An Englishman of strong and independent nature, who. without unduly courting the powerful, has by unceasing industry raised himself to honour and distinction in the state, is ever regarded by posterity with respect and veneration. Few of our lawyers have played a more conspicuous part in public affairs than Lord Eldon; and fewer still have laboured with similar assiduity to attain the position that enabled him to exercise an influence on the opinions and feelings of the nation. The son of a hoastman of Newcastle, and the grandson of a yeoman of the Sand-gate, he was precipitated, by an early marriage, into a profession towards which he had little inclination; yet, by hard study and well-used faculties, he rose to its highest honours, and obtained its highest rewards. John Scott was born on the 4th of June, 1751, at Love Lane, Newcastle-on-Tyne, where his father was a general trader, his chief business being that of a coal-fitter. He was a man of no inconsiderable substance, as the fortunes he was enabled to leave to his family sufficiently proved, and, according to all accounts, a freeman of high repute. His wife was characterised at once by her excellence in the domestic virtues, and by the superiority of her understanding, which have been thought to account, in some measure, for the worth and abilities that raised two of her sons to such honourable and distinguished positions. The future Chancellor's life was im-perilled [almost in infancy, from his falling down a flight of stairs in a go-cart; and he was only saved, apparently, by that good fortune which attended him throughout his career. At an early age he was sent to receive his first instructions from a person well known and long remembered in the town by the honourable appellation of Dominie Warden, his next teacher being the Rev. Hugh Moises, master of the Newcastle Grammar-School, who was quite absorbed in his instructive pursuits, and zealously devoted to the improvement and welfare of his pupils. This worthy, though he was far from sparing the rod, inspired his scholars with so much esteem, that his memory was held by them in considerable veneration. The teacher of mathematics was no less a person than the afterwards celebrated Professor Hutton; and one of John Scott's class-fellows was a pretty and gentle hoy, destined to add fresh glory to his country's renown, whom fame is now proud to claim as Lord Collingwood. Scott was one of the most diligent scholars, and greatest favourites with the master, who frequently held him up to his associates as a model for imitation; but this did not, as some-times unfortunately happens, render him in the slightest degree unpopular among the other boys, with whom, on the contrary, he was in high esteem. In fact, though he practised much of the application which distinguished his after years, he seems to have always relished a frolic; and used to relate his juvenile adventures, in this respect, with much merriment to the close of his life. In those days the short-cake of Chester-le-Street presented to the youthful inhabitants of Newcastle an irresistible temptation; and, one fine afternoon, he secretly undertook a journey thither, a distance of some miles, on foot, accompanied by a younger brother. Loitering about till evening set in, they were met by a friend of their father, who, thinking that it was much too late for such young travellers to return home, considerately took them to his house, and kept them all night. Meantime the family in Love Lane were seized with dread at their unaccountable disappearance, and had the town searched, but in vain. Next morning the crier, bell in Land, proclaimed through every street that the young Scotts were mysteriously missing, without obtaining the slightest intelligence in regard to them. At length, tired with travel, the roamers arrived at their father's door; and the angry hoastman having administered a sound whipping, sent them to school, where Mr. Moises marked his displeasure by a similar castigation. On another occasion, Master Jackey, as he was then styled, was the seventeenth boy flogged for a most ungallant piece of behaviour. They had surrounded an elderly lady in the street, and would not allow her to go either back or forward. She applied for redress to the master, who, having vigorously done his duty to the other delinquents, exclaimed, as he arrived at the seventeenth and last, —

"What! Jack Scott, were you there, too?"

The agitated criminal hesitatingly pleaded guilty.

"I will not stop," said the persevering flagellant: "you shall all have it!" But his former exertions had considerably weakened the force with which the strokes were inflicted, and "Master Jackey" con-gratulated himself on having got off more easily than his comrades.

It has been remarked, that neither at school nor college was Lord Eldon one of those "demure boys" denounced by Falstaff as never coming to any proof; and some amusing anecdotes are related, which would fully vindicate him from any such charge as that of being deficient in the spirit of mischief.

His father agreed with a writing-master to ini-tiate him into the art of penmanship, for half-a guinea a quarter, during which he confesses to having never attended for instruction hut once. At the expiration of that term he was sent to pay the teacher, but the latter declared he could not, with propriety, receive the money, as he had given no thing in exchange. The young truant, however, insisted upon him taking it, as he, with truth, stated that he durst not, under the awkward circumstance, carry it back to his father.

"Well," said the master, "if I am to take it, at all events I must give something for it. So, come here." On the other going close up to him, he took the money in one hand, and applied the other to Master Jack's ear, with a force which dashed him headlong against the wainscot of the room.

Between school-hours the hoys were in the habit of amusing themselves by riding on the gravestones in St. John's churchyard. One day when they were thus delightfully engaged, the awful cry suddenly arose that Moises was coming; and Jack being, as usual, amongst them, made a desperate plunge down some steps leading to the school, just in the nick of time to run against a pudding, which a maid-servant was taking to the bakehouse. He was obliged to borrow a companion's great-coat to cover the tell-tale mark it imprinted. But, what was worse, he had lost his hat in the scramble; and his father was so extremely enraged at the whole affair, that he sentenced him to go without one, till the customary time for taking his best into everyday wear. Thus was the future noble and learned occupant of the woolsack, though the son of a rich and respectable townsman, forced to appear without a head-piece for three months, Sundays excepted. The next scrape was still more perilous, being nothing less than plundering an orchard, then deemed by schoolboys rather an honourable exploit. After performing it, he had just gone to bed, when a complaint on the subject was lodged with his father, who immediately came to accuse him of the offence; but though his coat was lying close by, with the pockets full of the purloined apples, and he was suffering internal torture from those he had eaten, he stoutly denied the charge. Although the abstracted property could not betray him, as of old the oxen, by their bellowing did the monster Cacus, this did not save him from the double punishment consequent on all such misdemeanours, whether proven or not; for he relates that the taws of his father and the rod of Moises were applied with their usual wholesome and salutary severity.