return for the amusement afforded by his daily visits. But hope deferred" at length began to prey upon him. Yet there was resignation mixed with his despondency when he found himself gradually wasting away. In these moments, he would say to me," I do not fear death, your honour, and could I get my life written, and my boy sent to Calcutta, I should die contented." The first point I more than once commenced, but my health being undermined by severe and constant rheumatism, I was unable to make progress with it; and as a young sub, I had not the means to facilitate his other wish. At length, Tom expressed a desire to return to Jeipoor. A camel, a pony, clothes, money, every thing was provided for him by the kindness of the resident, Mr. Mercer, and our joint aid in camp. He had not quitted us long before despair overtook him; he threw away his clothes, and taking post in a deserted mut, proclaimed himself a fakir. In this condition he was discovered by the wife of Sindia's general, Jean Baptiste, who acted the Samaritan towards him; but it was too late, and he died.*

* This curious tale of a real character was furnished by the late Colonel James Tod, author of the Annals of Rajasthan.

38

A TALE OF THE MAYOR'S COURT AT MADRAS.

FOUNDED ON FACTS.

HAPPILY, the Mayor's Court at Madras is now a matter of history only. Its strange freaks of justice, and its solemn plausibilities, are no more. Even the place where its sittings were held is no longer to be traced. Buildings, which have been the scene of memorable occurrences in Europe, by surviving those occurences, lend their aid to tradition and give a shape and substance to its shadows; but every fragment of that court-house has long since crumbled under the hand of time, or rather under the white ant, which, in that climate, is a much more active destroyer. If any thing, however, prolonged its memory in the settlement, it was the pew in St. Mary's Church, appropriated to the corporation in its "palmy state," and which continued to be occupied by Richard Yeldham, the last mayor, who tenaciously clung to the desk and its folio prayer-book, and to what the cock-roaches

had spared of the velvet cushion, long after his brother aldermen had not only laid down their civic gowns, but " shuffled off their mortal coils" altogether. Nor was it easy, in spite of the sanctity of the place, to repress a smile, when a stranger by mistake, or, as it sometimes happened, misdirected to it by an ill-timed pleasantry, blundered into that pew, and his peons, taking their signal from the displeased looks of their master, instantly set the matter right by expelling the intruder, in the face of the whole congregation. But amusing as it was to see poor Richard hugging the phantom of his office, no human being was more respected; perhaps the more so from the whims and peculiarities of his habits.

The proceedings of this court were of a mongrel kind, between a suit in equity and a trial at Nisi Prius. Decrees passed by a majority of votes, and there was an appeal to the governor in council, which was but little resorted to; the waters of municipal justice not being cending to the fountain. were equally divided, or, of the day, when both sides had been equally bribed, the mayor had the casting-voice. But the persons who dipped their hands with most success into the rich feculence of that court were the attor

always the clearer for asWhen the four aldermen according to the slander

nies, who acted as barristers also. There were admirable pickings for these gentlemen, most of whom were adventurers, who had become lawyers "in spite of nature and their stars;" some of them fugitive mates of Indiamen, who, on the departure of their respective ships, suddenly started up from the snug concealment of a punch-house, and, having sufficient interest to obtain a free-merchant's license, were fortunate enough to get admission into the court as attornies. But whatever were their legal qualifications, they were as noisy a pack of pleaders, and gave their black clients as much talk for their money, as if they had been regularly trained in Westminster Hall or the Four courts of Dublin. They talked, however, to little effect. Neither good causes, nor powerful pleadings, availed much. There was a shuffling and cutting of the judicial cards, which deceived the best players. Vainly did the advocates waste their melodious breath in that Babel of brogues and dialects, for so I have heard it described. Impassive to their eloquence, sate old John T. -g, the most influential member of the bench, if I may use the cant phrase of the day, with his legs carelessly flung over the railing before him-there he sate, deaf to the voice of the charmer, immersed in thoughts that soared far above the merits of the cause he was hearing. As

he sipped his coffee, and ate his fish and rice, at that morning's breakfast, the wealthiest party to the suit had in a short visit overthrown the judicial equipoise of his mind; yet he listened, or seemed to listen, with serene attention, to the reciprocal wranglings of the bar. On such occasions, the most experienced of the practitioners felt what would be the decision; for having expended a certain portion of voluble nonsense, and exchanged a few witticisms not always of the finest manufacture, they tied up their papers and waited for T— g's opinion. If the case was a plain one, he had the faculty to perplex it; if intricate, he could make it intelligible, or appear so, to his brother judges. He was the bell-wether of the flock, and the rest followed in his track.

But the lawyers of the Mayor's Court were not uniformly of this class. In the year 1785, Mortimer Williams, a young man of fine talents and finished education, arrived at Madras, with permission to practise as an attorney. Though not called to the bar in England, he had been educated to the law, but was too poor and unbefriended to run the risks and defray the expenses of that precarious profession. Reports had reached him of the average state of talent in the Mayor's Court, and he calculated, perhaps not too sanguinely, that with such