misunderstood. The genuine Temple of Law is barely ten minutes' walk away; and among the packed throng figure many faces barristerial, relishing highly this playing with the edged tools of their profession. Lawyers, unwigged, chuckle over the sham lawyers in scarlet. These are very precise and scrupulous, feeling themselves, as it were, trustees for the sacred constitutions of these kingdoms, and administer what may be called the wrong end of the law, or possibly the law upside down, with a scrupulousness and gravity irresistibly comic.

But though the court becomes thus a spectacle to legal gods and men, the prisoner Captain has artfully provided himself with an engine of twobarristerial power; and is in his dock, fortified by a real, genuine sergeant, not military,-and a counsel of the outer Bar. He has attorney power, too, at his command. These persons are, as has been mentioned, invisible to the court's naked eye; for in one respect it is colour blind, and can only see scarlet. But it is wonderful to see what havoc these genuine iron-plated monsters-of-law-though only permitted to act vicariously, and by the agency of prompting-work among the poor wooden craft about. Armed with the terrible heavy iron prong of Crossexamination, they run riot among the others, raking, fouling, wheeling round them in circles, pouring in hot shot, and finally rushing at them "full on" with the heavy iron prong, and sinking them. Heaviest of heavy Dragoons-fellows sudden and fierce of quarrel, awful to regard, tremendous in respect of hair-are as children in their hands. They founder these great men-of-war under the terrible fire of paper questions. They grow timorous, and become a spectacle. Sympathising brethren of the profession, looking on from afar among the crowd, admire and applaud. The true actors stand out from the pantomimists.

In the procedure of this scarlet tribunal there is a measured pace, a linked protraction long drawn out, a grave tediousness, which is a source of infinite admiration to the beholders. The indecent haste of the regular courts of law may well be put to shame. The licensed practitioners in those places may blush for their hurried scampering, as it were, over the merits of a serious case. We must admire the jealous care, the fearful scrupulosity of these doctors of military law.

A little docket or oblong piece of paper is sent across through many hands, and at last reaches the military chief-justice. That is a question,the prisoner's question,-which is thus, as it were, put to the judge himself first. That little journey takes some seconds. Military judge proceeds to read to himself;-rapidly if it be short, and in a good flowing text; slowly, and with difficulty, if it be long, and in unskilful penmanship; still more slowly if it be an involved composition, whose bearing is not altogether apparent on the surface :-all which processes consume a certain number of seconds. Possibly at this stage a scruple may strike our judge's mind that its shape may not be altogether legal,—legal, at least, as seen through a military haze or atmosphere; and he will then address a friendly remonstrance to the deviser of the question, extra

judicially, as it were, and in a colloquial shape; a pressure, perhaps, gently resisted by the proposer. Risks and possibilities are then hinted, as resultant upon the admission of this fatal interrogation: it may be fruitful in antagonistic interrogations from the other side. Could not something be done in the way of a little trimming and shaping? Finally, it may be too grave to be decided on a single responsibility; so, if you please, we must clear the court, and sit with closed doors,-upon the little oblong slip of paper! Busy reporters, orderlies, counsel, heterogeneous crowd, including the professional brethren listening as amateurs, are all huddled out, under circumstances of indignity.

Re-admitted after, say, twenty minutes' exclusion, the heterogeneous mass bursts in ungracefully, and with much scraping and stamping strive for their old places. The council have decided; the momentary question may be put. Professional amateurs in the crowd lean forward eagerly to listen. Military chief-justice reads aloud, a sonorous, imperative tone, as though upon parade.

"Question: Did Colonel Shako remark to you, in the hearing of Cornet Bridoon, that Captain Snaffle was not fit to carry garbage to swine?"

Upon which follows express rushing of pens over papers in a dozen different quarters,-by nimble reporters, by president himself, by military attorney-general, by prisoner and prisoner's counsel, by amateur notetakers,-pens all racing for the bare life. A handsome pause must be allowed for this operation, at the end of which time the question may be taken to be fairly and irrevocably secured on paper. We are now ready for the answer.

Witness-who has been searching the corners of the ceiling, the wainscoting, the ventilators, and other suggestive sources of information -gathers himself for an effort, and says solemnly, "To the best of my recollection, he did not!"

Again are the pens let loose, and are heard at their old break-neck pace, enrolling the Delphic response. A pause again, and presently the scarlet attorney-general begins to read aloud, in a sort of plain-chant:

"Answer: To the best of my recollection, he did not!"

The little oblong docket has by this time travelled across to the fingers of the attorney-general, who has promptly impaled it on a ready file; and so the whole transaction being, as it were, perfect and complete, and the mutual relation of question and answer being thus happily established, we may now take breath, and get ready for another, which is already on its road to the fingers of the president.

By and by a stalwart colonel is being subject to this slow and leisurely process of examination; and to a question, which has passed through all the legitimate stages,-of travelling from hand to hand, of being chanted aloud, scribbled down noisily at racing speed, the stalwart colonel (searching, too, his facts, as before, in the ceiling) replies sonorously, "I decline to answer."

Impetuous racing of pens as before. Pause, and plain-chant from the attorney-general:

"Answer: I decline to answer."

As before. Court, however, presses stalwart colonel, who still refuses; and so the room is cleared for deliberation as to whether stalwart colonel shall be compelled to answer. Re-admission then, after half-an-hour's debate, with this result, that stalwart colonel must answer.

Hush, then! Question repeated stentoriously from attorney-general. Hush! perfect stillness for the reply.

Stalwart colonel fixes his eye on a hook in the far corner of the ceiling, and, deriving support therefrom, replies, "I don't know!" and after the traditional pen-racing attorney takes up the burden of the song, and chants:

"Answer: I don't know!"

There is no overcolouring here. This weary and punctilious dawdling spins itself out over a month's span, and the only marvel is that at such a rate of progress the investigation could have been got into such a space. Compared with this the procedure of certain Scotch courts, very busy with a notorious marriage-case, stands out in matchless contrast as a miracle of speed and despatch. It is strange that in the army, among the men of action and work, we should find words, and circumlocution, and a tangle of red-tape miles long.

It may be well conceived how the sharp scalping-knife of cross-examination becomes blunted and almost worthless in this dull process. The whole spirit and vigour of this operation, as a test of truth, becomes chilled by being filtered through written dictation, reading out loud, and long pauses.

It was considered on the whole, even by professional minds, naturally supposed to be tinged with a pardonable jealousy, that the gallant officer who played chief-justice in this tedious inquiry discharged his duties with considerable skill and tact. But in two or three instances his lordship went sadly astray in laying down the law. Thus, when the military plaintiff in the case, as the prisoner's colonel might fairly be styled, had finished his evidence, which was the main support of the charges, it would seem natural, and in the ordinary course of legal procedure, that the prisoner should then have the privilege of cross-examining him. But the chief-justice "ruled" that the cross-examination must be confined strictly to the subject-matter of the charges; and that if the prisoner wished to extract information from him on other subjects, he must call him hereafter as his own witness! This might pass as a clumsy and primitive mode of arriving at about the same result; but the scarlet chief-justice went further, and laid it down that "the rule of evidence is, that you confine yourself, on cross-examination, to what the witness stated before the court." And that this is not merely a military rule of evidence, may be assumed from the indignant repudiation, later on, of this being

"an

anomalous tribunal," or not being guided by the same rules of evidence which regulate the other tribunals of the country. But by and by the tribunal, which is not anomalous, and which is guided by the rules of other courts in the country, "lets in" a wild jumble of conversations between third and fourth parties, letters from third to fourth parties, speculations and rumours which did not reach the witness's ear, but the ear of another party, who told witness. Out of which wild and incoherent miscellany rises the fullest and handsomest testimony to the procedure of the old-established and regular tribunals of the country. It has been customary for scoffers outside the sacred ring-fence of the profession to be very merry on what they call the hocus-pocus and conjuring of the Law, and specially on that portion of it which deals with evidence. Those rules which have appeared childish are now triumphantly vindicated; and from this recent exhibition may be learnt that an affectation of perfect and Solomon-like justice, in patiently hearing the "whole" of a case, and a laborious entertaining of every fact, near or remote, which may bear on the question, is, paradoxical as it may seem, about the worst fashion in the world for bringing the facts of a case before the court.

It is high time that this amateur playing at trials should have an end, and that these pranks, which are about as legal as the doings of the sham judges and notaries who come on in the Opera, should be repressed.

Pens and Ink in the Reign of Terror.

A HISTORY of the excesses of the printing-press would be a description of some of the more loathsome forms of the evil passions of the mob,the canaille,-or, to use a noble lord's synonym for the masses, of "the scum." In times of political trouble this "scum" is stirred; and some very repulsive things float to the surface, terrifying the shuddering noblesse, and such Respectability as may be found throned at Clapham. Agitation that has the noblest conceivable end, still stirs the bad with the good. The rain from heaven sweetens and fertilises the earth, at the same time it fouls the river.

When the mass is excited, appeals are made to its ignorant passions by men whose lust is power or gain. The roused giant wants strong food, hot and hot; and there are cooks at hand to supply him. The demand for mountebanks creates mountebanks. King Mob can always find his ministers, who will fawn upon and flatter him, and vow that he is the comeliest, the sweetest, the most adorable of monsters. Is he sulky ?-his ministers will discover grievances for him, and incite him to avenge them. When his eyes start, and his nostrils vibrate at the smell of blood; when he craves a pick at the bones of the fair and innocent,-still, showing the napes of their necks to the monster, his parasites bid him name his imperial pleasure. Nay, when he is in a whimsical, unsettled mood; when he knows not what he wants, and is still determined to demand something, even when he appears content and at rest,-his wily ministers cluster about him, and advise him to take action, and be loud in his mouthing. They mount wagons under his nose, and scream, and denounce, and deliver perorations emulous of thunder, but wanting the lightning flash. They pour poisoned honey into his ear, and lift intoxicating goblets of craftily-mixed flattery to his lips. He is suprema lex. All his work is acted wisdom; and there is no wisdom save that which he speaks and acts. The king is an ant-eater in an ants' nest; the great and rich are vampires he must put under his heel, if he would keep them from blood-sucking. All purple and fine linen; all palaces, "lifting to eternal summer their marble walls;" all stars and garters, and coronets and tiaras; triple hats and iron crowns; chaplets and bâtons; maces and swords of state, even to the humble beadle's wand,-all are so much food for the bonfire of his vengeance. Let all be piled up till the glittering mass is lost in the mist of heaven, and then let King Mob, with the flaming breath of his anger, set fire to the doomed corruption that has so long hung in the air between the wind and his-the only-nobility. It is not so long since incense strong as this was burned by craven ministers under the nose of King Mob. Tempted by the triumph of a revolution, in the country of revolutions, a sorry rabble of talkers dethroned kings in bar-parlours, and sallied into the streets, counselling King Mob to make