"At this very hour do I shrink, when my imagination presents to me the spectres of three furred adgonToroi, in whose abilities, as exercised in trials for capital offences, not light, but darkness visible, served only to discover sights of woe."

"With learning, taste, and genius, which adorned the head, but improved not the heart; one of them was a sober, subtle, inexorable interpreter and enforcer of sanguinary statutes, with a ready memory, keen penetration, barren fancy, vulgar manners, and infuriate passions; another indulged himself in the gibberish of a canting fanatic, and the ravings of an angry scold, before trembling criminals;-with sagacity enough to make the worse appear the better cause to superficial hearers, and with hardihood enough not to profess much concern for the bodies of men, or their souls; the third carried about him an air, sometimes of wanton dispatch, and sometimes of savage exultation, when he immolated hecatombs at the altar of public justice ;-armed with 'giant strength,' and accustomed to use it like a giant,' these protectors of our persons transferred to thievery that severity which the Court of Areopagus employed only against cut-throats, and they did so where judges were not bound by a peculiar, direct, and sacred oath, adapted to the peculiar character of the tribunal, and where offenders had not the chance, as among the Athenians, of a

more favourable issue, of appeals to the Thesmothetæ, nor that privilege of going before trial into voluntary exile, which, on the first institution of this Court, had been granted to them by legislators, who 'Heweç noar, fire deoì, ¿x imídaro rõkἀτυχήμασιν ἀλλ' ἀνθρωπίνως ἐπικεφισαν, εἰς ὅσον είχε naλās, tas ovμpapàs. (Demos. Orat. adv. Aristocrat.).

"If a Bãμos Ex like that at Athens had been placed in the avenue to our English Courts, there Sinaozódos árodis would have differed from cach other in their outward demeanour, and yet have remained equally guiltless of bearing the sword in vain.' Elaphocardius, upon approaching the hallowed spot, might have paused for a second, winced under a slight stroke of rebuke from the monitor within, and quietly sneaked by on the other side. Cardamoglyphus would have wrung. his hands, lifted up his eyes to heaven, implored forgiveness to himself as a miserable sinner, and before sun-set would have boasted of not being as other men are,' regraters, sabbath-breakers, libertines, and more especially as that execrable criminal who stood before him at the bar. the steps of Cynopes would not have been turned aside to the right hand or to the left; his eye would have darted upon the emblems of the altar with a glare of fierce disdain; he would negligently have swept the base of it with the skirts of his robe; he would have laughed inwardly at

But

the qualms of one of his compeers, and scoffed without disguise at the mummeries of the others. Happily these arbiters of life and death are now no more: they have left an example not very likely to be imitated by their learned successors, and my hope is, that the mercy which they shewed not to others in this world, may in another world be shewn to them." (Characters of Fox, vol. ii. p. 344.)

LOCKE'S ADVICE ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW. Civil Law.

"When he has pretty well digested Tully's Offices, and added to it Puffendorf de officio hominis et Civis, it may be seasonable to set him upon Grotius de Jure belli et pacis, or which, perhaps, is the better of the two, Puffendorf de Jure Naturali et gentium; wherein he will be instructed in the natural rights of men, and the original and foundations of society, and the duties resulting from thence. This general part of Civil Law and History, are studies which a gentleman should not barely touch at, but constantly dwell upon, and never have done with. A virtuous and wellbehaved young man that is well versed in the general part of the Civil Law, (which concerns not the chicane of private cases, but the affairs and intercourse of civilized nations in general, grounded upon principles of reason,) understands

Latin well, and can write a good hand, one may turn loose into the world, with great assurance that he will find employment and esteem every where."

Common Law.

"It would be strange to suppose an English gentleman should be ignorant of the laws of his country. This, whatever station he is in, is so requisite, that from a justice of the peace to a minister of state, I know no place he can well fill without it. I do not mean the chicane or wrangling and captious part of the law; a gentleman, whose business is to seek the true measures of right and wrong, (and not the arts how to avoid doing the one, and secure himself in doing the other,) ought to be as far from such a study of the law, as he is concerned diligently to apply himself to that wherein he may be serviceable to the country. And to that purpose, I think the right way for a gentleman to study our law, which he does not design for his calling, is to take a view of our English Constitution and Government, in the ancient books of the Common Law, and some more modern writers, who out of them have given an account of this government; and having got a true idea of that, then to read our history, and with it join, in every king's reign, the laws then made. This will give an insight into the

reason of our statutes, and shew the true ground upon which they came to be made, and what weight they ought to have." (Locke's Essays on Education, p. 84. See also Bishop Burnet's Advice on the same subject, ante, p. 37.)

DEAN SWIFT AND SERGEANT BETTESWORTH.

The best account of the singular fracas between the Dean and the Sergeant is contained in Sir Walter Scott's Life of Swift, (p. 418,) from which it is now borrowed.

"In a Satire, printed in 1733, ridiculing the Dissenters for pretending to the title of Brother Protestants and Fellow Christians,' the Dean, among other ludicrous illustrations of their presumption, introduced this simile:

Thus at the bar the booby B

Though half-a-crown o'erpays his sweat's worth,
Who knows in law nor text nor margent,
Calls Singleton his brother Sergeant.'

The blank in the termination of the first couplet indicated Mr. Bettesworth, a Member of Parliament and Sergeant at Law,* remarkable for his

"The rhyme is said to have been suggested by a casual circumstance: a porter brought a burthen to the Dean's house while he was busy with the poem, and labouring to find a rhyme for this uncommon name, the more anxiously as Bettesworth exulted in the idea of its