They tend to the degradation of courts of justice. It is impossible to be engaged in ludicrous inquiries of this sort consistently with that dignity which it is essential to the public welfare that a court of justice should always preserve. I will not try the plaintiff's right to recover the four guineas, which might involve questions on the weight of the cocks and the construction of their steel spurs."

It has already been remarked that in all ages the wits of Westminster Hall have delighted in puns; and it may be here added, with the exception of some twenty happy verbal freaks, the puns of lawyers have not been remarkable for their excellence. L'Estrange records that when a stone was hurled by a convict from the dock at Charles I.'s Chief Justice Richardson, and passed just over the head of the judge, who happened to be sitting at ease and lolling on his elbow, the learned man smiled, and observed to those who congratulated him on his escape, "You see now, if I had been an upright judge I had been slaine." Under George III. Joseph Jekyll* was at the same time the brightest wit and most shameless punster of Westminster Hall; and such pride did he take in his reputation as a punster, that after the fashion of the wits of an earlier period he was often at considerable pains to give a pun a well-wrought epigrammatic setting. Bored with the long-winded speech of a prosy sergeant, he wrote on a slip of paper, which was in due course passed along the barristers' benches in the court where he was sitting

* One of Jekyll's best displays of brilliant impudence was perpetrated on a Welsh judge, who was alike notorious for his greed of office and his want of personal cleanliness. "My dear sir," Jekyll observed in his most amiable manner to this most unamiable personage, "you have asked the minister for almost everything else, why don't you ask him for a piece of soap and a nail-brush ?"

"The sergeants are a grateful race,

Their dress and language show it;
Their purple garments come from Tyre,
Their arguments go to it."

When Garrow, by a more skilful than successful crossexamination, was endeavoring to lure a witness (an unmarried lady of advanced years) into an acknowledgment that payment of certain money in dispute had been tendered, Jekyll threw him this couplet

"Garrow, forbear; that tough old jade
Will never prove a tender maid.”

So also, when Lord Eldon and Sir Arthur Pigott each made a stand in court for his favorite pronunciation of the word lion;' Lord Eldon calling the word lion and Sir Arthur maintaining that it was to be pronunced like lean, Jekyll, with an allusion to the parsimonious arrangements of the Chancellor's kitchen, perpetrated the jeu. d'esprit

"Sir Arthur, Sir Arthur, why what do you mean
By saying the Chancellor's lion is lean?
D'yo think that his kitchen's so bad as all that,
That nothing within it can ever get fat?"

By this difference concerning the pronunciation of a word the present writer is reminded of an amicable contest that occurred in Westminster Hall between Lord Campbell and a Q.C. who is still in the front rank of court-advocates. In an action brought to recover for damages done to a carriage, the learned counsel repeatedly called the vehicle in quession a broug-ham, pronouncing both syllables of the word brougham. Whereupon Lord Campbell with considerable pomposity observed, “ Broom is the more usual pronunciation; a carriage of the kind you mean is generally and not incorrectly called a broom

-that pronunciation is open to no grave objection, and it has the great advantage of saving the time consumed by uttering an extra syllable." Half an hour later in the same trial Lord Campbell, alluding to a decision given in a similar action, said, "In that case the carriage which had sustained injury was an omnibus—' "Pardon me, my lord," interposed the Queen's Counsel, with such promptitude that his lordship was startled into silence, "a carriage of the kind to which you draw attentention is usually termed 'bus;' that pronunciation is open to no grave objection, and it has the great advantage of saving the time consumed by uttering two extra syllables." The interruption was followed by a roar of laughter, in which Lord Campbell joined more heartily than any one else.

One of Jekyll's happy sayings was spoken at Exeter, when he defended several needlemen who were charged with raising a riot for the purpose of forcing the mastertailors to give higher wages. Whilst Jekyll was examining a witness as to the number of tailors present at the alleged riot, Lord Eldon-then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas-reminded him that three persons can make that which the law regards as a riot; whereupon the witty advocate answered, "Yes, my lord, Hale and Hawkins lay down the law as your lordship states it, and I rely on their authority; for if there must be three men. to make a riot, the rioters being tailors, there must be nine times three present, and unless the prosecutor make out that there were twenty-seven joining in this breach of the peace, my clients are entitled to an acquittal." On Lord Eldon enquiring whether he relied on common-law or statute-law, the counsel for the defence answered firmly, "My lord, I rely on a well-known maxim, as old as Magna Charta, Nine Tailors make a Man.” Finding themselves unable to reward a lawyer for so ex

cellent a jest with an adverse verdict, the jury acquitted the prisoners. Towards the close of his career Eldon made a still better jest than this of Jekyll's concerning tailors. In 1829, when Lyndhurst was occupying the woolsack for the first time, and Eldon was longing to recover the seals, the latter presented a petition from the Tailors' Company at Glasgow against Catholic Relief.

"What!" asked Lord Lyndhurst from the woolsack, in a low voice, " do the tailors trouble themselves about such measures?" Whereto, with unaccustomed quickness, the old Tory of the Tories retorted, "No wonder; you can't suppose that tailors like turncoats."

As specimens of a kind of pleasantry becoming more scarce every year, some of Sir George Rose's court witticisms are excellent. When Mr. Beams, the reporter, defended himself against the friction of passing barristers by a wooden bar, the flimsiness of which was pointed out to Sir George (then Mr. Rose), the wit answered

"Yes-the partition is certainly thin

Yet thick enough, truly, the Beams within."

The same originator of happy sayings pointed to Eldon's characteristic weakness in the lines

"Mr. Leach made a speech,

Pithy, clear, and strong;
Mr. Hart, on the other part,

Was prosy, dull, and long;

Mr. Parker made that darker

Which was dark enough without;

Mr. Bell spoke so well,

That the Chancellor said-'I doubt.'"

Far from being offended by this allusion to his notorious mental infirmity, Lord Eldon, shortly after the verses had floated into circulation, concluded one of his decisions by

saying, with a significant smile, "And here the Chancellor does not doubt."

Not less remarkable for precipitancy than Eldon for procrastination, Sir John Leach, Vice-Chancellor, was said to have done more mischief by excessive haste in a single term than Eldon in his whole life wrought through extreme caution. The holders of this opinion delighted to repeat the poor and not perspicuous lines

"In equity's high court there are
Two sad extremes, 'tis clear;
Excessive slowness strikes us there,
Excessive quickness here.

"Their source, 'twixt good and evil, brings
A difficulty nice;

The first from Eldon's virtue springs,
The latter from his vice.'

It is needless to remark that this attempt to gloss the Chancellor's shortcomings is an illustration of the readiness with which censors apologize for the misdeeds of eminently fortunate offenders. Whilst Eldon's procrastination and Leach's haste were thus put in contrast, an epigram also placed the Chancellor's frailty in comparison with the tedious prolixity of the Master of the Rolls

"To cause delay in Lincoln's Inn
Two diff'rent methods tend:
His lordship's judgments ne'er begin,
His honors never end."

A mirth-loving judge, Justice Powell, could be as thoroughly humorous in private life as he was fearless and just upon the bench. Swift describes him as a surpassingly merry old gentleman, laughing heartily at all comic things, and his own droll stories more than aught else. In court he could not always refrain from jocular