f
an hour more, and then pronounced upon Sludberry the awful sentence of
excommunication for a fortnight, and payment of the costs of the suit.
Upon this, Sludberry, who was a little, red-faced, sly-looking,
ginger-beer seller, addressed the court, and said, if they'd be good
enough to take off the costs, and excommunicate him for the term of his
natural life instead, it would be much more convenient to him, for he
never went to church at all. To this appeal the gentleman in the
spectacles made no other reply than a look of virtuous indignation; and
Sludberry and his friends retired. As the man with the silver staff
informed us that the court was on the point of rising, we retired
too--pondering, as we walked away, upon the beautiful spirit of these
ancient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighbourly feelings they are
calculated to awaken, and the strong attachment to religious institutions
which they cannot fail to engender.

We were so lost in these meditations, that we had turned into the street,
and run up against a door-post, before we recollected where we were
walking. On looking upwards to see what house we had stumbled upon, the
words 'Prerogative-Office,' written in large characters, met our eye; and
as we were in a sight-seeing humour and the place was a public one, we
walked in.

The room into which we walked, was a long, busy-looking place,
partitioned off, on either side, into a variety of little boxes, in which
a few clerks were engaged in copying or examining deeds. Down the centre
of the room were several desks nearly breast high, at each of which,
three or four people were standing, poring over large volumes. As we
knew that they were searching for wills, they attracted our attention at
once.

It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of the attorneys' clerks
who were making a search for some legal purpose, with the air of
earnestness and interest which distinguished the strangers to the place,
who were looking up the will of some deceased relative; the former
pausing every now and then with an impatient yawn, or raising their heads
to look at the people who passed up and down the room; the latter
stooping over the book, and running down column after column of names in
the deepest abstraction.

There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron, who after a whole
morning's search, extending some fifty years back, had just found the
will to which he wished to refer, which one of the