f
which mourners endure whilst following to the grave the remains of their
dearest relatives, by compelling them at the same time to pay the
horse-duty." Had Mr. Gaselee been a humorist, Lord Ellenborough would
have laughed; but as the advocate was well known to have no turn for
raillery, the Chief Justice gravely observed, "Mr. Gaselee, you incur
danger by sailing in high sentimental latitudes."

To the surgeon in the witness-box who said, "I employ myself as a
surgeon," Lord Ellenborough retorted, "But does anybody else employ you
as a surgeon?"

The demand to be examined _on affirmation_ being preferred by a Quaker
witness, whose dress was so much like the costume of an ordinary
_conformist_ that the officer of the court had begun to administer the
usual oath, Lord Ellenborough inquired of the 'friend,' "Do you really
mean to impose upon the court by appearing here in the disguise of a
reasonable being?" Very pungent was his ejaculation at a cabinet dinner
when he heard that Lord Kenyon was about to close his penurious old age
by dying. "Die!--why should he die?--what would he get by that?"
interposed Lord Ellenborough, adding to the pile of jests by which men
have endeavored to keep a grim, unpleasant subject out of sight--a pile
to which the latest _mot_ was added the other day by Lord Palmerston,
who during his last attack of gout exclaimed playfully. "_Die_, my dear
doctor! That's the _last_ thing I think of doing." Having jested about
Kenyon's parsimony, as the old man lay _in extremis_, Ellenborough
placed another joke of the same kind upon his coffin. Hearing that
through the blunder of an illiterate undertaker the motto on Kenyon's
hatchment in Lincoln's Inn Fields had been painted '_Mors Janua Vita_,'
instead of 'Mors Janua Vitae,' he exclaimed, "Bless you, there's no
mistake; Kenyon's will directed that it should be 'Vita,' so that his
estate might be saved the expense of _a diphthong._" Capital also was
his reply when Erskine urged him to accept the Great Seal. "How can
you," he asked, in a tone of solemn entreaty, "wish me to accept the
office of Chancellor, when you know, Erskine, that I am as ignorant of
its duties as you are yourself?" At the time of uttering these words,
Ellenborough was well aware that if he declined them Erskine would take
the seals. Some of his puns were very poor. For instance, his
exclamation, "Cite to me the decisions of the judges of the land: not
the judgments of the Chief J