much greater patience, and more mildly and gently, endure and bear up the disastrous load of their misfortune than if they had been sentenced at their first arrival unto the court."

Of one who settled a great many law-suits, he said, "He was no judge at all, but a right honest man."

He also has a chapter in which he likens the formation of law-suits to the growth of a bear's cub, which, at first shapeless and ugly, is licked into form by its dam. At first they consist of only one or two writings; “but when there are heaps of these legiformal papers packed, piled, laid up together, impoked, insatcheled, and put up in bags, then it is with good reason we term that a suit." Process," he says, "is purchase; viz., of good store of money to the lawyers, and of many pokes — id est, Prou Sacks to the pleaders."

He was very severe on the judges, whom he called "furred law-cats," and of whom he says they "are most terrible and dreadful monsters that devour little children.”

In his chapter on the "Apedepts," he satirizes certain courts of judicature. Among the monsters in this island was one which fed on Appeals, and another whose name was Review. The island was colonized from Attorneyland, and its inhabitants fed on parchment, ink-horns, and pens.

In commenting on another law-suit, he says, "Hereupon the magisters made a vow never to decrott themselves in rubbing off the dirt of either their shoes or clothes Master Janotus with his adherents vowed never to blow or snuff their noses until judgment were given by a definitive sentence. By these vows do they continue unto this time both dirty and snotty; for the court hath

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not garbled, sifted, and fully looked into all the pieces as yet. The judgment, or decree, shall be given out and pronounced at the next Greek Calends — that is, never. As you know that they do more than nature, and contrary to their own articles. The articles of Paris maintain that to God alone belongs infinity; and nature produceth nothing that is immortal, for she putteth an end and period to all things by her engendered, according to the saying, Omnia orta cadunt. But these thick mist-swallowers make the suits in law depending before them both infinite and immortal. In doing whereof they have given occasion to, and verified, the saying of Chilo the Lacedæmonian, consecrated to the Oracle at Delphos, that misery is the inseparable companion of law-suits; and that suitors are miserable; for sooner shall they attain to the end of their lives, than to the final decision of their pretended rights."

Against what other part soever of Rabelais' works the charge of obscurity may be sustained, it certainly cannot be brought against these animadversions on lawyers. It also seems to me, that if we may judge by the want of consistency in the decisions of some of the highest legal tribunals in this land, the custom of dicethrowing as a means of determining law-suits is by no means obsolete. The only argument against this belief is, that if the aleatory chance prevailed, their judgment would occasionally be just.

This review of Rabelais also suggests the query, whether the practice of Justice Bridlegoose may not have given rise to the phrase, "cast in law," or cast in damages," a problem for Mr. Richard Grant White, Dean Trench, and the other word-hunters.

MONTAIGNE

has less to say on the subject of our reading than might be expected. He asks, "What can be more outrageous than to see a nation where, by lawful custom, the office of a judge is to be bought and sold, where judgments are paid for with ready money, and where justice may legally be denied to him that has not wherewithal to pay; where this merchandise is in so great repute, as in our government, to furnish a fourth estate of wrangling lawyers, to add to the three ancient ones of the church, nobility, and people; which fourth estate, having the laws in their hands, and sovereign power over men's lives and fortunes, make a body separate from the nobility?" He complains that "the very women and children, nowadays, take upon them to school the oldest and most experienced men about the ecclesiastical laws; whereas the first of those of Plato forbids them to inquire so much as into the reason of civil laws, which were to stand instead of divine ordinances." He complains, too, of the fluctuation of laws, particularly in England, especially in regard to religion; and of his own country, he says, "I have known a thing that was capital to become lawful." He says that King Ferdinand, sending colonies to the Indies, "wisely provided that they should not carry along with them any law-students, for fear lest suits should get a footing in that new world; as being a science in its own nature the mother of alteration and division; judging with Plato, 'that lawyers and physicians are the pests of a country.' He very pertinently inquires, "Whence does it come to pass that our common language, so easy for all other uses, becomes

obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts? and that he who so clearly expresses himself herein, whatever he speaks or writes, cannot find in this any way of declaring himself that he does not fall into doubt and contradiction? If it be not that the princes of this art, applying themselves with a peculiar attention to invent and cull out sounding words, and contrive artistical periods, have so weighed every syllable, and so thoroughly sifted every sort of seam, that they are now confounded and entangled in the infinity of figures, and so many minute divisions, that they can no more fall into any rule or prescription, nor any certain intelligence." He insists that glosses and commentaries only serve to obscure the text. "This is most apparent in the law; we give the authority of law to infinite doctors, infinite decisions, and as many interpretations; yet do we find any end of the need of interpreting? Is there, for all that, any progress or advancement toward peace? Do we stand in need of any fewer advocates or judges than when this great mass of law was yet in its first infancy?" On this point he is at direct variance from Dr. Johnson, who, as we have seen, believed, that as precedents multiplied, the less would be the need of lawyers. It is interesting to be told that Montaigne never had a suit. "No judge, thank God, has ever yet spoken to me in the quality of a judge." He is particularly savage on the French laws, and I judge his remarks on this point to be quite applicable to the bulk of our State legislation: "They" (the laws) "are often made by fools; more often by men that, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity; but always by men who are vain and irresolute authors. There is nothing so much, nor so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty,

as the laws. The command is so perplexed and inconstant, that it, in some sort, excuses both disobedience and defect in the interpretation, the administration, and the observation of it." I hope the makers of our late proposed constitution will ponder this last sentence. His chapter on "Sumptuary Laws" we commend to the NewEngland Prohibitionists. This wise man winds it up with this weighty sentence: "No laws are in their true credit, but such to which God has given so long a continuance that no one knows their beginning, or that there ever was any other."

Of the multitude of laws he observes, "I am not much pleased with his opinion who thought by the multitude of laws to curb the authority of judges, in cutting out for them their several parcels; he was not aware that there is as much liberty and latitude in the interpretation of laws as in their form: and they but fool themselves who think to lessen and stop our disputes by recalling to us the express words of the Bible; forasmuch as the mind does not find the field less spacious wherein to controvert the sense of another, than to deliver his own; and as if there were less animosity and tartness in commentary than in invention. We see how much he was mistaken; for we have more laws in France than all the rest of the world put together, and more than would be necessary for the government of all the worlds of Epicurus : 'Ut olim flagitiis, sic nunc legibus laboramus;' and yet we have left so much to the decisions and opinions of our judges, that there never was so full a liberty or so full a license. What have our legislators gained by culling out a hundred thousand particular cases, and by applying to these a hundred thousand laws? This num