t methods tend:
His lordship's judgments ne'er begin,
His honors never end."

A mirth-loving judge, Justice Powell, could be as thoroughly humorous in
private life as he was fearless and just upon the bench. Swift describes
him as a surpassingly merry old gentleman, laughing heartily at all
comic things, and his own droll stories more than aught else. In court
he could not always refrain from jocularity. For instance, when he
tried Jane Wenham for witch-craft, and she assured him that she could
fly, his eye twinkled as he answered, "Well, then you may; there is no
law against flying." When Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester--a thorough
believer in what is now-a-days called spiritualism--was persecuting his
acquaintance with silly stories about ghosts, Powell gave him a telling
reproof for his credulity by describing a horrible apparition which was
represented as having disturbed the narrator's rest on the previous
night. At the hour of midnight, as the clocks were striking twelve, the
judge was roused from his first slumber by a hideous sound. Starting up,
he saw at the foot of his uncompanioned bed a figure--dark, gloomy,
terrible, holding before its grim and repulsive visage a lamp that shed
an uncertain light. "May Heaven have mercy on us!" tremulously
ejaculated the bishop at this point of the story. The judge continued
his story: "Be calm, my lord bishop; be calm. The awful part of this
mysterious interview has still to be told. Nerving myself to fashion the
words of inquiry, I addressed the nocturnal visitor thus--'Strange
being, why hast thou come at this still hour to perturb a sinful
mortal?' You understand, my lord, I said this in hollow tones--in what I
may almost term a sepulchral voice." "Ay--ay," responded the bishop,
with intense excitement; "go on--I implore you to go on. What did _it_
answer?" "It answered in a voice not greatly different from the voice of
a human creature--'Please, sir, _I am the watchman on beat, and your
street-door is open_.'" Readers will remember the use which Barham has
made of this story in the Ingoldsby Legends.

As a Justice of the King's Bench, Powell had in Chief Justice Holt an
associate who could not only appreciate the wit of others, but could
himself say smart things. When Lacy, the fanatic, forced his way into
Holt's house in Bedford Row, the Chief Justice was equal to the
occasion. "I come to you," said Lacy, "a prophet from the Lord God, who
has sent me to thee an