MR. PRYME'S RECOLLECTIONS.* Mn. GEORGE PRYME, whose autobiographic recollections are

accompanied by slight connecting links of narrative added by his daughter, was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Political Economy in that University, and member for the borough. He also practised at the common-law bar for some years, being called the same day as Lord Campbell. It is perhaps needless to say that Mr. Pryme did not attain to any great dis- tinction either as a barrister or as a member of Parliament. His name is almost unknown to the present generation. His autobio- graphy shows us that he was useful and hard-working, but if not altogether a silent member, his speeches were, no doubt, reported in the third person. At the Bar he held a certain number of briefs, and was engaged in some interest- ing cases, yet he never took a lead in the profession. All this, however, does not prevent his recollections from being ex- tremely interesting. The persons with whom he came in contact, the glimpses he gives us of the manners of the early part of the century, the details of the barbarous criminal law which he had to administer, the abuses that have been gradually swept away, carry us on with ever fresh and increasing pleasure. Mr.

• The Autobiographic Recollections of George Prom, Erg., M.A. Edited by his Daughter. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Co. London: Bell and Daldy. 1870. Pryme was at school with Kirke White, who at that early age showed no peculiar ability. While Fellow of Trinity he saw something of Lord Byron, who was " unaffected and agreeable, but we Fellows did not think him possessed of any great talent, so much so that when the ' Euglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers' appeared without his name, Monk and Rose and I would not believe that he was the author." While keeping his terms for the Bar, Mr. Pryme dined constantly with Lord St. Leonardo, then Mr. Sugden, who was practising under the Bar as a conveyancer, and, therefore, ranked only as a student. " One day," says Mr. Pryme, "I suggested to him whether with his abilities he had taken a right course, and whether he should not practise in the Court of Chancery. He answered me that he was not anxious for the honours of the profession, and sought only an income, -which he was taking the fairest course to obtain." Another legal acquaintance of Mr. Pryme's was Lord Campbell, wlio once went -down specially to Huntingdon Assizes as Attorney-General, and going on to Cambridge to see Mr. Pryme, was taken by the ser- vants for a farmer. In the House of Commons, Mr. Pryme heard the "too confident and presumptuous" maiden speech of Mr. Disraeli, and in strong contrast to it, " the graceful, harmonious, modest, and almost timid, maiden speech of Mr. W. E. Glad- stone." Mr. Prymo was also a listener at some of those sermons preached by Dr. Chalmers which attracted all London, and at one of which "Mr. Wilberforce came too late, and, being a alight man, was taken in at an open window, and so got to a seat re- served for him," rather after the pattern of Zacchmus.

The instances we have already given show the miscellaneous -character of Mr. Pryme's recollections. But they also speak to the retentiveness of his memory, and the curious range of his -observation. The manners and customs of his early life which he has preserved for us have been picked up by means of the same faculty. We hear of there being only one umbrella in Cambridge at the end of the last century, and that one was kept at a shop and let out by the hour. " The early umbrellas were very -clumsy," says Mr. Pryme, " They were made of oiled cloth, and were very flat, people not being then aware of the philosophy that -fluid will not penetrate Hit falls slantingly, and were carried by a wing fastened to the top, so that the handle often got dirty." At dinner, we read, the wine was not put on the table, but was kept on the sideboard, and if you wished to drink wine with a dady, you asked her what she would take, and then told the servant to bring two glasses of it. The dinner-hour in good families was two o'clock if they were alone, three or four if they had a party. -Only thirty years ago a countrywoman calling upon a convey- ancer in Hull at two o'clock, was told that he was at dinner, and she exclaimed, " What I has he turned fine gentleman ?" Mr. Pryme gives us one fact which shows the slow progress made by the science of medicine dnring the early part of the century. When a boy he was attacked by so violent a fever that he was given up by the doctor, and as it was considered useless to give him any more medicine, and he expressed a craving for brandy, he was allowed a couple of glasses. Next day 'the doctor called to ask if he was still alive, and was told that he was much better. Some years afterwards Mr. Pryme met this doctor, and talked to him about the remedy which had proved successful. The doctor said that at the time he gave the brandy he thought it the most improper thing that could be taken, but that as his patient had only a few hours to live, he wished to make him more comfortable. A still greater change was witnessed by Mr. Pryme in the science of politics. One of dais most startling facts is, that before Grampound was disfran- chised, he saw an advertisement offering the borough of Westbury for sale by order of the Court of Chancery. Here, too, is a sin- gular instance of the fulfilment of prophecy :— "When the Reform Bill passed, the Earl of Winchelsea, who had been the vehement and sincere opponent of it, and also of Roman "Catholic Emancipation, uttered a prophecy that within ten years there would be neither King, nor House of Lords, and that mass would be

• sting in Westminster Abbey. This prophecy was fulfilled in every point, though not exactly in the sense in which he had intended it. Within the time specified there was no House of Lords, for the interior of it was burnt ; no King, for a Queen occupied the throne; and _Mozart's Requiem was sung in the Abbey."

Mr. Pryme's experience as a barrister does not seem to have been very large, but from an early age he was interested in law, and he watched carefully the gradual modification of judicial severity. As a boy he remembers a man being tried for stealing a silver cup value 40s., and the judge putting it to the jury whether the bottom of the cup might not be of copper. While Mr. Pryme was practising on the Norfolk circuit, a rider at Newmarket was hanged for putting some noxious stuff into a drinking-trough on the course, so as to cause the death of a race- horse. The effect of such severity was that extreme technicality was allowed to prevail, and Mr. Pryme tells us of a case where a murderer very nearly escaped on account of the body of his victim being found in a grove through which the boundary of the county ran, and there was some difficulty in proving whether the body was found in the county. A curious story is told of the murder of an old clergyman who was remarkable for snow-white and rather woolly hair. Suspicion fell on a man seen near the spot that day, and on his being apprehended, there was found in

his possession a billhook, with some blood and snow-white woolly hairs upon it. Upon this evidence the man was convicted, but the judge, not being wholly satisfied with the verdict, granted' a fortnight's respite. However, before this was communicated to the prisoner, he had acknowledged his guilt. While walking in the prison yard he saw at a window a man with snow-white hair, and so exactly resembling his victim, that he thought it must be his ghost, and under the influence of his belief he made a full con-

fession. The most remarkable part of this was that the murder was committed with a sword, which was afterwards thrown away in a wood, while the blood and white hairs on the bill were those of a sheep. Mr. Pryme gives us an interesting account of the ingenuity of one of the old Bow-Street runners :—

" After careful examination of the locks he pronounced that it was so cleverly done, that it could only have been effected by one of three or four men who were skilled in such work. Thereupon he returned to town, and visited one of the houses where thieves resort. Entering into conversation with those he found there, ho asked casually, Where's such a man ? ' and don't see —,' and presently it came out that one man, whom he knew by name, had not been seen since the day of the robbery. His next step was to visit the different coach offices, and after some inquiries made in vain, he at last discovered that a man, liko the one in question, had gone down with luggage to Oxford the day after the robbery. He took his place for the next day, and when arrived at Oxford set about tracing him in this way. He dressed him- self very shabbily and visited the different little inns in the outskirts of the town, saying at each, ' I want a pot of beer for —,' naming the man he wished to find. He was met with, ' We don't know such a • person hero,' to which he replied, ' Oh ! it's a mistake, then, no matter,'

and so on, till at last the answer was, We'll send No,' said he, that won't do, he's in a hurry, and I'm to go with you.' He went, and found his man, and some of the stolen property in his possession."

We have spoken of Mr. Pryme's acquaintance with Lord

Campbell and Lord St. Leonards. He was also brought in frequent contact with Lord Abinger, who will be better known under the

familiar name of Scarlett, and who more than once acted as Mr. Pryme's leader. He told Mr. Pryme that one secret of his great success with juries was his habit of watching their countenances, and if he found the topic he was urging did not make the desired impression, he turned to other aspects of the case, and then came back to his first point, which he argued from a somewhat different point of view. It is rather an abrupt transition from Scarlett to Macaulay, but a book of this kind makes that necessary. Mr. Pryme mentions Macaulay's extreme quickness in grasping at results, as giving the appearance of a hasty judgment.

He instances this by referring to the well-known speech on Talfourd's Copyright Bill, in which Macaulay said that the grandson of Richardson, the novelist, would not allow his family to read the works of their ancestor. Mr. Pryme happened to meet the son of this grandson, and he positively

stated that his father had only excluded Clarissa Harlow, " the details of which he thought, and so must every careful father

think, unfit for his daughters to read." We close our review of a very entertaining book with the story of a Cambridge Professor, who was asked to call on a friend in London, an address being given him in a certain square. Some time afterwards the Pro-

fessor was asked by his friend why he had not been to see him, and his answer was, " I did come, but there was some mistake; you told me you lived in a square, and I found myself in a parallelogram, and so I went away again." Let us hope that no

such scruples will deter any of our readers from ordering this volume.