from his senior companions of the preceding day their individual shares of travelling expenses which he had advanced for them.

The office of "junior” being by no means a sinecure,—nay, quite the contrary,—Mr. Tresham congratulates himself upon his own narrow escape from its responsibilities; and producing a note book, describes in it certain stenographical hieroglyphics, according as judge or counsel utter anything that appears worthy of being recorded. In his endeavours, however, to concentrate his mind upon the arguments of Mr. Serjeant Y, Z, or the charge of Mr. Baron P, Q, he is sadly distracted by the proceedings and general line of conduct of the great body of unemployed barristers around him. Some of these are relating good stories, others talking politics, or reading novels and newspapers, or scribbing notes, and tossing them across to friends sitting apart from the places they occupy themselves, or planning rides and walks for the afternoon. About luncheon-time a very welcome irruption takes place of small brown paper parcels filled with sandwiches, the consumption and friendly distribution of which pleasantly diversifies a half-hour.

The day is wearing, and a long complex case bids fair to occupy the remainder of it. Our friend Tresham bethinks himself of seeing what is doing on the Crown side; and finding his way through a dimly lighted subterranean passage that connects the courts of civil and criminal justice, emerges into the latter; and as he struggles through the crowded passages, is for a moment recalled to a sense of some individual consequence, by the circumstance of a man in a skyblue coat obsequiously lifting a wooden rail, to admit him to the seats occupied by the bar, exclaiming at the same time in a pompous voice, “Make way for counsel." Hustling himself into a place, he finds that he has accidentally rejoined his own particular friend, whom he had lost sight of since the morning, and who is by this time half way through the first volume of Mrs. Trollope's last novel. Tresham feels some surprise at beholding this apparent apathy to what is going forward, and endeavours to watch with some attention the progress of a case of sheepstealing which is occupying the time of the court. Every part of it is crowded, and numbers of ladies embellish with their presence the judicial bench, obviously much absorbed in the pending enquiry;—so far more intense is the interest created in the public mind by felony than mere civil wrong. "Well," observes Tresham's friend, "this is slow work; have you a mind for a walk?—it wants yet an hour or two of five." To which proposition, although its spirit is in flagrant violation of his preconceived notions of close assiduity to business, he mechani

cally accedes, follows his companion out of court, and calling pro forma at the butcher's lodgings, to ascertain whether anybody has been enquiring for them, the two associates are soon to be seen rambling along the green and pleasant banks of the Medway.

At six o'clock, Mr. Tresham joins the bar mess, of which he has just been elected a member. A very numerous party sit down to as good a dinner as the best hotel in the town can provide. The leader of the circuit is in the chair. Champagne diffuses its joyous influence over the many choice spirits that support him,-wit, and good humour, and hilarity, are the order of the evening, and our hero enters with great relish into the enjoyment of such goodly fellowship. As night advances, the seniors slink away from the convivial board, to attend consultations, and read their briefs for the following morning. The junior community adjourn to their various lodgings, subdividing them. selves into whist parties. Mr. Tresham and his friend, who delight in that enticing game, have invited a couple of men to tea and a rubber at their lodgings; and an evening succeeds, of which the upshot is the exit of two guests from the butcher's shop door, at two o'clock in the morning, with about five pounds of the hosts' loose cash. A precisely similar sum had been levied from Tresham, as the usual contribution of a new member of the bar mess to its wine fund; and having paid ten shillings besides for his dinner, he begins to find that the amusements of circuit are not to be enjoyed for nothing.

Wednesday passes away for Tresham very much after the fashion of the preceding day. Alternate attendance in the civil and criminal court, a long walk in the afternoon,-a pleasant dinner with a larger party than before, the after-part of which is diversified by the arrival of a messenger from the judges, who send to crave the pleasure of the bar's company to dine with them on the morrow, and a second evening, prolonged till a late hour over the whist table,-are its leading incidents; only the sanguine feelings with which Tresham started from Elm Court, Temple, are rapidly sobering into a more rational and truthful view of the chances of fame and success that await him on circuit. On Thursday, however, an occurrence takes place, which effectually arouses Mr. Tresham from a half-desponding, half-drowsy rumination upon his professional prospects. He is sitting in the Crown Court, and the ingenious speeches of Mr. Slicklips have just procured the acquittals of three as arrant scoundrels as ever filched a pocket, robbed a hen-roost, or fired a hayrick. Such verdicts, in the very teeth of the most damning evidence, rather startle Mr. Justice O, P, who is the pre6

VOL. II.

siding criminal judge; and who, with a view to restore, if possible, the equipoise of those nice scales, which it is his own official province to hold suspended, directs that the very next cases in which the prisoners happen to be defended by counsel shall be prosecuted at the expense of the county. The result of this arrangement is a distribution of what are pleasantly styled "soup tickets,"-in other words, the clerk of the peace makes over the depositions in each particular case so referred to by the judge, to the junior members of the bar present, in whose hands they become, as it were, so many impromptu briefs, furnishing an opportunity not otherwise attainable for the display of their virgin eloquence. Per favour of the mode of proceeding just described, in the present instance, Mr. Tresham, from a mere hanger on of the assize, unexpectedly finds himself counsel for the prosecution in the forthcoming case of Regina v. Peter Snubbins, indicted for feloniously stealing three trusses of hay, much against the peace of our sovereign Lady the Queen, her crown and dignity. It would be difficult accurately to describe the state of fussiness into which our friend is thrown by this sudden accession of responsibility,-how sudden the impetus with which he turns over the leaves of Archbold's Criminal Pleading,'-how anxious his investigation of all the circumstances of the case, as they are set forth in the depositions before him. So absorbed indeed is he in the all-important purpose of convicting poor Peter Snubbins, that he has no leisure to acknowledge the felicitations of his friends upon his great luck in happening to be in court at the critical moment. Only ten minutes before, the junior of the circuit had taken his departure. Had he remained, the case of Regina v. Snubbins was his, by rights; what a chance for Tresham!

6

The case is called on, and "senior juniors," with a kind of malignant smile, eye the young barrister on his first legs. In a tone of voice betraying a considerable degree of trepidation, his trembling fingers mechanically grasping the depositions, he mutters something about the honour of addressing a British jury,-composed, by the bye, in the present instance, of as dunder-headed looking rustics as might be well gotten together, and, upon a timely hint from the bench, curtails an intended long narrative of the prisoner's delinquency by observing that its circumstances will perhaps be best collected from the witnesses' own mouths. Thereupon a raw-boned grazier, six feet high, with a most determined air of defiance and vindictiveness, jumps into the witness box; and, in reply to the somewhat leading questions of Mr. Tresham, makes out a most unanswerable case against the prisoner at the bar.

For a time, Snubbins's counsel, rather compassionating the inexperience of Tresham, and trusting perhaps to his own subsequent powers of cross-examination and oratory, permits the young gentleman to proceed with his examination in chief in rather a loose, irregular style; but upon Tresham abusing of such impunity, taking a bolder flight, and actually demanding of the witness "whether he saw the prisoner take the bay?" his hitherto indulgent antagonist starts up, and in a wrathful voice that at once reduces our diffident friend to silence, appeals to his lordship to know whether such a monstrous question can be tolerated, even from the inexperience of that learned gentleman ? The judge smiles as he shakes his head; and with a blandness and ease of manner more provoking than the sharpest censure, takes the examination of the witness completely out of Tresham's hands. Submitting with a tolerable grace and assumed indifference to the implied "snubbing," he throws a little more caution into his mode of eliciting evidence from the next witnesses, who, to say the truth, are ready enough to state all they know, without much prompting,-being the parish constable that detected the prisoner making off with the hay, and the police officer that assisted to take him. Things are rather too clear in the present case, even for the rhetoric of Mr. Slickslips. Neither in cross examination is the testimony of the gigantic grazier to be shaken, nor in his address to the jury can he contrive to insinuate any portion of that scepticism into the minds of those gentlemen as to the positive guilt of Peter Snubbins, which he professes to entertain. The prisoner is convicted accordingly, to the immeasurable delight and self-congratulation of Octavius Harvey Tresham, Esq.

Pluming himself on the consciousness of having gained a verdict, he now asks, with a business-like air, of the men nearest to him, whether, under all circumstances, he could have done more than he did, and seems thoroughly relieved by their assuring him that he has accomplished all that could possibly be required. He now accedes, with a consciousness of having earned a right to a little relaxation, to the proposal of a walk from his friend, who by this time has finished the second volume of Mrs. Trollope's novel; and the heated atmosphere of the law courts is exchanged for a pleasant saunter to Gibraltar,-an old-fashioned tavern overlooking the sluggish Medway.

It is the day upon which the judges of Assize regale the bar, but the slow length of some important special-jury cause detains both bench and bar, protracting the appointed dinner hour to a most indefinite one.

"The court must be up by this time," says Tresham, who has been ready dressed, and sitting over the fire at his lodgings rather more than an hour, “it is nearly half-past seven o'clock !"

"I have not yet heard the trumpet," listlessly observes his friend half asleep on the sofa, alluding doubtless to the peculiar clarion which, as we have before noticed, announces the goings forth and comings back of judicial personages. At that very moment, the wished for signal of their approach greets the ear with its shrill twang, and within the next half-hour, Tresham and his companion find themselves sitting down to table at the judges' lodgings, with between eighty and ninety other guests.

Such a party is of course too numerous to be a very sociable one, and subdivides itself into 'côteries.' A few formal healths are pro

posed after dinner by the presiding judge, and after a reasonable quantity of wine has been drank, the toast of " Prosperity to the Circuit" is understood as a signal for the company to disperse. That an entertainment should be given by the judges of Assize to the members of circuit, is a time-honoured law of hospitality, and that none of the observances incidental to old fashioned customs should be wanting on the occasion, two of their lordships' lacqueys lie in wait on the stairs for vails, levying a shilling a piece from every member of the bar as he leaves the dinner-table. How far this usage might best be honoured in the breach is a line of argument taken up by Mr. Tresham on his road back to his lodgings, where, having somewhat heated his brain with liberal potations of very full-bodied port, he is glad to retire early to his repose.

On Friday morning, Mr. Tresham rises at a rather less early hour, and effects his appearance in court at a somewhat later one than usual. A severe headache incapacitates him from following up with any interest or attention the business of the Assize, and were briefs at that moment to pour in upon him, it is doubtful whether he could muster energy enough to look into them. His friend has taken a sudden fancy to return to London, and left him immediately after breakfast with that intent.

"If he does not find it worth his while to remain why should I?” says Tresham to himself, and falls into a meditation on the means and expediency of imitating his companion's example. While ruminating on this subject he catches the friendly eye of the under-sheriff, in whom he is delighted to recognize an acquaintance. That functionary immediately scribbles a note of invitation to Tresham to dine that day with