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With hollow voice, the walk of King's Bench leaving.

To weave the tricky web no midnight oil

Is now consumed by pale-eyed pleader in his moil.

We subjoin the original verses, XIX.-XXV., from the "Christmas Hymn":

The oracles are dumb;

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;
Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;

From haunted spring, and dale

Edg'd with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent;

With flow'r-inwoven tresses torn,

The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;

In urns, and altars round;

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar pow'r foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice batter'd God of Palestine,

And moonèd Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shrine;

The Libyck Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue;

In vain with cymbals ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue:

The lonely Temples o'er,

And the resounding shore,

II.

The mammon-lovers weep and loud lament;
From building, court, and lane,

Most fiercely they complain :

With flour inwoven tresses torn,

The clerks in twilight shade of Tanfield thickets mourn.

See Gray's and Lincoln's Inn,

See Chancery Lane's great In

III.

stitution mourns with midnight plaint.

In halls and tables round,

A drear and solemn sound

Affrights the BENCHERS at their 'xceedings quaint;

And the Stone Building seems to sweat,

The Terminus' club, both old and new, begins its breast to beat.

IV.

The Bore and Baälim

Forsake the Temples dim;

Dies the thrice-batter'd Court of Chancery.

And Judges nothing loth,

The Law and Equity both,

Decree, ungirt with hopeless misery;

Vice-Chancellors refer no more to Horne,

In vain the faithful Does their wounded Richards mourn.

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Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud :
Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest ;

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud;

In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark,

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp'd ark.

This club was established on the passing of the Act for rendering the assignment of term unnecessary (8 & 9 Vict. c. 112.), and was called after the god Terminus.

Huge piles of papers, all of blackest hue;

In vain with curses dark

They ply the Masters' Clerk

With states of facts, tied up with tape so red:

The Masters all have gone, and now,

The Judge works out his own decrees in old Southampton Row.

The Attorney's no more seen

In Gray's or Lincoln's Inn,

VI.

Trampling, with laughter loud, the unpaid Bar;
Nor can he set at rest

Counting his sacred chest,

Nought but immediate payment is at all allowed.
Direct to Counsel, Client now resorts,

No more th' Attorney's car the harnessed Bar support.

They feel throughout the land

The dread SoCIETY's hand,

VII.

The rays of Science blind their dusky ey❜n;

Nor all the trash beside

Longer dare abide;

No abstracts for twice thirty years unfold their snaky twine;

Our BAND, to prove their name is true,

Do by their various REPORTS control the learned crew.

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Pillows his chin on an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted Fayes

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-lov'd maze.

Yea, truth and justice then,

Will down return to men,

IX.

Orb'd in a rainbow, and like glories wearing,

Mercy will sit between,

Thron'd in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;

And Heaven, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace Hall.

1 It need not be observed that stanzas VIII. IX. and x. remain as in the original, being xv. and xviii. of the Hymn.

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

X.

But now begins, for from this happy day,
Th' old DRAGON1 under ground

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wroth to see his kingdom fail,

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

Much attention has recently been excited by accidents on railways, and the means of their prevention. It may be useful to bring before our readers a Paper on this point printed in the Times of the 2nd September last, which, we know, comes from a high authority. Perhaps when there is so much desire expressed for an assimilation of laws in all parts of the kingdom, we might here usefully take a hint from Scotland.

"In Scotland persons are tried for culpable or reckless neglect of duty, by which the lives of the subjects are endangered or any passengers injured, and the trials have produced great benefit in increased attention to the safety of the passengers. It is believed that in England no such charge is competent; at least, no trials on such a charge take place. In Scotland the public prosecutor has powers and means of investigation of the most unlimited kind, by the magistrate compelling the production of every book and document which is necessary to see with whom blame lies. In the case of a death in 1845, the superintendent of one Scotch railway was tried and convicted and severely punished, as well as the engine driver, the one for coming out and the other for going on with an engine known to both to be insufficient, and which the books proved had been treated as such for some time. In that case the representations of the superintendent to the directors as to the insufficiency of many of the engines were recorded and produced; and the directors were warned by the Lord-Advocate and the Bench, that if another accident occurred from that cause with any of the engines then in use, they would be tried criminally. The effect on that line had been most marked and decided in the additional number and improved character of the engines."

We have now exhausted our budget, and we may conclude by observing that we look forward to the approaching CONFERENCE, to which we have directed an Article, as a proof that there is a general desire to approach the subject of Law Reform in a conciliatory spirit. We think we see symptoms of a change of feeling in quarters where we have hitherto least expected it; but where we are most anxious that such good feeling should exist: to which we trust we heartily respond.

Oct. 28. 1852.

Our friend, the author of the New Pilgrim's Progress, has evidently this Dragon in view when he described the Dragon FEUDALITY. See 6 L. R. p.

299.

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ART. I.-CIVIL PROCEDURE IN ENGLAND, AMERICA, AND SCOTLAND, COLLATED.

A Travelling Opinion. By a Colonial Crown Lawyer.

A VENERATED Judge, in a recent admirable work, thus characterises the Jurisprudence of Scotland.1

"The law itself is not much upheld by the dim mysteries which are said elsewhere to be necessary in order to save law from vulgar familiarity. With a little deduction on account of the feudality that naturally adheres to real property, it is perhaps the best and the simplest legal system in Europe.

"It is deeply founded in practical reason, aided by that conjoined equity, which is equity to the world as well as to lawyers. There can be no more striking testimony to its excellence than the fact, that most of the modern improvements in English Law, on matters already settled in the Law of Scotland, have amounted in substance to the unacknowledged introduction of the Scotch system."

On this appropriate text it is proposed to offer a passing commentary. After upwards of a dozen years devoted to professional and public avocations in a colony, the writer has had the advantage to revisit America and this country at the time of the discussion and first operation of the most extensive and effective measures of Law Reform of the century. Anticipating that he may be called in the course of duty to assist in applying these important ameliorations elsewhere, his attention is naturally arrested by every thing that appears

1 Lord Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey, vol. i. p. 85. VOL. XVII.-FEB. 1853.

Q

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