or confirmed carelessness or indifference, or fraudulent intention to
deceive. It was in arguing before the court _in banc_, that Mr. Smith so
much excelled; being equally lucid in stating and arranging his facts,
logical in reasoning upon them, and ready in bringing to bear on them
the most recondite doctrines of law. He was certainly not calculated to
have ever made a figure at Nisi Prius; yet I recollect one day that one
of the present judges, then a Queen's Counsel, was talking to me in
court as Mr. Smith entered, and said, "What think you? your friend Smith
has been opposing me to-day in a writ of inquiry to assess damages in a
crim. con. case." I laughed. "Ay, indeed,--I thought myself that if
there was a man at the bar more unfit than another for such a case, it
was Smith; but I do assure you that he conducted the defendant's case
with so much tact and judgment, that he reduced my verdict by at least
£500! He really spoke with a good deal of feeling and spirit, and when
the Jury had got accustomed to him, they listened most attentively; and
the result is what I tell you."

[9] To this gentleman he dedicated, in 1843, the third edition of
his "Mercantile Law." Within a very few months of each other, both
of them died--Mr. Richards himself having, as he once told me,
ruined his health by his intense and laborious prosecution of his
profession. He had found it necessary to retire a year or two before
his death. His brother, also, Mr. Griffith Richards, Q.C., one of
the ablest members of the Chancery Bar, recently died under similar
circumstances.

Following the course of his professional progress, in 1840 Mr. Smith was
appointed a revising barrister for one of the counties on his circuit,
by Mr. Baron Alderson, who was personally a stranger to him, and named
him for the office solely on account of his eminent fitness for the