arose as to the disposal of office. Lord O'Hagan had retired from the Court of Chancery, and a successor to the vacant post of Chancellor had to be appointed. It had been offered to Mr. Ball, one of the members for the University of Dublin, and at that time the most distinguished member of the Irish bar, and by him had been accepted. His presence could not, however, then be spared from the House of Commons, and he had to content himself, until his services in the popular chamber were no longer required, with the post of Attorney-General for Ireland. Accordingly, whilst the promotion of Mr. Ball was in abeyance, the Great Seal was put in commission, with Sir Joseph Napier, Mr. Justice Lawson, and Master Brooke as Commissioners. Sir Joseph was Chief Commissioner, and his eldest son William, of whom more hereafter, was appointed secretary to the Commission. During the next few months, from the February to the November of 1874, the work entrusted to Sir Joseph was enormous. In addition to hearing causes in the Court of Chancery and deciding cases in the Court of Appeal, he was Assessor to the General Synod which now regulated the affairs of the disestablished Church of Ireland, whilst as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin his time was much occupied in the consideration of certain changes that were then proposed as to its governing body. Yet in his triple capacity as

judge, assessor, and vice-chancellor, he acquitted himself so ably of the different duties imposed upon him, as to receive the marked approval of all who were connected with him in his work.

On Friday, November 27, 1874-a day he ever remembered-Sir Joseph sat for the last time as President in the Court of Chancery. His fondly cherished son William had been seized with an illness from which he never recovered, and the stricken father had but one thought, to remain at the bedside of the sufferer until all was over. In ignorance of the affliction which was bowing him down to the very earth, the Lord Mayor of Dublin had invited Napier to a banquet to be given to her Majesty's Judges on the following Tuesday. The invitation was of course declined. At the banquet, Whiteside, now Lord Chief Justice, responded to the toast of the Bench, and took the opportunity to comment upon the 'headless Court of Chancery,' in allusion to the circumstance that no Lord Chancellor had as yet been appointed. The sneer was not however allowed to pass unnoticed. Three days before the Christmas of 1874 Mr. Justice Lawson, one of the Lords Commissioners, and Lord Justice Christian sat in the Court of Appeal in Chancery, there to deliver judgment on the last case in their list. It was also to be the last sitting of the Commissioners, for the day after

Christmas day Mr. Ball was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Sir Joseph Napier (whose judgment was read) and Mr. Justice Lawson concurred in the decision of the court below, and the appeal was consequently dismissed. Lord Justice Christian was somewhat of a different opinion from his colleagues, and in delivering his judgment thus concluded:

I have tried to make intelligible the considerations which, I must confess, have left me full of misgivings as to the soundness of this claim, though it has met with the approval of both the Lords Commissioners. Then the question presents itself-which is, under the circumstances, of little or no consequence to any one but myself-what course ought I to take? If I were sitting alone, and were hearing this case in the first instance, I believe that I should send it to a trial at law. But I am not hearing it in the first instance, and I am not sitting alone. I have the advantage of being associated with colleagues whose judgment, whose knowledge, whose conversance with the affairs of this court and exclusive devotion of their time to them, I can hold in that respect that, as when I find them agreeing with me I am encouraged, so when I find them differing from me I am instantly held in check. The latter is precisely the position in which I find myself at this moment, and which I have found myself in since the commencement of the present admirable constitution of this court. I say advisedly—and I am happy to take this, the last opportunity of saying it-the present admirable constitution of this court-headless though it be-a headless institution as, with exquisite appropriateness of time and place and circumstances, it has been lately called by one who seldom stops to measure his phrases by his knowledge of whatever

subject he may take a fancy to declaim about-I have great pleasure in informing that very eminent legal personage, as he has been good enough to concern himself about us, that the Court of Chancery in Ireland is now, and has been for the last nine months of this year, under very excellent headship and leadership indeed—and in particular as to this its upper branch, of which I can speak with some knowledgethis, the Court of Appeal in Chancery-this, let me remind our censor, the first and most exalted, without a single exception, among all the courts within this realm, whether of law or of equity, as the court must needs be which hears appeals from the court of the Lord Chancellor himself, when we have the felicity to possess one that never since it was founded has it been better headed, better guided, better led, smoother in working, more harmonious in mutual help and co-operation, more efficient in every way for transacting the public business, than it has been during the last three terms of the present year.

CHAPTER XI.

SORROW.

Verily

I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perk'd up in a glist'ring grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.

Henry VIII., act ii. sc. 3.

IN the lecture upon Edmund Burke to which we have already alluded, Napier when commenting upon the honours proposed to be conferred on the great statesman, thus proceeds:

In the midst of all this Burke was bowed to the earth by a stroke of affliction, which left his home desolate and blighted his earthly hopes. The child of his young affection-the son of his bosom, whom he so tenderly loved, to whom he looked as the bearer of the title he had won and the inheritor of the property that he had with toil and effort secured, he was now cut off; but a few months after Richard, his loved brother, had been taken to his rest. All, all were gone; he was now left in solitude and sorrow. In the celebrated letter which he wrote in reply to