his services, at all hazards and at any cost, it was the late Sir
William Follett; and how he contrived to satisfy the calls upon him, to
the extent which he did, is truly wonderful. How can one head, and one
tongue, do so much, so admirably? is a question which has a thousand
times occurred to those of his brethren at the bar, who knew most of his
movements, and were least likely to form an exaggerated estimate of his
exertions. The litigant public seemed to feel that every moment of this
accomplished and distinguished advocate's waking hours was their own,
and they were restricting his sleeping hours within the very narrowest
limits. Every one would have had Sir William every where, in every
thing, at once! Whenever, during the last fifteen years of his life,
there was a cause of magnitude and difficulty, there was Sir William
Follett. What vast interests have been by turns perilled and protected,
according as Sir William Follett acted upon the offensive or defensive!
Misty and intricate claims to dormant peerages, before committees of
privileges, in the House of Lords; appeals to the High Court of
Parliament, from all the superior courts, both of law and equity, in the
United Kingdom, involving questions of the greatest possible nicety and
complexity--and that, too, in the law of Scotland, both mercantile and
conveyancing, so dissimilar to that prevailing in other parts of the
kingdom; appeals before the Privy Council, from the judicial decisions
of courts in every quarter of the globe where British possessions exist,
and administering varying systems of law, all different from that of
England; the most important cases in the courts of equity, in courts of
error, and the common law courts in _banc_; all the great cases
depending before parliamentary committees, till he entered the House of
Commons; every special jury cause of consequence in London and
Middlesex, and in any of the other counties in England, whither he went
upon special retainers; compensation cases, involving property to a very
large amount;--in all these cases, the first point was--to secure Sir
William Follett; and, for that purpose, run a desperate race with an
opponent. Every morning that Sir William Follett rose from his bed, he
had to contemplate a long series of important and pressing engagements
filling up almost every minute of his time--not knowing where or before
what tribunal he might be at any given moment of the day--and often
wholly ignor