Law and Laughter
   , flying about Westminster Hall, reached the Chancellor, who was very much amused with it, notwithstanding the allusion to his doubting propensity. Soon after, Sir George Rose having to argue before him a very untenable proposition, he gave

   his opinion very gravely, and with infinite grace and felicity thus concluded: "For these reasons the judgment must be against your clients; and here, Sir George, the Chancellor does not

    doubt

   ."

   The following was Lord Eldon's answer to an application for a piece of preferment from his old friend Dr. Fisher, of the Charter House:

   "

    Dear Fisher

   ,—I cannot, to-day, give you the preferment for which you ask.—I remain, your sincere friend,

    Eldon

   ." Then, on the other side, "I gave it to you yesterday."

   According to his biographer, Lord Eldon caused a loud laugh while the old Duke of Norfolk was fast asleep in the House of Lords, and amusing their lordships with "that tuneful nightingale, his nose," by announcing from the woolsack, with solemn emphasis, that the Commons had sent up a bill for "enclosing and dividing Great Snoring in the county of Norfolk!"

   Like Lord Thurlow, Lord Eldon was in close intimacy with George III in the days when his Majesty's mind was supposed to be not very strong. "I took down to Kew," relates his lordship, "some Bills for his assent, and I placed on a paper the titles and the effect of them. The king, being perhaps suspicious that my coming down might be to judge of his competence for public business, as I was reading over the titles of the different Acts of Parliament he interrupted me and

   said: 'You are not acting correctly, you should do one of two things; either bring me down the Acts for my perusal, or say, as Thurlow once said to me on a like occasion, having read several he stopped and said, "It is all d—d nonsense trying to make you understand them, and you had better consent to them at once."'"


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