--except a gaoler. No master has it over his servants;
it is diminished in our colleges; nay, in our grammar schools.'"

"Sir William Scott informs me that on the death of the late Lord
Lichfield, who was Chancellor of the University of Oxford, he said to
Johnson, 'What a pity it is, sir, that you did not follow the profession
of the law! You might have been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, and
attained to the dignity of the peerage; and now that the title of
Lichfield, your native city, is extinct, you might have had it.' Johnson
upon this seemed much agitated, and in an angry tone exclaimed, 'Why
will you vex me by suggesting this when it is too late?'"

The strange marriage of Lord Stowell and the Marchioness of Sligo has
been excellently described by Mr. Jeaffreson in his "Book of Lawyers."

"On April 10, 1813," says our author, "the decorous Sir William Scott,
and Louisa Catherine, widow of John, Marquis of Sligo, and daughter of
Admiral Lord Howe, were united in the bonds of holy wedlock, to the
infinite amusement of the world of fashion, and to the speedy
humiliation of the bridegroom. So incensed was Lord Eldon at his
brother's folly that he refused to appear at the wedding; and certainly
the chancellor's displeasure was not without reason, for the notorious
absurdity of the affair brought ridicule on the whole of the Scott
family connection. The happy couple met for the first time in the Old
Bailey, when Sir William Scott and Lord Ellenborough presided at the
trial of the marchioness's son, the young Marquis of Sligo, who had
incurred the anger of the law by luring into his yacht, in Mediterranean
waters, two of the king's seamen. Throughout the hearing of that _cause
celebre_, the Marchioness sat in the fetid court of the Old Bailey, in
the hope that her presence might rouse amongst the jury or in the bench
feelings favourable to her son. This hope was disappointed. The verdict
having been given against the young peer, he was ordered to pay a fine
of L5,000, and undergo four months' incarceration in Newgate, and--worse
than fine and imprisonment--was compelled to listen to a parental
address, from Sir William Scott, on the duties and responsibilities of
men of high station. Either under the influence of sincere admiration
for the judge, or impelled by desire of vengeance on the man who had
presumed to lecture her son in a court of justice, the marchioness wrote
a few hasty words of thanks to Sir William Scot