Lord Mansfield was noted for the charming quality of his voice—an immense force in oratory, helping as it does to sway the feelings of the audience. Pope is said to have had this charm in so remarkable a degree that in his childhood he was called ‘the little nightingale,’ a term more applicable to vocalization than to speaking, and, like Pope, Murray had studied elocution. [Illustration: _Hogarth._] He is said to have had a greed for money-getting, and never to have given an opinion gratis or unprofessionally. There is a story told of a lady who, wishing to have the authority of his ideas upon the subject of the French Revolution, inquired how he thought it would end, and was answered that, ‘as the event was without precedent, so the end was without prognostic,’ a sentence that could not have greatly added to her enlightenment. It was through Lord Mansfield’s suggestion that the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn are in possession of Hogarth’s picture of ‘Paul before Felix.’ A legacy of £200 had been left to the Inn, and as the best way of spending it his lordship recommended the Benchers to employ Hogarth to paint them the picture, which hangs, or did hang, in the Benchers’ old hall. It is pleasant to record of Lord Mansfield that, at a time when the criminal law of England was Draconic in its indiscriminating severity, he, as a rule, leaned to the side of mercy. It was Lord Mansfield who directed a jury to find a stolen trinket less in value than ten shillings in order that the thief might escape capital punishment, to which the jeweller who prosecuted demurred, asserting that the fashion of the thing had cost him twice the money. ‘Gentlemen,’ replied the judge, with grave solemnity, ‘we ourselves stand in need of mercy; let us not hang a man for the fashion’s sake!’ His kinsman and successor, the second Earl of Mansfield, spent much of his time at Hampstead, of which he was also a warm admirer; and when, in the autumn of 1829, it became necessary for the freeholders and copyholders to consider what measures should be taken for the preservation of their own privileges, and the prevention of further encroachments on the Heath, by breaking up and destroying the herbage, for the digging and selling of sand, etc., and also to oppose the further progress of what was called Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson’s Estate Bill, which had actually arrived at its last stage in the House of Lords without their knowledge,[219] and, consequently, without a voice being raised against it, Lord Mansfield wrote to the committee promising to support the opposition, and subscribing £50 towards the necessary expenses.