that is flying, and thus, perhaps, some young men of their body may have an opportunity of acquiring a fine sober brown, to which their complexions might not have been very likely to attain through the medium of hard study. Upon the whole, they are a well-thriven looking race of juvenile jurisconsults; but I certainly could not see many heads among them which Dr Spurzheim would think of setting down as belonging to so many future Voets and Poitiers. For the most part, however, they are at least so candid as to wear their own hair, and so to afford the initiated a fair opportunity of inspecting their various conformations of cranium. A few, indeed, bury all beauties and defects in that old bird's-nest of horse-hair and pomatum, which is in this place usually adhered to by the seniors alone; for you must know the costume of the Scottish Bar is far from being regulated in the same uniform manner with that of WestminsterHall; and those advocates, who hold no official situation under the crown, are at liberty to pace the floor of the Parliament-House with or with out wigs, exactly as it may please their fancy. I confess I should think it were better, either that all had wigs, or that all wanted them; for at present the mixture of bushy heads of hair, à la Berlin, or à la Cossack, with stiff rows of curls, toupees, and three tails, presents a broken and pyebald sort of aspect, to which my southern optics cannot easily reconcile themselves. Perhaps it were best to re-instate the wig in its full rights, and make it a sine qua non in the wardrobe of every counsellor; for if it be fairly allowed to disappear, the gown will probably follow; and in process of time, we may see the very Judges, like those Mr Fearon saw in Connecticut, giving decisions in loose great coats, and black silk neckcloths. Another circumstance that offended me in the appearance of the barristers, is their total want of rule in regard to their nether integuments. I, that have been a Pro-proctor in my day, cannot away with boots, trowsers, and gaiters, worn under a gown. I think a gown implies dress, and that the advocates should wear nothing but black breeches and stockings when in court, as is the case in the south. These are very small matters; but it is astonishing how much effect such small matters produce in the general appearance of a Court of Justice-where, indeed, above all places in the world, propriety of appearance, in regard 26 LETTER XXX. TO THE SAME. By degrees I won my way through several different currents of the crowd, and established myself with my back to the wall, full in the centre of the Advocates' side of the house. Here I could find leisure and opportunity to study the minutiae of the whole scene, and in particular to "fill in my foreground," as the painter's phrase runs, much more accurately than when I was myself mingled in the central tumult of the place. My position resembled that of a person visiting a peristrephic panorama, who, himself immoveable in a darksome corner, beholds the whole dust and glare of some fiery battle pass, cloud upon cloud, and flash upon flash, before his eyes. Here might be seen some of the "Magnanimi Heroes," cleaving into the mass, like furious wedges, in order to reach their appointed station-and traced in their ulterior pro gress only by the casual glimpses of “the proud horse-hair nodding on the crest"—while others, equally determined and keen ἐν προμαχοισι μαχεσθαι, from their stature and agility, might be more properly compared to so many shuttles driven through the threads of an intricate web by some nimble-jointed weaver, Mixpoi μer anλa Maɣntai. On one side might be observed some first-rate champion, pausing for a moment with a grin of bloody relaxation, to breathe after one ferocious and triumphant charge-his plump Sancho Panza busily arranging his harness for the next, no less ferocious. On another sits some less successful combatant, all his features screwed and twisted together, smarting under the lash of a sarcasm-or gazing blankly about him, imperfectly recovered from the stun of a retort; while perhaps some young beardless Esquire, burning for his spurs, may be discovered eyeing both of these askance, envious. even of the cuts of the vanquished, and anxious, at all hazards, like Uriah the Hittite, that some letter might reach the directors of the fray, saying, "Set ye this man in the front of the battle." The elder and more employed advocates, to have done with my similitudes, seemed for the |