comical, the scuffle was rendered even more ridiculous by the caricaturists, who made the most of the absurd incident. No such grotesque terror had been witnessed in Westminster Hall since Nixon, the crazy nonjuring parson, startled Lord Hardwicke and the Chancery bar out of their propriety by putting a match to some gunpowder, and causing a loud but harmless explosion in the Chancellor's court.

Lawyers have suffered severely from fire in their colleges; but at Westminster water is the element that has treated them most unkindly. Its proximity to the river has repeatedly placed the frequenters of the hall in positions of embarrassment and even of danger. In 1236, the Thames so greatly overflowed the northern bank, that "in the great palace of Westminster, men did row with wherries in the middle of the hall." Six years later a similar inundation occurred, on which occasion "in the great hall at Westminster men took their horses, because the water ran over all." In comparatively recent times the river has been no less mischievous and ungovernable. On March 24, 1735, the lawyers were so com pletely encompassed by water, that they were glad to escape from their hall in boats or on porters' shoulders. A similar irruption of water in 1791 is commemorated in a ballad, two stanzas of which run thus—

46

Come, listen awhile to my lay,

I sing of a strange inundation,
That had like to have carried away

All the wigs and long robes of the nation;
While thinking of no harm at all,

But a few wretched people's undoing,
Father Thames entered Westminster Hall,
Threat'ning all law and justice with ruin.

"Of the fright universal it spread,

Conception can ne'er form a notion,
Wigs bristled upright on each head,

Each counselor stood without motion;

The tide that for no man will stay,

While the clamor grew louder and louder,

From every tye-wig washed away

Common sense, with the curls and the powder."

The last of the Westminster Hall floods took place on October 18, 1841, when the lawyers were shooting pheasants and their courts were empty.

It is still usual for the Chancellor to entertain the other judges on the first day of Michaelmas Term, and afterwards go with them in state to Westminster Hall, in which place, from a numerous assembly of young barristers, and ladies specially interested in the welfare and dignity of the legal profession, the reverend chiefs of the law receive a gratifying hum of admiration, and sometimes an outburst of louder applause as they march in procession from the northern gate to their respective courts. In olden time, and even so late as George IV.'s reign, each term of the year was opened with this formal procession, the ceremony being in many respects more impressive than at present-Jeaffreson.

E

CHAPTER III.

VEN as a spectacle the courts of law are well worth a visit from strangers. It is an interesting and somewhat imposing sight to witness the four judges, -which, as will afterwards be seen, is the number who sit at once in most of the courts,-seated on the bench, all looking remarkably grave, and made to appear more so than they really are by their huge wigs. Had Dominie Sampson seen one of these wigs on the head of a judge, there would have been no end to his exclamations of "prodigious!" The robes, too, in which the judges are clothed, are showy in no ordinary degree, while in amplitude they happily correspond with the proportions of their wigs. Then there are the counsel in a tier of seats opposite to their lordships. In some of the courts there are often fifty or sixty counsel at one time,—all cloehed in their gowns, and each head enclosed in a wig of liberal dimensions. To be sure, three-fourths of the number are briefless; but they are quite as useful, notwithstanding, in giving effect to the scene, as those who are most extensively employed. There they sit, day after day, brothers in adversity, and keeping each other in countenance. I am not particularly partial to the system of Lavater; but I think it applies with an almost unerring certainty to briefless barristers. There is a longitude in their faces about which, as the Duke of Wellington used to say, there is no mistake. But putting their physiognomies out of the question, they may be generally distinguished from their more fortunate brethren by their attempts to kill time by making all manner of

pen-and-ink sketches,-men, women, beasts, houses, trees, &c. &c., which are usually most clumsy affairs.

In the other courts demure faces are chiefly confined to briefless barristers-in the Court of Chancery it is otherwise. There demure faces are universal. From the Lord Chancellor himself, down to the most recently admitted of the junior counsel, there is the same elongation of countenance. No one ever saw a smiling or cheerful face there, of which any of the long-robed gentlemen could claim the proprietorship. I have known many a young gentleman enter that court, on his being called to the bar, with a pleasant and cheerful frontispiece; but I know of no instance-I question if there be any such on record-in which that expression of countenance has been preserved a single week. A few days in any case, in some instances a few hours, are sufficient to transmute the most cheerful countenance into one of the most demure description. The certainty and suddenness of the change, are matters beyond the range of my philosophy. They seem to be the effect of some magical instrumentality. Nor is this elongation of face confined to the parties whose heads are thrust into wigs. The very spectators who chance to drop into the court are subjected to the mysterious agency. You see young gentlemen full of life and hilarity of spirit, and middle-aged men from the country whose jolly expression of countenance it would do any one's heart good to witness, enter the Court of Chancery, and before they have been five minutes there, they look as demure as if they were assisting at the performance of a funeral. I have had occasion at different times to spend several consecutive hours in the Court of Chancery, and have felt a positive relief on seeing a cheerful countenance come into it on which I could gaze for a little, just as Mungo Park, the celebrated African

traveler, felt delighted when he beheld the oasis in the desert. But my gratification has always been of an exceedingly temporary kind: ere the lapse of a few minutes I have invariably found such countenances wearing as grave an aspect as that of an undertaker. Doctors differ among themselves as to whether or not cholera be contagious: no one who ever put foot in the Court of Chancery can doubt the contagiousness of the gravity which prevails there. Not even the most pleasant and cheerful looking women who accidently visit the place can resist its powerful influence. I have sometimes thought that if there were a looking-glass in the court, in which young ladies could see their own elongated and demure faces while there, they would start back in an agony of horror at the spectacle, under the impression that some malignant supernatural agency had wrought the change.

From one cause or the other there are always a great many strangers in the courts of law. On those occasions when an important case is expected to come on, the court in which the trial is to take place is crowded to excess. In such cases I have known a guinea to be offered for a seat. Some time ago, when a noble lord was the defendant in a case in which the husband of a literary lady of great personal charms was the plaintiff, five guineas, I believe, were offered by one gentleman for a seat. Twenty, however, would not, after the trial had commenced, have procured the accommodation. I doubt if a greater number of human beings were ever crowded together for an equal length of time, in so limited a space, than on that occasion. In most parts of the court the pressure was so great, that one might almost as well have tried to break through the walls of Newgate, as to have forced his way through the dense mass of mortality, as some one happily phrased it, which surrounded him.