judges before their chamber, assembled in the Court of Common Pleas, and there expected the arrival of their justices. Whilst the alterations were going forward at Westminster Hall, the Lord Chancellor sate in Lincoln's Inn Hall.

Having spent enough time in the Hall, let us make for the parks; but as we cross Palace Yard, and look again at the Northern Gate, let us remember that in olden time, and so late as the opening of this century, the exterior aspect of the Hall, like the outside of the Temple Church at the same date, was much disfigured by mean and unsightly buildings. Close against the wall, on the right hand of a person entering the Hall, stood the old Exchequer Coffee House, where the advocates of George III.'s era used to meet their clients in consultation. Describing in 1800 the disfigurements of the Hall, Ireland says "This shameful negligence, in not preserving the original parts, is most conspicuous in the removal of the figures in front; and in the concealment of them, by the erection of those nuisances, the coffee-houses, at the entrance. The Gothic points of the niches are still discernible over part of the Exchequer Coffee House; and the whole-length figures, in the niches beneath them, we have reason to believe are yet

serjeants of their ancient monopoly in the Common Pleas, rendering permanent the change temporarily effected by William IV.'s warrant; the power and prosperity of the serjeants had undergone several variations, and upon the whole very great diminution. At the close of Mary's reign, and at the opening of Elizabeth's, they were in a state of depression,-for either Serjeant Bendloes was actually the only serjeant in existence for several months at that time, or he was the only serjeant who for a while attended Westminster Hall in the pursuit of business. Under Elizabeth the order regained much of their ancient prestige; and throughout the seventeenth century they were powerful and respected,-although their futile opposition to Francis North on Dumb Day, when they refused to speak, tended to make them ridiculous in the eyes of the public. Throughout the eighteenth century they steadily lost influence, and notwithstanding the eminence of some of their fraternity, became objects of pleasantry with the advocates of Erskine's date. Buller used to call them "the heavy blacks;" in allusion to the question often heard in Westminster Hall, "Why is a serjeant's speech like a tailor's goose ?"-to which query the answer was, "Because it is hot and heavy." Of late years their decay has been even more rapid and visible. The statute already mentioned was a disastrous blow to an order which in the minds of flippant laymen is associated with Charles Dickens's inimitable caricature of Mr. Serjeant Busfuz, in the 'Pickwick Papers.' The ancient brotherhood of serjeants, however, still numbers some able and very successful practitioners at the bar, who for the most part hold patents of precedence by virtue of which they rank with queen's counsel.

standing. In an ancient print which we have seen of this building, published before the coffee-houses were erected, the figures all appeared perfect; and in course gave great relief to the general elevation. We cannot but sincerely regret the sad innovations that have been made all along this whole range of buildings, by projections of sheds, porter-shops, and other excrescences of the meanest character; which being here huddled promiscuously together, conceal from the public eye every vestige of antiquity."

VOL. II.

BB

AT

T the present time, when three out of every five journalists attached to our chief London newspapers are Inns-ofCourt men; when many of our able and successful advocates are known to ply their pens in organs of periodical literature as regularly as they raise their voices in courts of justice; and when the young Templar, who has borne away the first honours of his university, deems himself the object of a flattering compliment when he is for the first time invited to contribute to the columns of a leading review or daily journal—it is difficult to believe that strong men are still amongst us who can remember the days when it was the fashion of the bar to disdain law-students who were suspected of " writing for hire" and barristers who "reported for the papers." Throughout the opening years of the present century, and even much later, it was almost universally held on the circuits and in Westminster Hall, that Inns-of-Court men lowered the dignity of their order by following those literary avocations by which some of the brightest ornaments of the law supported themselves at the outset of their professional careers. Notwithstanding this prejudice, a few wearers of the long robe, daring by nature, or rendered bold by necessity, persisted in "maintaining a connexion with the press" whilst they sought briefs on circuit, or waited for clients in their chambers. Such men as Serjeant Spankie and Lord Campbell, as Master Stephen and Mr. Justice Talfourd, were reporters for the press whilst they kept terms; and no sooner had Henry Brougham's eloquence charmed the public, than it was whispered that for years his pen, no less ready than his tongue, had found constant employment in organs of political intelligence.

But though such men were known to exist, they were regarded as the "black sheep" of the bar by a great majority of their profession. It is not improbable that this prejudice against gownsmen on the press was palliated by circumstances that no longer exist. When political writers were very generally regarded as dangerous members of society, and when conductors of respectable newspapers were harassed with vexatious prosecutions and heavy punishments for acts of trivial inadvertence, or for purely imaginary offences, the average journalist was in many respects inferior to the average journalist working under the present more favourable circumstances. Men of culture, honest purpose, and fine feeling were slow to enrol themselves members of a despised and proscribed fraternity; and in the dearth of educated gentlemen ready to accept literary employment, the task of writing for the public papers too frequently devolved upon very unscrupulous persons, who rendered their calling as odious as themselves. A shackled and persecuted press is always a licentious and venal press; and before legislation endowed English journalism with a certain measure of freedom and security, it was seldom manly and was often corrupt. It is therefore probable that our grandfathers had some show of reason for their dislike of contributors to anonymous literature. At the bar men of unquestionable amiability and enlightenment were often the loudest to express this aversion for their scribbling brethren. It was said that the scribblers were seldom gentlemen in temper; and that they never hesitated to puff themselves in their papers. These considerations so far influenced Mr. Justice Lawrence that, though he was a model of judicial suavity to all other members of the bar, he could never bring himself to be barely civil to advocates known to be "upon the press."

At Lincoln's Inn this strong feeling against journalists found vent in a resolution, framed in reference to a particular person, which would have shut out journalists from the Society. It had long been understood that no student could be called to the bar whilst he was acting as a reporter in the gallery of either house; but the new decision of the benchers would have destroyed the ancient connexion of the legal profession and literary calling. Strange to say this illiberal measure

was the work of two benchers who, notwithstanding their patrician descent and associations, were vehement assertors of liberal principles. Mr. Clifford-" O. P." Clifford was its proposer, and Erskine was its seconder. Fortunately the person who was the immediate object of its provisions petitioned the House of Commons upon the subject, and the consequent debate in the Lower House decided the benchers to withdraw from their false position; and since their silent retreat no attempt has been made by any of the four honourable societies to affix an undeserved stigma on the followers of a serviceable art. Upon the whole the literary calling gained much from the discreditable action of Lincoln's Inn; for the speech in which Sheridan covered with derision this attempt to brand parliamentary reporters as unfit to associate with members of the bar, and the address in which Mr. Stephen, with manly reference to his own early experiences, warmly censured the conduct of the society of which he was himself a member, caused many persons to form a new and juster estimate of the working members of the London press. Having alluded to Dr. Johnson and Edmund Burke, who had both acted as parliamentary reporters, Sheridan stated that no less than twenty-three graduates of universities were then engaged as reporters of the proceedings of the house.

The close connexion which for centuries has existed between men of law and men of letters is illustrated on the one band by a long succession of eminent lawyers who have added to the lustre of professional honours the no less bright distinctions of literary achievements or friendships, and on the other hand by the long line of able writers who either enrolled themselves amongst the students of the law, or resided in the Inns of Court, or cherished with assiduous care the friendly regard of famous judges. Indeed, since the days of Chancellor de Bury, who wrote the Philobiblon,' there have been few Chancellors to whom literature is not in some way indebted; and the few Keepers of the Seal who neither cared for letters nor cultivated the society of students, are amongst the judges whose names most Englishmen would gladly erase from the history of their country. Jeffreys and Macclesfield represent the unlettered Chancellors; More and Bacon the lettered. Fortescue's