l presence of Him _who
turneth man to destruction, and sayeth, Come again, ye children of men_!

Sir William Follett has now lain in his grave for six months. During
this interval, the excitement which his death created amongst those who
had been in constant intercourse with him for years, has subsided;
leaving them better able to take a calm and candid view of his
character, acquirements, and position, and form a sober estimate of the
nature and extent of his reputation while living, and the probability of
its permanently surviving him.

When summoned from the scene of his splendid and successful exertions,
he was unquestionably the brightest ornament of the British bar.
Immediately afterwards the press teemed with tributes to his memory:
some of them characterised by great acuteness and discrimination,
several by exaggerated eulogy, and one or two by a harsh
disingenuousness amounting to misrepresentation and malevolence. Nothing
excited more astonishment among those who had thoroughly known Sir
William Follett, than the appearance of these attacks upon his memory,
and the bad taste and feeling which alone could have prompted the
perpetration of them, at a moment when the hearts of his surviving
relatives and friends were quivering with the first agonies of their
severe bereavement; when they had just lost one who had been the pride
of their family, the pillar of their hopes,--and who was universally
supposed to have left behind him not a single enemy--who had been
distinguished for his courteous, mild, and inoffensive character, and
its unblemished purity in all the relations of private life. Certain of
the strictures here alluded to, were petty, coarse, and uncandid; and
with this observation they are dismissed from further notice. Sir
William Follett had undoubtedly his shortcomings, in common with every
one of his fellow men; and, as a small set-off against his many
excellences of temper and character, one or two must be glanced at by
any one essaying to present to the public, however imperfectly, a just
account of this very eminent person. The failing in question formed the
chief subject of vituperation--_vituperation of the dead!_--by the
ungracious parties to whom brief reference has just been made; and
consists, in short, in the excessive eagerness to accumulate money, by
which it was alleged that the late Sir William Follett was
characterised. This charge is certainly not without foundation; but
while this