GEORGE

See also:

• GEORGE MANSON (1850-1876)

MANSON (1850-1876)  , Scottish water-colour painter, was born in Edinburgh on the 3rd of December 1850, When about fifteen he was apprenticed as a woodcutter with W . & R . Chambers, with whom he remained for over five years; diligently employing all his spare time in the study and practice of art, and producing in his morning and evening hours water-colours of much delicacy and beauty . In 1871 he devoted himself exclusively to painting . His subjects were derived from humble Scottish life—especially child-life, varied occasionally by portraiture, by landscape, and by views of picturesque architecture . In 1873 he visited Normandy, Belgium and Holland; in the following year he spent several months in Sark; and in 1875 he resided at St Lo, and in Paris, where he mastered the processes of etching . Meanwhile in his water-colour work he had been adding more of breadth and power to the tenderness and richness of colour which distinguished his early pictures, and he was planning more complex and important subjects . But his health-had been gradually failing, and he was ordered to Lympstone in Devonshire, where he died on the 27th of February 1876 . 6oi code . He defined almost every principle that governed commercial transactions in such a manner that his successors had only to apply the rules he had laid down . His knowledge of Roman and foreign law, and the general width of his education, freed him from the danger of relying too exclusively upon narrow precedents, and afforded him a storehouse of principles and illustrations, while the grasp and acuteness of his intellect enabled him to put his judgments in a form which almost always commanded assent . A similar influence was exerted by him in other branches of the common law; and although, after his retirement, a reaction took place, and he was regarded for a while as one who had corrupted the ancient principles of English law, these prejudices passed rapidly away, and the value of his work in bringing the older law into harmony with the needs of modern society has long been fully recognized .

See Holliday's Life (1797);

Campbell's Chief Justices; Foss's Judges; Greville's Memoirs, passim; Horace Walpole's Letters; and other memoirs and works on the period .