"Question (number five hundred and seventeen thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine).—If I understand you, these forms of practice indisputably occasion delay? "Answer. - Yes, some delay.

"Q.-And unspeakable vexation?

“‘A.—I am not prepared to say that. They have never given me any vexation, — quite the contrary.

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"Q.—But you think that their abolition would damage a class of practitioners?

"A.- I have no doubt of it.

Q. Can you instance any type of that class? “A. — Yes: I would unhesitatingly mention Mr. Vholes. He would be ruined.

"Q.-Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession, a respectable man?

"A. (which proved fatal to the inquiry for ten years). - Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession, a most respectable man.'

"So, in familiar conversation, private authorities, no less disinterested, will remark that they don't know what this age is coming to; that we are plunging down precipices; that now here is something else gone; that these changes are death to people like Vholes, -a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the Vale of Taunton, and three daughters at home. Take a few steps more in this direction, say they, and what is to become of Vholes's father? Is he to perish? And of Vholes's daughters? Are they to be shirt-makers or governesses? As though Mr. Vholes and his relations being minor

cannibal chiefs, and it being proposed to abolish cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus: Make man-eating unlawful, and you starve the Vholeses!"

To my mind, there is no exaggeration in poor Miss Flite, the crazy chancery suitor who caged canary-birds, and called them the wards in chancery, naming them Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. To my mind, there is no exaggeration in the story of the two wards in Jarndyce, whose hapless destinies were united by marriage, and whose earthly union was sundered by a broken heart on the day when the legal lamp in the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce went out for want of pecuniary oil. To my mind, there is no exaggeration in the scene in which our author depicts the merriment and derision with which the bar received the intelligence that Jarndyce and Jarndyce was "over for good," and saw the papers carried out, "bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes, which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being, anyhow, on the hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more." And so great is the power of education, of precedent, and of habit, that to my mind, there is no exaggeration in the absurd pride with which Mr. Kenge refers to Jarndyce and Jarndyce as a monument of chancery practice," and boasts "that on the numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study, ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect," and that "the matured autumnal fruits

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of the woolsack have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce." It is not unnatural for lawyers to feel in this way, who are brought up under a system in which their incomes depend in a great measure upon the number of words they can employ to express an idea, and in which success is very essentially dependent on their skill and adroitness in misleading their adversaries. Still less does this work deserve the charge of exaggeration when we read in the author's preface, that "at the present moment," 1853, "there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time; in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds; which is a friendly suit, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is another well-known suit in chancery, not yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century, and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs." And we may be sure Mr. Dickens does not exaggerate when he assures us, in the preface, that " every thing set forth in these pages, concerning the court of chancery, is substantially true, and within the truth."

While, then, the trial scene in "Pickwick Papers" is a piece of ingenious pleasantry, the prison scene in the same work, and the whole of "Bleak House" and of "Little Dorrit," are something better and more useful. They are full of that broad and earnest humanity which is the key-note and theme of all Mr. Dickens's works, and which renders him the most engaging and influential writer of English fiction since Shakspeare.

But truth is better as well as stranger than fiction, and the most potently useful words written upon law in this century were those of the New-York Code of Procedure of 1848: "It is expedient that the present forms of actions and pleadings in cases at common law shall be abolished, that the distinction between legal and equitable remedies should no longer continue, and that an uniform course of proceeding in all cases should be established."

CHARLES READE,

in two of his later novels, "Very Hard Cash" and "Griffith Gaunt," gives long reports of imaginary law-trials. I believe that Mr. Reade has studied law, but he certainly has not drunk deep enough at the legal spring to escape blunders that would throw out a candidate for admission to the bar. For example, in "Very Hard Cash," in an action of false imprisonment, the issue being the insanity of the plaintiff, he admits the dying declaration of the plaintiff's sister to the effect that he was sane! And in "Griffith Gaunt " he admits evidence of a woman's unchastity on the question of her reputation for veracity! In the latter novel he severely satirizes what he calls the "postponement swindle." In this he also makes his heroine defend herself (successfully, of course) against an accusation of murder. All this is conveyed with great wit and power, and with a dramatic sense in which the author surpasses all his contemporaries. For the action of false imprisonment which his hero brought against the proprietor of the insane asylum, an approximate precedent may be found in real life, in Van Deusen v. Newcomer, 40 Mich. 90, where the Michigan supreme

court were equally divided on the question, whether the superintendent of an insane asylum, in good faith confining a person at the instance of his friends, without previous judicial determination of his insanity, is liable to such an action when it turns out that he was sane.

TROLLOPE.

If I were called on to designate the most brilliant writer of fiction of the present century, I should hesitate ; but if I were required to name the dullest, I could not hesitate a moment in awarding this voluminous writer the palm. "The Nation" once acutely said, "Flatness has always been at once Mr. Trollope's forte and foible." Trollope in fiction and Tupper in poetry, — to the mind, an inseparable pair! Mr. Trollope's exceeding goodness does not make up for his dulness. "Orley Farm" illustrates his dealing with legal subjects. The great question is one of fact as to the genuineness of a will of Sir Joseph. The legatee was permitted to testify that her father had once told her that he hoped Sir Joseph would provide for her; that she had always known the testator, and did not think it unnatural he should provide for her,

etc.

"And

But it is in his ethics that Mr. Trollope is strongest. He severely blames Mr. Furnival, a barrister, for espousing and advocating his clients' cause with zeal and apparent confidence, when he "knew" she had forged the will. By "knew" he simply means, suspected. more than this," he adds, "stranger than this, worse than this, when the legal world knew as the legal world soon did know—that all this had been so, the legal world found no fault with Mr. Furnival, conceiving