ed the
passage I had quoted from Grotius, and that it solely respected
natural, but was inapplicable to civil, rights. Lord Loughborough, the
first time I saw him after the debate, assured me that before he went
to sleep that night he had looked into Grotius, and was astonished to
find that the chancellor, in contradicting me, had presumed on the
ignorance of the house, and that my quotation was perfectly correct.
What miserable shifts do great men submit to, in supporting their
parties! The Chancellor Thurlow," continues the bishop, "was an able
and upright judge, but as the speaker of the house of lords, he was
domineering and insincere. It was said of him, that in the cabinet he
opposed everything, proposed nothing, and was ready to support
anything. I remember Lord Camden's saying to me one night, when the
chancellor was speaking contrary, as he thought, to his own
conviction, 'There now! I could not do that: he is supporting what he
does not believe a word of.'"

_Roscoe's Lives of Eminent Lawyers--Cabinet Cyclopaedia_.

* * * * *

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

* * * * *

TORCHLIGHT.

It is an interesting circumstance in the habits of the ancient Romans,
that their journeys were pursued very much in the night-time, and by
torchlight. Cicero, in one of his letters, speaks of passing through
the towns of Italy by night, as a serviceable scheme for some
political purpose, either of avoiding too much to publish his motions,
or of evading the necessity (else perhaps not avoidable) of drawing
out the party sentiments of the magistrates in the circumstances of
honour or neglect with which they might choose to receive him. His
words, however, imply that the practice was by no means an uncommon
one. And, indeed, from some passages in writers of the Augustan era,
it would seem that this custom was not confined to people of
distinction, but was familiar to a class of travellers so low in rank
as to be capable of abusing their opportunities of concealment for the
infliction of wanton injury upon the woods and fences which bounded
the margin of the high-road. Under the cloud of night and solitude,
the mischief-loving traveller was often in the habit of applying his
torch to the withered boughs of wood, or to artificial hedges: and
extensive ravages by fire, such as now happen not unfrequently in the
American woods (but generally from carelessness in scatterin