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LETTER XXX.

TO THE SAME.

By degrees I won my way through several different currents of the crowd, and established myself with my back to the wall, full in the centre of the Advocates' side of the house. Here I could find leisure and opportunity to study the minutia of the whole scene, and in particular to "fill in my foreground," as the painter's phrase runs, much more accurately than when I was myself mingled in the central tumult of the place. My position resembled that of a person visiting a peristrephic panorama, who, himself immoveable in a darksome corner, beholds the whole dust and glare of some fiery battle pass, cloud upon, cloud, and flash upon flash, before his eyes. Here might be seen some of the Magnanimi Heroes," cleaving into the mass,

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like furious wedges, in order to reach their appointed station-and traced in their ulterior progress only by the casual glimpses of" the proud horse-hair nodding on the crest"-while others, equally determined and keen in προμάχοισι μάχεσθαι, from their stature and agility, might be more properly compared to so many shuttles driven through the threads of an intricate web by some nimble-jointed weaver, Μικροι μεν αλλα Μαχηται. Οη one side might be observed some first-rate champion, pausing for a moment with a grin of bloody relaxation, to breathe after one ferocious and triumphant charge-his plump Sancho Panza busily arranging his harness for the next, no less ferocious. On another sits some less successful combatant, all his features screwed and twisted together, smarting under the lash of a sarcasm-or gazing blankly about him, imperfectly recovered from the stun of a retort; while perhaps some young beardless Esquire, burning for his spurs, may be discovered eyeing both of these askance, envious even of the cats of the vanquished, and anxious, at all hazards, like Uriah the Hittite, that some letter might reach the directors of the fray, saying, "Set ye this man in the front of the battle."

The elder and more employed advocates, to have done with my similitudes, seemed for the

most part, when not actually engaged in pleading, to have the habit of seating themselves on the benches, which extend along the whole rear of their station. Here the veteran might be seen either poring over the materials of some future discussion, or contesting bitterly with some brother veteran the propriety of some late decision, or perhaps listening with sweet smiles to the talk of some uncovered Agent, whose hand in his fob seemed to give promise of a coming fee. The most of the younger ones seemed either to promenade with an air of utter nonchalance, or to collect into groupes of four, five, or six, from whence the loud and husky cackle of some leading characters might be heard ever and anon rising triumphantly above the usual hum of the place. I could soon discover, that there are some half-dozen, perhaps, of professed wits and story-tellers, the droppings of whose inspiration are sufficient to attract round each of them, when he sets himself on his legs in the middle of the floor, a proper allowance of eyes and mouths to glisten and gape over the morning's budget of good things-some new eccentricity of Lord H. -, or broad bon-mot of Mr C The side of the Hall frequented by these worthies, is heated by two or three large iron stoves;

and from the custom of lounging during the winter-months in the immediate vicinity of these centres of comfort, the barristers of facetious disposition have been christened by one of their brethren, the" wits of the Stove-school." But, indeed, for aught I see, the journeyman days of the whole of the young Scotch advocates might, with great propriety, be called by the simple collective,Stove-hood.

What has a more striking effect; however, than even the glee and merriment of these young people close at hand, is the sound of pleaders pleading at a distance, the music of whose elocution, heard separate from its meaning, is not, for the most part, such as to tempt a nearer approach. At one Bar, the wig of the Judge is seen scarcely over-topping the mass of eager, bent-forward, listening admirers, assembled to do honour to some favourite speaker of the day -their faces already arrayed in an appropriate smile, wherewith to welcome the expected joke -or fixed in the attitude of discernment and penetration, as if resolved that no link of his cunning chain of ratiocination should escape their scrutiny. At another extremity, the whole paraphernalia of the Judge's attire are exposed full to vision all the benches around his tribu

nal deserted and tenantless, while some wearisome proser, to whom nobody listens except from necessity, is seen thumping the Bar before him in all the agonies of unpartaken earnestness, his hoarse clamorous voice floating desolately into thin air, "like the voice of a man crying in the wilderness-whom no man heareth.”

The appearance of the Judges, or Lords Ordinaries, themselves, next attracted my attention, and I walked round the Hall to survey them, each in rotation, at his particular Bar. Their dress is quite different from what we are accus tomed to in our civil courts in England, and bears much more resemblance to what I have seen in the portraits of the old Presidents of the French Parliaments. Indeed I believe it is not widely different from this; for the Court of Session was originally formed upon the model of the Parliament of Paris, and its costume was borrowed from that illustrious court, as well as its constitution. The Judges have wigs somewhat different from those of the Advocates, and larger in dimension; but their gowns are very splendid things, being composed of purple-velvet and blue cloth and silk, with a great variety of knots and ornaments of all kinds. I could not see this vestment without much respect, when I re