with terrific choruses, the echo of which resounds all over the building. It certainly cannot be pleasant for a gentleman, who, at two in the morning, is making a desperate attempt to master some abstruse problem in conveyancing, or to discover the full meaning of a new Act of Parliament, to have everything like law scared a thousand miles away from him, by an assurance proceeding from twelve or thirteen rather tipsy voices, that they'll take a flight from earth to heaven, and leave the world behind them. Perhaps our friend sincerely wishes that they would only carry their promise out, and take a flight to heaven, or anywhere away from the place they are in. But they do nothing of the kind, at least until four or five o'clock, when a loud scuffling and tramping is heard on the stairs as the party breaks up. Different from first, second, and third floor, is the fourth, the top, or nearly so, of the house. Its proprietor calls himself a law student as well as the others, but law perhaps is precisely that which he studies least. Not a fashionable idler, like our friend of the ground-floor; not a plodding lawyer, like the occupant of the second; nor a riotous good-for-nothing, like him of the third floor-his days and his nights are given to steady unflinching work. He too looks forward to distinction at the profession he is about to embrace, but that distinction is to him a very distant prospect indeed. His every moment at present is taken up by a ceaseless struggle for bread. Perhaps he ekes out his livelihood by writing, perhaps he gives private lessons in some subject. Be this as it may, he depends on his own head for his support and advancement in life. Hitherto it has stood him in good stead; by it he has forced himself on to his present position; let us hope that it will be hereafter as faithful to him.

A visit to any other of the buildings of our inn would bring forward pretty much the same set of characters; some lazy, some industrious; some rich, and others poor; all enjoying the same glorious independence of chamber life, all waited on by that most hideous, untidy and unwashed class of females, yclept "laundresses."

We have in our Inn a chapel and a library. But its peculiar boast is its dining-hall. To say the truth, we have some reason to be proud of it. Although on the outside it is not very remarkable, yet the interior of it is striking to a stranger, and bears his mind back for centuries. It is a fine large, lofty room, somewhat like Westminister-hall in style, and panelled and raftered with good oak, which has been seasoned and

blackened by many a year. At each end is a door, over one of which is a gallery, supported on a screen or partition of oak, finely carved. On the walls are painted the coats of arms of the gentlemen who at various times have filled the office of treasurer to the Honourable Society of Brown's Inn; and here also are hung portraits of the different great men whom "Brown's" proudly counts as having in old days been of her alumni. Very eminent men some of them were too, not merely cunning in the drawing of settlements, or the devising of subtle pleas-which we of the law are, perhaps, too much inclined to look on as the very highest pitch of

human wisdom-but wise too in discovering the secrets of nature, and analysing that most puzzling of substances, the mind of man. Down the room stretch the long tables at which the students and barristers dine during term time. The tables are of solid substantial oak, well polished. They are old, too, for we have a tradition that they were presented to our Inn by Queen Elizabeth.

Indeed the whole hall is redolent, if I may use the expression, of this queen and of her court. From the gallery which I have spoken of, she viewed Will Shakspere and his company-at least so the story goes amongst us-act the Midsummer Night's Dream, at the other end of the hall. I have heard, too, of revels being held there, when doubtless "the grave Lord Keeper led the brawls," and the ladies of the court performed solemn dances with the chivalrous young gentlemen of the day. One of the earliest specimens of the English drama-ere Shakspere had yet come forth-was acted in our hall. I think our honourable society has some cause for being proud of these associations.

However, Queen Elizabeth, her courtiers, and her maids of honour, have long since passed away, and are to us but unsubstantial shadows. Far more important to the man of the present is an account of what is now doing. In our Inn our principal doings are connected with eating. Every one knows, that in order to be called to the bar, the student must attend during a certain number of terms at one of the Inns of Court, and in each term must eat a certain number of dinners. These dinners are at all the Inns a very solemn proceeding at none more so, perhaps, than at ours, where the old customs that are kept up easily carry the mind back to a very distant date.

Let us enter the hall on any day in term time, at about twenty minutes after five o'clock. Various groups are gathered here and there throughout it; some round the large stove which stand in the centre, others chatting with the clerk who attends to take down the names of those who appear, in order that they may obtain credit for the dinner. All wear black stuff gowns of different fashions, according as the wearer is a student or a barrister. Some are discussing the last law-point that has been raised at Westminister, others settling the affairs of the nation. Here and there is a little knot of students from our own land, laughing and joking, and making exceedingly bad puns. These Irish gentlemen are obliged to keep terms in England as well as at home, in order to be called to the Irish bar. Some of them only left their homes in Dublin last night at seven o'clock, and still bear the marks of travel on their countenances. Whatever differences of politics there may be amongst them, they seem unanimous on some points -that the passage from Kingstown to Holyhead is a dire nuisance, and that they will willingly assist any plan to build a bridge across, or drain the Irish Channel dry.

From time immemorial "Brown's" has been a favourite resort of Irish students, and strange stories linger about

of their fun, and sometimes of their mischief. But those stories are very much of the past, nor is it likely that any of them would perpetrate now what is related of one who afterwards attained a high position on the Irish Bench. Many, many years ago, a number of our young countrymen were, like our friends whom I have just described, lounging about the stove waiting for dinner. Just as the benchers came in and were taking their places, one of these young gentlemen managed, unobserved, to place in the stove half a dozen squibs, which exploded as grace was being said, smashed some dozens plates which were lying near to be warmed, and filled the hall with smoke and a strong smell of gunpowder. Of course a hubbub arose at once. The wrath of the benchers was roused; the doors of the hall were ordered to be locked, and a court was summarily constituted for the discovery and punishment of the author of the mischief. As the promptest mode of detection, the students were ordered to remain in their places, and each was required to rise in turn and declare on his honour whether he was the culprit. One after the other arose and declared his innocence, and it was rapidly coming to the turn of our Irish student. He felt that he was in all probability ruined for life; for of course there was nothing open to him but to confess his guilt, and of that confession expulsion from the Inn would be the certain and speedy consequence. As may be imagined his thoughts were not of the pleasantest nature as the student next him rose, as our countryman supposed, to follow the example of the others, and disclaim any part in the outrage. But this one did not declare on his honour that he was not the culprit. He boldly refused to answer at all the question put to him, and declared that he considered such an inquisitorial proceeding to be quite unworthy of any body of Englishmen, and that he for one, let the consequences be to him what they. might, would not obey the arbitrary command of the Benchers. If they wished to discover who committed the offence, they should proceed in some manner more in accordance with the spirit of English law. His declaration was received with a murmur of applause through the hall, and the Benchers, feeling that they had taken a wrong course, suffered the matter to drop there, and put no further questions. In this way our countryman narrowly escaped suffering the penalty of his mischievous spirit. Years afterwards when he had risen to a high official position, he was one day walking down Whitehall, when he was accosted by a gentleman somewhat poorly attired, who asked him if he did not remember him. For a moment the subject of our story hesitated, but soon he recollected all, and addressing the stranger: "Remember you!" he said-" Ill never forget you as long as there is a squib or a cracker to be bought in London." I am glad to say that he showed practically that he did remember. His old preserver had been unfortunate in life. He had never been called to the bar, and had followed other callings, in none of which he had prospered; and his prospects were very dreary indeed when be met the quondam Guy Fawkes of the plates and dishes of Brown's Inn, who obtained for him

an employment which made him comfortable for the rest of his days.

However, to return to the hall of the present day, the hands of the clock move on, and at half-past five the benchers make their appearance, and take their places at a table on the raised dais at the top of the hall. Three blows are struck with a wooden mallet, and at this signal students and barristers repair to their respective tables. Another blow is struck, gracesomewhat longer than the short " Benedictus benedicat" of the King's Inns here-is said in Latin, and dinner begins. There is a bar table and a students' table, each divided into several messes of four members. Each mess has its dinner served to it separately-the meat on large pewter plates-and enjoys its own special bottle of wine. Every mess has its captain, an officer whose privilege it is to help himself first to everything, and whose duty it is to preserve order among the members of his mess. The meat is not carved by any one individual for the others, as is done in our more modern and more civilized King's Inns in Dublin, but every one helps himself. The captain, as I have said, begins ; he sends the dish to the gentleman opposite to him, who, when he has helped himself, does not give it to his neighbour, but shoves it across to the person opposite that neighbour. He again sends it to his vis-a-vis. In this zigzag fashion all the dishes and the wine are passed round, and any infraction on the rule may be punished by a fine on the gentleman trespassing. This fine ought to consist of a bottle of wine for the mess, but is, in fact, never enforced. An important part of the captain's duty is to drink to the messes near his One of the customs of our hall is, that every mess should drink to its neighbours before the cheese is put upon the table. This is done in the following manner: The captain of the highest mess, at any moment he chooses, bids those sitting with him to fill their glasses, and, looking at the mess below, exclaims: "Gentlemen of the lower mess," and drinks to them. The lower mess afterwards returns the compliment, and in its turn drinks likewise to the mess below it, and thus a series of health-drinking passes all round the hall. This need not, however, begin with the highest mess. Every mess may drink to the one next below it at any time, though not to that above it until it has itself been challenged. While this ceremony has been going on amongst the barristers and students, the dinner is advancing, and the benchers have got almost to the end of theirs. A student, dining for the first time in the hall, will now be surprised to see the cook of the Inn, dressed in full culinary costume, with white cap and apron, enter and advance up to the benchers' table. He takes his stand at the head of it, receives from the bencher there a glass of wine, drinks it off, and retires as silently as he came in. Such are some of our old customs. There are others, but it would be long to ennumerate them all. Dinner closes as it began, with three blows of a mallet on a board, and a long Latin grace.

own.

Such is dinner upon ordinary days. But we have two great occasions in each term-two solemn festivals;

we call them Grand-day and Call-day. To begin with the former. In the first place, we dine at six o'clock, while on other days, as I have said, we sit down at half-past five. Then, too, the dinner is "on a style of extraordinary magnificence," that is, every mess gets an extra bottle of wine and a fowl in addition to the usual joint. But the peculiarity of the day is the sending round of what is called the Loving-Cup. This is done before the dinner is served. We all, students and barristers, sit down with our backs to our tables, and two servants pass round the hall, one carrying a plate with small pieces of bread or toast upon it, the other bearing the Loving-Cup. This is a huge chalice, filled to the brim with spiced-wine. It is presented to each individual in the hall in turn, beginning with the upper bar, and ending with the lowest students' mess. Every one partakes of it, all drinking from the one chalice. After dinner it is brought round again. This time it is presented to each mess, three members of which stand up and taste the cup in turn, pronouncing at the same time the words: "To the glorious memory of good Queen Bess." At least that, as I have been given to understand, is the regular orthodox toast; but some, especially student, from the sister isles do not seem to relish the memory of the sovereign in question, and either drink in silence, or simply salute each other with a "God bless you!" The "loving-cup" having thus made its second progress, nothing more remains to be done. The "usual loyal and patriotic toasts" are generally drunk, and various speeches are made in connection with the toasts, and so the evening ends.

But the great day of feasting and jollity at our Inn is Call-day. This is the day upon which such gentlemen as have qualified themselves, by digesting the full number of dinners, for the exercise of the legal profession, are solemnly called to the bar, and endowed with the permission of ever more wearing wigs and gowns, and doing whatever business they can obtain. As they have gained their spurs by eating, it is thought but right that the joyful occasion should be celebrated by drinking. Accordingly, from time immemorial, the custom of our Inn has been that on passing from the rank of student to that of barrister, each gentleman should treat the hall to additional wine. Thus, when three or four men are called in one term, it follows that the solitary bottle of port or sherry, usually allotted to each mess, swells into three or four bottles of different wines. Of this the consequence, of course, is exceeding jollity, and now and them much uproar. Dinner, save for the extra wine, passes as usual. But when grace has been said, the cloth removed, and the benchers have withdrawn, proceedings begin to take another turn. First, a porter appears, who calls out the embryo barristers, and leads them to the benchers' " private room." What ceremonies take place at this mysterious interview, I, not having yet been initiated, cannot take upon myself to say; but after the lapse of some ten or twelve minutes, those who had left the hall students, return amid universal clapping of hands and cheering, full-fledged barristers. Then one of the members of

the upper bar mess stands up and solemnly proposes the health of his new brothers. This he, of course, does in a complimentary strain. He eulogises each gentleman separately, declares that he has either himself known him, or heard of him from others, as having always been gentlemanly in his conduct, and exemplary in his hard readings; and finally, rising to the height of prophecy, he foresees in his three or four friends, three or four of the wisest chancellors who ever have illustrated the bar by their learning, or benefited the country by their wisdom. This speech is, of course, received with tremendous applause. The whole assembly arise, raise their glasses, and drink to Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson, with all the honours. Hip, hip, hip, hurrah! When the din has subsided,

the first on the list of new barristers rises to return thanks for himself. If he be at all a man of heart, and especially if he have partaken a little plentifully of his own wine, he will allude feelingly to his sorrow at leaving his friends the students. Perhaps he may even contrive to squeeze out a tear at the affecting prospect of having to sit henceforth at a table fully six feet distant from that which he has hitherto used. However he speedily recovers from these heart-breaking reflections, when he considers the men who await him at the bar-mess; men, he may say, as distinguished for the goodness of their heart (hear, hear) as for the splendour of their talents (loud cheering and thumping of tables, amid which the learned gentleman sits down). The other speeches are of pretty much the same tenor, have been so from time to whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, and in all probability will be so as long as call-day is observed. This duty of drinking the new barristers' healths having been performed, we pass on to the other entertainments of the evening. Some one volunteers to sing a song, and after that some one else does the same. The longer and louder the chorus, the better the song, of course. Next some gentleman stands up, and in a speech full of fraternal feeling, proposes the health of the Irish students of Brown's Inn. This, of course, is responded to in an oration adorned with every flower that rhetoric can supply, by some one of the Irish students, who in turn proposes the health of his English brothers. By this time a good deal of wine has been consumed, and some of the gentlemen present have reached that stage of jollity which may be termed the quarrelsome. Accordingly some one in the enviable state gets up and makes an angry speech. He finds fault with the gentlemen who have proposed the two last toasts. He says that he has never yet heard until to-night any distinction made between English and Irish students. Nationality sinks to nothingness in Brown's Inn Hall, and the only title recognised there is that of students or barristers, apart from all other differences. Some other gentlemen are ready to make an angry answer to this, but they are silenced; and to set all right, and ease all tender consciences, we drink the students of Brown's Inn collectively. Thus the evening is passed, Songs succeed songs, and speeches follow speeches.

until the lateness of the hour, and the emptiness of the bottles, persuade the revellers to end the festivities of this call-day.

Such are a few of the peculiarities of our Inn, and such is the students' path to the bar. Other customs there are, but it would be long to enumerate them all. Nor is Brown's Inn the only one where these old-fashioned habits prevail. The other Inns of Court are well deserving of study likewise, and he who would attempt to glean from them, would certainly not come away empty-handed. What a field for observation

there is in the governing bodies of these old institutions, Charles Lamb has well shewn, in his Essay on the Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. But for me, an humble student, this is dangerous ground, and to advance upon it might be construed into a species of high treason. Indeed I do not know to what I may have exposed myself by revealing even so much of the arcana of our Inn as I have done, and a regard for my own personal safety, if not for the comfort of my readers, tells me that it is high time for me to conclude.

A DAY AMONG THE TWELVE PINS.

'Tis only a few years since the vast "territory" of Conamara was still the property of the late Thomas Barnwell Martin, who, as the Seanachies would have said, was the son of Richard, the Colonel; the son of Robert, the son of Anthony, the son of Richard, who was called "Nimble Dick." The history of "Nimble Dick" is well worth a passing word. He commenced his career in the reign of Charles II., as Mr. Richard Martin of Dangan, near Galway; but being connected with the legal profession, and of active habits, as his traditional sobriquet implies, he contrived to get, by hook and by crook, a great tract of the confiscated lands of the O'Flaherties of Iar-Connaught into his possession; or, as he himself stated, he acquired it "with great care, pains, and industry under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation." He was obliged to take up arms, like the other gentry of the West, for James II., and was a captain at Aughrim, where tradition does not give him credit for very honorable conduct; and in the next place we find him, although "a rank Papist," obtaining from King William, under the promise of building a town which was never built, a patent confirming to him and his heirs all the lands which he had acquired in IarConnaught. His son, Anthony, commonly styled Captain, had two sons, of whom the second, Robert, who married Bridget, a younger daughter of John Barnwell, eleventh baron of Trimleston, inherited the property, and distinguished himself by murdering an English or rather Scottish officer, Licut. Henry Jolly of the Grenadiers, in Galway, in the year 1735. It appears that Mr. Martin was passing along the street, when some one spat from a window over his head. The supposed insult occurred at a coffee-house, frequented by the military: Mr. Martin rushed up stairs with his sword drawn, and saw two officers sitting near the window in the billiard

VOL. I.

room; both were unarmed, and one of them apologised for the inadvertent offence, hastening however to the barracks for his sword, that he might afford reparation to the insulted dignity of Nimble Dick's grandson; but in the meantime Mr. Martin ran the unhappy Lieut. Jolly through the body, inflicting several mortal wounds on him in a paroxysm of rage, and then escaped across Lough Corrib in a small boat. Soon after he gave himself up, on condition that he would be tried by a Galway jury. The trial took place before the King's Bench in Dublin; the evidence was clear, especially that of the waiter, who saw the prisoner rush upon his victim like a tiger, and plunge his sword in his body; but Mr Martin was acquitted, and returned in triumph to Galway with his jury, making merry along the way. In 1745 he set out to join the Pretender in Scotland, but did not leave Ireland, and on his return to Galway the same year declared himself a Protestant as a measure of security; his descendants ever since adhered to the state Church, and he died at an advanced age in 1792. Robert Martin's son and successor was the eccentric Colonel Richard Martin, of duelling and anti-cruelty-to-animals celebrity, and the next step in the pedigree brings us to the late Mr. Martin, with whom we commenced. It is a curious fact that just four generations passed away, and the representative of Nimble Dick was without one sod of the vast estate which that gentleman accumulated ! That the forfeit should have fallen chiefly upon the best and most estimable of the race, is an instance of those wise and inscrutable judgments before which all must bow, and which visit the crimes of men upon their posterity. Mary, the only child of Mr. Thomas Martin, was highminded, intellectual, charitable, patriotic, and amiable. Familiarly known as the Queen of Conamara, she possessed the qualities which could best exalt the queenly character, yet she it was who was the chief sufferer in the family downfall. Acting on the impulse of honorable self-sacrifice, she relinquished her own legal rights. in favour of her father's creditors; and so, the heiress of many cloud-capt mountains, and of countless lakes, and bays, and islands, and of wild moor-land acres counted by hundreds of thousands, that might have served as a dowry for a princess, died landless and almost penniless in a distant country!

But I have commenced with a digression, for I only meant to say that it was a few years ago, while the halls of Ballinahinch Castle still glowed with the hospitality of the Martins, and ere the world knew how tightly its proprietor was pressed in the iron grasp of the Law Life Insurance Company, that I sallied forth from its portals, accompanied by a guide, to whose charge I had been committed, to explore the misty region of the Twelve. Pins.

For about a mile along the way we obtained frequent. glimpses of Ballinahinch lake, and of the small islets from which it obtains its name, and on one of which stands an old castle of the O'Flaherties, constructed, as old records say, of the materials of the ancient Dominican abbey of Tombeola, of which no vestiges now remain. North of the lake rose the majestic group of the Twelve

L

Pins, one of the principal summits of which, Benlettery, seemed almost to overhang the tranquil lough; and about the tops and sides of the mountain hung patches of cloud, the immediate destination of which, whether upward or downward, it would have been at that moment very desirable to ascertain. Dr. Gerard Boate, writing more than two hundered years ago of the "quality and fashion of the Irish coast and shores," describes "Slime" Head as being "by the seafaring-men called Twelve-pence, because the land showeth itself in twelve round hommocks;" but he was wrong both in the form of the name, and in confounding these "hommocks" with "Slime Head." Again, lest some of my readers should suppose that the name had any relation to the old popular play of "nine pins," and that perchance our famous lar-Connaught mountains were used in one of those giants' games in which Arthur's quoitsof which travellers among the Welsh mountains must have often heard-were employed, I may as well mention that the name is only a corruption for the Twelve Bens or pinnacles. The Irish name is Beanna-Beola, or the mountains or summits of Beola; but who the personage was whose memory has been thus enshrined in the everlasting hills, and has been also identified with the Tombeola-the tomb or mound of Beola, already mentioned, history sayeth rot. The antiquaries of Vallancey's time coined a word for our Irish dictionaries-" beola, a robber"-but this, I am assured, was a groundless forgery; and Beola was undoubtedly the proper name of a person, whether of some "giant" of the fabulous ages, or of some saint of the primitive Irish Church.

When we had got little more than a mile from the castle, we crossed the high road which leads to Clifden, and ascending by a rugged boreen, pursued our way towards the marble quarries of Bar-an-oran. I soon perceived that my guide was a bacach, as the Conamara people derisively call a stranger. In fact, Mr. Martin employed no one but strangers, and surrounded himself with a colony of people from Tipperary, the Queen's County, Longford, and other distant parts of Ireland. The original population he disliked. He considered them hopelessly ignorant and indolent; and it would certainly have required more time, and trouble, and outlay, to introduce among them habits of comfort and industry than he cared to bestow. When men have been for unnumbered generations plunged in poverty, without one gleam of hope, or the slightest shade of improvement in their condition, it requires some helping hand at last to raise them, if they are ever to be raised, from their misery. They cannot begin an upward movement of their own accord; how should they? They know nothing of social progress, and whoever enquired into the history of a Conamara village, could not blame its inmates for that ignorance. However, Mr. Martin's plan for improving his estate was not by helping or teaching the native inhabitants how to do so, but by trying to effect it by means of colonisation.

But to return to my companion. Being a bacach as he was, he knew nothing whatever about the traditions of

the country; all the local legends and superstitions he held in contempt; he was too philosophical to believe a word of what was said about the " goodpeople," and could not explain the meaning of any of the poetically-descriptive names of the lakes and mountains about us. He never thought of such a thing.

"We are going, you say, Paddy, to Bar-an-oran,” I observed; "but what is the meaning of that word?”

"Meaning, Sir? Faith I don't think there is much meaning in it, no more than in any names in this part of the country. It only means "the top of the song," and there is not much sense in that I think," answered Paddy.

Now, it did not require a very profound knowledge of Irish to know that the name pronounced as the word in question bears an interpretation more consistent with a topographical application, as in fact, it simply means "the head of the well, or spring;" but taking this as an illustration of my guide's deficiency in Conamara lore, I wished to be at liberty to explore the mountains without him; and an opportunity to do so soon presented itself. While I was examining some large blocks of fine serpentine marble that had been raised from the quarries many years before, and that lay there neglected for want of purchasers, Paddy Ford, for such was my guide's name, left me for a while, and I then heard from men who were sinking a drain to carry off the water from a quarry, that he was the Castle bailiff, and had gone to serve processes in a neighbouring village. It needed no more to determine me to dispense with his company; and requesting the quarrymen to tell Paddy at his return to give himself no trouble about me, I told them I was resolved to climb the heights of Bennabeola alone, and if possible make my way to Glen Inagh. In vain did they endeavour to dissuade me from the attempt. The clouds still clung to the sides of the mountains, and they assured me that the day was likely to turn out unfavorably; at all events the weather was doubtful, and if I were caught by the fog among the Twelve Pins, I had a bad chance of ever making my way back. "Besides, Sir," said they emphatically, "you will run the risk of being clifted."

I did not consider the full import of this warning at the time but mindful of former exploits among more celebrated mountains, both Alps and Pyrenees, and with the grand scenery of Chamouni present to my mind, I looked up contemptuously towards the weatherbeaten summits of Bennabeola as they peered out among the clouds, and assured my friendly advisers that I thought very little of the dangers which such hills as these could present. It was well the men were some of Mr. Martin's bacachs, else they might have been offended by the slight cast upon the dignity of their mountains; but for the credit of our Conamara scenery, I must say that its mountains are much more effective in a picture than their relative elevation as set down in a tabular list of the mountains of Europe would lead one to expect, for they display at once all the majesty of their proportions rising before us from plains almost level with the sea; whereas in other countries we find that we have