where every art was honoured for its
own sake, and where every visitor was
received for his own claims and merits, that
house was his. It was in this respect a great
example, as sorely needed as it will be sorely
missed. Rendering all legitimate deference to
rank and riches, there never was a man more
composedly, unaffectedly, quietly, immovable
by such considerations than the subject of this
sorrowing remembrance. On the other hand,
nothing would have astonished him so much
as the suggestion that he was anybody's
patron or protector. His dignity was ever of
that highest and purest sort which has no
occasion to proclaim itself, and which is not
in the least afraid of losing itself.

In the first joy of his appointment to the
judicial bench, he made a summer-visit to
the sea-shore, "to share his exultation in the
gratification of his long-cherished ambition,
with the friend"—now among the many friends
who mourn his death and lovingly recall his
virtues. Lingering in the bright moonlight
at the close of a happy day, he spoke of his
new functions, of his sense of the great
responsibility he undertook, and of his placid belief
that the habits of his professional life
rendered him equal to their efficient discharge;
but, above all, he spoke, with an earnestness
never more to be separated in his friend's
mind from the murmur of the sea upon a
moonlight night, of his reliance on the
strength ot his desire to do right before God
and man. He spoke with his own singleness
of heart, and his solitary hearer knew how
deep and true his purpose was. They passed,
before parting for the night, into a playful
dispute at what age he should retire, and
what he would do at three-score years and
ten. And ah! within five short years, it is
all ended like a dream!

But, by the strength of his desire to do
right, he was animated to the last moment of
his existence. Who, knowing England at
this time, would wish to utter with his last
breath a more righteous warning than that
its curse is ignorance, or a miscalled education
which is as bad or worse, and a want of
the exchange of innumerable graces and
sympathies among the various orders of
society, each hardened unto each and holding
itself aloof? Well will it be for us and for
our children, if those dying words be never
henceforth forgotten on the Judgment
Seat.

An example in his social intercourse to
those who are born to station, an example
equally to those who win it for themselves;
teaching the one class to abate its stupid
pride: the other, to stand upon its eminence,
not forgetting the road by which it got