ATTORNEY

3pp., folio. Bifolium. On aged and worn paper. Docketed on reverse of second leaf and addressed to 'Mr. Robert Park | Writer in | Glasgow', with postmark in red ink. The first page is headed 'Edinburgh within John's Coffee House the fifteenth day of December One thousand Seven hundred and Eighty six Years. | Siderunt of the committee respecting the Attorney Tax Law.' The minutes end at the top half of the third page, and a followed on the lower part of the same page by Sprott's covering note, written by a secretary and signed by him with short autograph postscript.

2pp., 8vo. In fair condition, on aged and worn paper, with slight discoloration to reverse of second leaf, which also bears traces of mount along one edge. Addressed, on reverse of second leaf, to 'The Attorney General | &c &c &c | J R G Graham'. This letter - an unusually detailed survival for a communication from one officer of state to another during this period - concerns a House of Commons debate on the 'Moral and Religious Education of the Working Classes', held on 28 February 1843, and extensively reported in The Times, 1 March 1843, pp.3-4.

3pp., 12mo. A fair copy. Very good, on lightly-aged paper. The twenty-eight-line poem is arranged in seven four-line stanzas, with Hillard's firm signature and the date at the end. The poem begins with unintentional, but no less curious, sexual overtones: 'The rod of Aaron, severed long | From its ancestral bowers, | Felt in its veins the sap of youth, | And shone with buds of flowers. | The rigid staff, smoothworn and dry, | In living green was dressed.

4pp., 4to. Bifolium. Ninety lines of text. Good, on lightly-aged paper, with small hole on second leaf causing damage to a few words of text. Addressed with two postmarks (one French, one American) on the reverse of the second leaf to 'William W. Whitwell Esq | Boston. Mass. | United States of America'. A significant letter, written from Paris by an astute and cultured American jurist on the day following the demonstration of 15 May 1848.

4pp., 4to. Bifolium. 89 lines of text. Good, on lightly-aged paper. Addressed, with red circular postmark, on reverse of second leaf, to 'Revd. Samuel J. May | South Scituate'. Hillard describes 'Dr. Follen' as 'an intimate and dear friend to me'. He looks back 'with melancholy pleasure upon the happy hours' he spent in the society of 'so pure and elevated a being'. He has 'never known a better man; I do not know that I may not say, that I have never known so good a man.

1p., 4to, on recto of first leaf of bifolium, with verso of the second addressed by Hale to 'Henry Vose jr. Esq | Counsellor at Law | Springfield | Mass', and carrying Hale's red wax seal, broken into two parts, and a red postmark. Good, on lightly-aged paper. Hale writes that he is enclosing 'the sum with which you were so kind as to accommodate me last week - I don't know how I should have "got along" without it'. 'I have no news for you to-day, as our steamer has not yet arrived, and I dare not venture uponn the vast perturbed sea of our politics'.

English judge and Tory politician (1816-88; DNB). Both letters 3 pages, 16mo, and both in good condition. Interesting letters giving his views on an important matter.