The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.—When the unexpected news of Sir Cress-
well Cresswell's sudden death burst upon the
town every man asked his neighbour, in a tone of
hopeless speculation, " Whom can they appoint to
succeed him p" Sir Cresswell had made his own
Court ; he had arranged his own practice; he had
disciplined his own Bar; he had acquired an abso-
lute dominion over his own suitors. No one had
ever thought of any other Judge of the Divorce
Court than the man who filled the place with such
all-sufficiency. He was so strong in mind and so
unfailing in body that we had not considered that
he was treading upon the verge of the working
existence of ordinary men. He had made no men-
tion of retiring. He was altogether unconscious
of the disease which had so fatally sapped his
life. However well he had earned a right to pass
his latter years in a learned leisure, the public
would perhaps hive murmured a little if he had
left a post where he was so indispensable. The
sudden summons, however, came, and he died in
harness. We had nct been prepared for so
quick a necessity to answer the question
—Who among our judges is fit to he the successor
to eir Cresswell Cresswell p It is now announced
that Sir James Wilde, one of the barons of the Ex-
chequer, is to be removed to the Probate and Divorce
Court. We cannot say that either the profession or
the public have received this intelligence with un-
qualified content. We will not inquire whe-
ther Mr. Baron Wilde combines in himself
all the qualities necessary to the highest
point of efficiency in the Judge of Matrimonial
Causes; and Mr. Baron Wilde !s so fully entitled to
our respect that we would not willingly put any
question which might seem to imply a slight. It is,
however, no disparagement to him to say that,
whatever may be his qualities as a lawyer and a
man of the world, ho is not physically a strong
man capable of hard work. As an amiable lawyer
of respectable abilities, he will no doubt do all that
can be reasonably expected of a judge who to this
intellectual calibre adds the misfortune of a delicate
physique, and it certainly will not be his fault if
the profession shall see a difference between the
Divorce Court as it was and as it will be. The Di-
vorce Court, however, is not in its nature a sanato-
rium; it is much more of a gymnasium. We want
strength, and power, and sinew there, both physical
and intellectual, and there is at least a very general
impression that by this appointment we are not
likely to gain all these. We admit the great diffi-
culty of the choice. When the public looked around
they could not recollect among their eligibles Chief
Justice Erle or Sir Roundell Palmer, because unfor-
tunately the place to be filled is not one of the great
prizes of the profession, end when these names have
been spoken it would be difficult to name another
of lower rank which would carry with it universal
conviction that every condition had been fulfilled.
It is not therefore in any spirit of captious criticism
that we remark upon this appointment; but simply
to point out the necessity that when you appoint
an ailing man to a place of great importance you
must make his labour light. It is physically im-
possible that Sir James Wilde can do the work that
Sir Cresswell Cresswell did, and it will not be fair
either to him or to the public to put him to do it.
Even Sir Cresswell was pumping in a well with the
water always up to his lips. We cannot afford to
have this court discredited by delays and choked by
arrears. It has a number of natural enemies through-
out the country, and any shortcomings in its work
will be made use of for superstitious and sectarian
objections to the system of law it administers.
It
would be a great pity to deprive it of all the
it. The
advan-
tage which a full judicial staff might
at nexation of the Probate jurisdiction to give
ehe Matri-
monial jurisdiction was at first a
ideas ridiculous homage
to an absurd association of ; if Sir James
Court, Wilde is to go to the Divorce
it will, we
fear soon become necessary to hand over the Pro-
bate business to another judge.
POST.—To-day is the day with which, in the esti-
mation of a very considerable and
in reality begins.
Not the autumn a
and influential section
of her Majesty's subjects, autumn
the
people which is associated
with falling leaves, reddening woodlands, chilly
nights and mornings, and roast goose at Michaelmas,
but the autumn of patrician and opulent sportsmen,
the autumn of sultry days upon the hills, an autumn
which is still summer ere a single hectic hue is per
ceptible in the deep green copses. It is the 12th o
August—
Ipsi votes ad sidera jactant,

Intonsi montes.
Ere these lines can greet the reader's eye a thousand
keen marksmen will be awakening the echoes of the
Highlands, and as many head of grouse have flut-
tered bleeding into the heather. Shooting in all its
branches is by far the most exclusive of field sports.
It is only a rich man who can preserve game, and
it is only those who find it worth while to pay three
guineas for the privilege who are allowed to shoot it.
The preservation of foxes costs, on the other hand, a
mere trifle, and any man who has only a donkey
to bestride may join in the pursuit if he chooses.
Angling, too, has always been to some extent a sport
open to the poor. No license is required for it, and
the expense of preservation, though often consider-
able, is as nothing compared to hares and pheasants.
With grouse of course the great expense is the hire
of the moor; but even on the moor a considerable
staff of keepers and watchers has to be kept up.
And the sport itself being conducted on a larger
scale, and the game more remote and inaccessible,
becomes of necessity the privilege of still fewer
than partridge or even pheasants. Yet grouse
shooting, though more exclusive and aristocratic,
is, for obvious reasons, less unpopular than shooting
of any other kind. In the first place, people who
cannot shoot grouse do not as a rule see grouse.
And thus one source of irritation is removed. In
the second place, as they cannot be preserved in
more
exactly the same style as domestic game, they
do not involvo those desperate conflicts with the
poachers which bring so much odium on preservers.
Thirdly, they do comparatively little injury to the
farmers' crops, and hence another topic of invective
familiar to a certain class of malcontents is not
suggested by " The Twelfth." For all these rea-
sons a peculiar superiority attaches to this noble
sport, independently of those attractions which are
almost universally acknowledged. The change of
scenery, the beauty of the bird himself, the com-
plete freedom of the hillside, and the bracing air
which is inhaled, delight and exhilarate the shooter
more than it is possible that the finest southern
shooting ground should do. But over and above
all this there must, in the minds of many great men
at least, be the agreeable consciousness that, in
turning oat this morning, they leave behind all
grumbling jealousies and heartburnings. Of course,
among the very great magnates of the land the his•
content produced by game-preserving is hardly, it
at all, felt ; and in a great many districts we must
remember it does not exist. By proper manage-
ment and liberality the most populous preserves
may be kept up without creating a spark of ill-feel-
ing in the neighbourhood. But it is notorious that
they often do create it ; and then, unless the estate

is very large and the tenantry particularly cautious,