16 LETTER XXIX. TO THE SAME. AFTER passing through one or two dark and dungeon-like lobbies or anti-chambers, or by whatever more appropriate name they may be designated, one enters by a low pair of foldingdoors, into what is called the Outer House, wherein all civil cases are tried, in the first instance, by individual Judges, or Lords Ordinaries, before being submitted to the ultimate decision either of the whole Bench, or of one of its great Divisions. On being admitted, one sees a hall of very spacious dimensions, which, although not elegant in its finishing or decorations, has nevertheless an air of antique grandeur about it, that is altogether abundantly striking. The roof is very fine, being all of black oak, with the various arches of which it is composed resting one upon another, exactly as in Christ-Church Hall. The area of this Hall is completely filled with law-practitioners, consisting of Solicitors and Advocates, who move in two different streams, along the respective places which immemorial custom has allotted to them on the floor. The crowd which is nearest the door, and in which I first found myself involved, is that of the Solicitors, Agents, Writers, or Men of Business, (for by all these names are they called.) Here is a perfect whirl of eagerness and activity-every face alert, and sharpened into the acutest angles. Some I could see were darting about among the different bars, where pleadings were going forward, like midshipmen in an engagement, furnishing powder to the combatants. They brought their great guns, the advocates, to bear sometimes upon one Judge and sometimes upon another; while each Judge might be discovered sitting calmly, like a fine piece of stone-work amidst the hiss of bombs and the roar of forty-pounders. In the meantime, the "men of business," who were not immediately occupied in this way, paced rapidly along-each borne on his particular wave of this great tide of the affairs of men, but all having their faces well turned up above the crowd, and keeping a sharp look-out. This VOL. II. B was, I think, their general attitude. It reminded me of trouts bobbing near the surface of a stream, all equally sharp-set and anxious for a ja snap at whatever is going. Any staring or idle person must have appeared quite out of place amongst them, like a fixed point among Epicurus's concourse of atoms; and indeed I think, after I began to collect myself a little, I could easily observe that I myself, standing firm in the midst of the hubbub, with my arms folded ut mos est, attracted some notice from a few of those that were hurrying past me, to and fro, and ever and anon. Whether I looked like a client either in esse or in posse, I know not, but "Some fell to such perusal of my face, As they would draw me;" while I, in the meantime, could begin to discover here and there a few persons of more quiescent demeanour, who looked like some of those unfortunates, at whose expence this superb scene of motion is maintained and kept in action. Money may be compared to a momentum or impetus, of which one body loses as much as it imparts to another. The client, after having transferred a certain impetus to his agent, loses part of his alacrity, and is apt to stand still in the A Parliament-House, with a rather disconsolate air; while he sees his agent (consolatory specta cle!) inspired with the momentum of which he himself is divested, and spinning about in every sort of curve, ellipsis, and parabola. The anxious gaze with which these individuals seemed to be contemplating the toss and tumult around them, formed a sufficient distinction between them and the cool, unconcerned, calmly perspicacious Dr Morris. It was evident, that they could not at all enter, with any delight kindred to mine, into the sentiment of the luxurious Epi curean, "Suave mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis, Such of these litigants, again, as had come from the country, could be easily pointed out from among the other clients. Here and there I noticed a far-travelled Gaffer, conspicuous for his farmer's coat of grey, or lightest cærulean tincture-his staff in his ungloved horny fingersand his clouted shoon, or tall, straight, discoloured pair of top-boots, walking about without reflecting, to judge from his aspect,-that the persons by whom he was surrounded had mouths which would make very little of demolishing a litigious farmer, with his whole stock and plenishing, and leaving no more vestige of him than remained of Acteon, after he fell in with those very instru ments which he himself had been wont to employ in the chase. He need only look about him, and see the whole pack. Here are, σε 1 "Pamphagus et Dorceus et Oribasus; Arcades omnes; If he had once fairly got into difficulties, and "a poinding" had gone out against him, the following would also apply, "Ille fugit per quæ fuerat loca sæpe secutus. Neither Pamphagus, nor Labros, nor Ladon of the "substricta ilia," nor Leucon with the white |