Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The National Portrait Gallery
Not only were the legal oracles right as to the fact of Sir James Wilde's appointment, but also as to the special fitness which prompted the prophecy. The brief period during which be exercised his judicial functions in the Court of Exchequer was still long enough to make it evident that the forensic seers were accurate in their estimate. In the familiar phraseology of his compeers he made what is termed a good judge. The almost uninterrupted career of success was unfortunately broken by physical infirmity. It would have been well if, despite of added years and growing occupations, the man could have become for awhile. A boy again, and taken his place once more by the stumps at Winchester, or in the Cambridge tennis-court. Such eminence as was compassed by Sir James Plaisted Wilde is not purchased without a price, and that paid by the subject of our memoir was a heavy one indeed, for it necessitated the resignation of his post, and the consequent suspension of a career of usefulness. Happily it was only for a time that his powers had thus to be held in abeyance but the immediate cause was alarming enough. At the Summer Assizes of 1862, when he was junior judge on the Northern Circuit, Sir James's strength utterly gave way during the pressure of an exceptionally heavy calendar at Liverpool. He was obliged to leave a. Portion of the business unfinished; and in the spring of the following year he was also unable to go the Western Circuit, and Mr. Serjeant Shee was placed in the commission in his stead. These are the ominous warnings we all of us get in our different walks of life that the intellectual machinery is a delicate one, and reacts curiously on the physical frame. Though so young in his judicial life, Sir James Wilde was obliged to look forward to some otz'a tuta, and happily the legal profession, like the clerical, is not altogether lacking in such harbours of refuge, into which the storm-beaten vessel can put when the winds and waves have for the moment over-taxed it.
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