copious repetition of these words," It is our duty and our privilege to speak, my Lord; and it is your duty and your privilege to hear." Another Advocate, also yet living, is said, in a similar state of haziness, to have forgotten for which party, in a particular cause, he had been retained; and, to the unutterable amazement of the agent that had fee'd him, and the absolute horror of the poor client behind, to have uttered a long and fervent speech exactly in the teeth of the interests he had been hired to defend. Such was the zeal of his eloquence, that no whispered remonstrance from the rear,-no tugging at his elbow, could stop him in medio gurgite dicendi. But just as he was about to sit down, the trembling writer put a slip of paper into his hands, with these plain words,-" You have pled for the wrong party;" whereupon, with an air of infinite composure, he resumed the thread of his oration, saying," Such, my Lord, is the statement which you will probably hear from my brother on the opposite side of this case. I shall now beg leave, in a very few words, to shew your Lordship how utterly untenable are the principles, and how distorted are the facts, upon which this very specious statement has proceeded." And so he went once more over the same ground, and did not take his seat till he had most energetically refuted himself from one end of his former pleading to another. The race, however, of Judges, Advocates, and, of course, of Clients, among whom such things passed without remark or reproach, is now fast expiring. In spite of the authority of Blackstone, it seems to be generally believed now-adays, that no man will study a point of law the better for drinking a bottle of port while he is engaged at his work. The uniform gravity of the Bench has communicated a suitable gravity to the Bar,-the greater number of the practitioners at the Bar having, indeed, necessarily very much diminished the familiarity with which the Bench and the Bar were of old accustomed to treat each other; while the general change that has every where occurred in the mode of life, has almost entirely done away with that fashion of high conviviality in private, for which, of old, the members of the legal profession in this place were celebrated to a proverb. In short, it seems as if the business of all parties were now regarded in a much more serious point of view than formerly, and as if the practice of the Bar-risters, in particular, were every day getting more and more into a situation similar to that in which the practice of their southern brethren has long been, a situation which, as you well know, admits of very little of such indulgences as these old Scotch Advocates seem to have considered quite in the light of indispensables. There is still, however, one Judge upon the bench whom W— has a pleasure in bidding me look at, because in him, he assures me, may still be seen a genuine relic of the old school of Scottish Lawyers, and Scottish Judges. This old gentleman, who takes his title from `an estate called Hermand, is of the Ayrshire family of the Fergusons of Kilkerran ; the same family of which mention is frequently made in Burns's Poems, one of whose ancestors, indeed, was the original winner of the celebrated "Whistle of Worth," about which the famous song was written. Three joyous good fellows, with hearts clear of flaw;" Craigdarroch began, with a tongue smooth as oil, &c. &c. in a strain equally delectable. He is now, I suppose, with one exception, the senior Judge of the whole Court, for I see he sits immediately on the left hand of the President in the First Division. There is something so very striking in his appearance, that I wonder I did not take notice of it in an earlier letter. His face is quite thin and extenuated, and he has lost most of his teeth; but instead of taking away from the vivacity of his countenance, these very circumstances seem to me to have given it a degree of power, and fire of expression, which I have very rarely seen rivalled in the countenance of any young man whatever. The absence of the teeth has planted lines of furrows about the lower part of his face, which convey an idea of determination, and penetration too, that is not to be resisted; and the thin covering of flesh upon the bones of his cheeks, only gives additional effect to the fine, fresh, and healthful complexion which these still exhibit. As for his eyes, they are among the most powerful I have seen. While in a musing attitude, he keeps his eyelids well over them, and they peep out with a swimming sort of languor; but the moment he begins to speak, they dilate, and become full of animation, each grey iris flashing as keenly as a flint. His forehead is full of wrinkles, and his very eye-brows are luxuriant; and his voice has a hollow depth of tone about it, which all furnish a fine relief to the hot and choleric style in which he expresses himself, and, indeed, to the lively way in which he seems to regard every circumstance of every case that is brought before him. Although very hasty and impatient at times in his temper and demeanour, and not over-scrupulous in regard to the limits of some of his sarcasms, this old Judge is a prodigious favourite with all classes who frequent the Courts, and, above all, with the Advocates, at whose expense most of his spleen effervesces. He is a capital lawyer, and he is the very soul of honour; and the goodness of his warm heart is so well understood, that not only is no offence taken with anything he says, but every new sarcasm he utters endears him more, even to the sufferer. As for the younger members of the profession, -when he goes a circuit, you may be sure, in whatever direction he moves, to meet with an extraordinary array of them in the train of Lord Hermand. His innocent peculiarities of manner afford an agreeable diversity to the surface of the causes carried on under his auspices, while the shrewdness and diligence of his intellect com |