[26] _Odyss._ viii. 274: "And upon the anvil-stand he set the mighty anvil; and he forged the links that could be neither broken nor loosed, so that they should stay firm in their place." [27] Lord Justice James said of his colleague that he had only one defect as a judge: "He was too anxious to convince counsel that they were wrong, when he thought their contention unsound, seeming to forget that counsel are paid not to be convinced." LORD CHANCELLOR CAIRNS Hugh M'Calmont Cairns, afterwards Earl Cairns (born 1819, died 1885), was one of three remarkable Scoto-Irishmen whom the north-east corner of Ulster gave to the United Kingdom in one generation, and each of whom was foremost in the career he entered. Lord Lawrence was the strongest of Indian or Colonial administrators, and did more than any other man to save India for England in the crisis of the great Mutiny of 1857. Lord Kelvin has been, since the death of Charles Darwin, the first among British men of science. Lord Cairns was unquestionably the greatest judge of the Victorian epoch, perhaps of the nineteenth century.[28] His name and family were of Scottish origin, but he combined with the shrewd sense and grim persistency of Scotland some measure of the keen partisanship which marks the Irish Orangeman. Born an Episcopalian, he grew up a Tory in politics, an earnest Low-Church Evangelical in religion; nor did his opinions in either respect ever seem to alter during his long life. His great abilities were perceived both at school (he was educated at the Academy in Belfast) and at college (Trinity College, Dublin), and so much impressed the counsel in whose chambers he studied for a year in London, that he strongly dissuaded the young man from returning to Dublin to practise at the Irish bar, promising him a brilliant career on the wider theatre of England. The prediction was verified by the rapidity with which Cairns, who had, no doubt, the advantage of influential connections in the City of London, rose into note. He obtained (as a Conservative) a seat in Parliament for his native town of Belfast when only thirty-three years of age, and was appointed Solicitor-General to Lord Derby's second Ministry six years later--a post which few eminent lawyers have reached before fifty. In the House of Commons, though at first somewhat diffident and nervous, he soon proved himself a powerful as well as ready speaker, and would doubtless have remained in an assembly where he was rendering such valuable services to his party but for the weakness of his lungs and throat, which had threatened his life since boyhood. He therefore accepted, in 1867, the office of Lord Justice of Appeal, with a seat in the House of Lords, and next year was made Lord Chancellor by Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister, who dismissed Lord Chelmsford, then Chancellor, in order to have the benefit of Cairns's help as a colleague. Disraeli subsequently caused him to