which he illustrated the most commonplace events of life. Blackstone and Murray deserted the Muse, and the mechanical routine of a clerk's desk would have quenched the divine afflatus in the soul of Swiveller himself. David Copperfield was a law-clerk and law-student; but clearly he is an imaginary character, a fiction of law. Those discussions between himself and his master and destined father-in-law, Mr. Spenlow, one of the firm of which the inexorable Jorkins was the other partner and constant scape-goat, on the subject of the ecclesiastical courts, never took place, I suspect. We believe in Uriah and Swiveller, and Dodson and Fogg's young gentlemen, but not in David. He is much too good to be true; that is to say, he was never bound to the law. Such an apprenticeship would have made a different article of him. I know what I risk in thus asserting my disbelief in David as a clerk; but I reiterate the language of Betsy Prig, when she denied the existence of Mrs. Harris, "I don't believe there's no sich a person." On the other hand, one readily gives credit to Lovel, the clerk of Samuel Salt, in Lamb's essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." He was Salt's savor. "Lovel took care of every thing. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his 'flapper,' his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, nor failed in any thing without expecting and fearing his admonishing. He put himself almost too much in his hands, had they not been the purest in the world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever have forgotten for a moment that he was a servant. "I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and 'would strike.' In the cause of the oppressed he never considered inequalities, or calculated the number of his opponents. He once wrested the sword out of the hand of a man of quality, that had drawn upon him, and pommelled him severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a female, an occasion upon which no odds against him could have prevented the interference of Lovel. He would stand next day bareheaded to the same person, modestly to excuse his interference; for L. never forgot rank where something better was not concerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing; had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it); possessed a fine turn for humorous poetry, - next to Swift and Prior; moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely; turned cribbage-boards and such small cabinet toys to perfection; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility; made punch better than any man of his degree in England; had the merriest quips and conceits; and was, altogether, as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing with." We get another glimpse of law-students in "Pictures of the French." In reproducing some of these literary delineations, I regret that I cannot also place before the reader some of the graphic accompaniments which add so much to this volume. The first thing the French lawstudent does on entering upon his studies, is to get him a companion to keep house for him, a female one of course. "The loves of the student and the grisette are none of those headstrong passions which make all the weeping and wailing of our modern drama: in a short time he treats her hardly better than a maid-servant, sends her on errands, and makes her get him tobacco, brandy, and ham for supper." This seems a very improper association; but we are reminded by Lord Campbell, in his life of Lord Thurlow, who had three illegitimate daughters, that up to the close of the eighteenth century, "a majority of the judges had married their mistresses. The understanding then was, that a man elevated to the bench, if he had a mistress, must either marry her or put her away." And he wickedly adds, "For many years there has been no necessity for such an alternative." After this we may not be censorious as to the Frenchman's morals, nor surprised at learning that "his law-library consists of Beranger's Songs,' 'Voltaire's Tales,' 'The Contract Social,' an odd volume of one of Paul de Kock's novels, and a few more old tomes." "If we were asked by what outward signs the lawstudent may be recognized, we should reply that he does not dress in the latest fashion, but that he creates a fashion for himself. He takes care to let his hair and his beard grow, in order, as he says, not to look like a grocer; but at certain periods of the year, before the examinations, these signs of anarchy disappear. His head resembles the style of a member of the Jacobin Club; his tuft and moustache that of a gallant at the court of Louis XIII. "A colossal pipe is absolutely indispensable to the student: he is a wholesale smoker. His pipe-bowl attests the skill of the smoker, and presents the effigy of a Turk, Henry IV., Robert Macaire, Francis I., St. Just, or some other hero. "He is king of the Latin quarter; at the theatre he lords it; he lords it in the tavern; he lords it in the street. "The fine arts,.- literature, philosophy, and politics,— he will study them all, every thing but his law. He devours the new novels, and decides the fate of the last new play. The portrait of Madame George Sand, hooked by a pin to his bed's head, bears witness to his enthusiastic admiration for that distinguished hermaphrodite." He has the cacoethes scribendi. "The tales he composes almost invariably begin, 'It was in a lovely morning of spring, that two men, wrapped in large cloaks, were silently descending the hill,' etc. Or sometimes he rushes in medias res: 'By the mass!' exclaimed our young hero, as he emptied at a draught his goblet of Hungarian wine, 'we live, my lords, in times,' etc. His poetry is generally consumptive, languid, pulmonary, giving over, and given over by, all the world; full of I's and interjections; as, for instance, "I wander weary and alone, Along the world: an outcast moan All things are born to nurse my sadness! student and the policeman. They are foes as irrecon-cilable as the Capulets and the Montagues. "It is rare that the law-student does not play on some instrument. He takes lessons on the flageolet, the German flute, or the French horn; or at least he can crow an air on the accordeon. "Three, four, or five years suffice for the student to pass triumphantly through his five probations, including the thesis. You may recognize in an instant in the Salle des Pas Perdus the Westminster Hall of Paris - him who has just been called. He flaunts along in his borrowed gown; his heaving breast raises the tawny frill; he carries under his arm an immense portfolio, stuffed with papers, to simulate the absent briefs." "In the spouting-clubs, where the student and junior advocates learn the art of defending the widow and the orphan, the youthful aspirant pleads with equal emphasis and erudition. He quotes the year-books and the digest, Pothier and Gaius, and crams his speech with scraps of Latin. 'Yes' he exclaims, 'in the question now before us, my learned friend on the other side is penitus extraneus; he is urged on by the hope of gain, certat de lucro captando: while we we certantes de damno vitando. The junior advocate is fond of anticipating the arguments of the other side; and it is extraordinary if you do not detect in his speech two or three phrases pronounced in a shrill voice, and beginning, 'My friends on the other side will, perhaps,' — and then, after enumerating these imaginary objections, he throws back his sleeves, raises his arms to heaven, and exclaims, 'Is it possible to imagine - I ask, gentlemen, whether it be possible to imagine a line of argument more entirely |