MEN OF THE DAY. No. 208.

MR. MONTAGU WILLIAMS.

MR. MONTAGU WILLIAMS is a young man of five-and-forty. He was educated at Eton, and at nineteen went into the South Lincoln Militia, then commanded by Colonel Sibthorpe, as Ensign and Lieutenant. This was at the time of the Crimean War, and Lieutenant Williams soon took over with him a hundred men who volunteered for the Line, and was gazetted as an Ensign to the 96th Regiment of Foot. During twelve months he served with that regiment, he then exchanged into the 41st, and continued his service until, the 41st being ordered to the West Indies, he left the profession of arms altogether.

But so far from proposing to remain idle, Mr. Montagu Williams only exchanged one sphere of activity for another of a far more wearing nature. He occupied himself much with theatricals; he married a lady distinguished upon the stage; he read for the Bar in the chambers of Mr. Holl; and before he was eight-and-twenty he blossomed into an accepted Barrister. He devoted himself to the department of Criminal Law, and very soon displayed so much readiness and ability that he became in a comparatively short time one of the leading men at the Old Bailey. He is not a profound lawyer; but there is no man with a keener eye for a flaw in an indictment, or with greater readiness and fertility of resource in the conduct of a case; so that he has now been placed as of right upon the ladder of promotion by being made Junior Counsel to the Treasury. Few men have a larger or more varied acquaintanceship than Mr. Montagu Williams. He is a brilliant and entertaining talker, and full of good stories. He is amiable and friendly to all, and has a kindly feeling for literature and the stage which has been duly reciprocated. In a recent discussion between two editors he was one of those who were consulted; and he it was who in his military capacity acted for one of the parties to the discussion, and helped to avert a conflict with lethal weapons of which the result might have been a double loss to the country.

MEN OF THE DAY. No. 208.

MR. MONTAGU WILLIAMS.

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(These charts are for monitor calibration only)

Yale Center for British Art, 2013