855 the Equity Courts were without business. People had
become weary of seeking justice where justice was not to be found. The
state of the Bench was unsatisfactory. Cranworth was feeble; Knight
Bruce, though powerful, sacrificed justice to a joke; Turner was heavy;
Romilly was scientific; Kindersley was slow; Stuart was pompous; Wood
was at Bealings."

If I were to indulge in quotations from well-known parodies of prose,
this chapter would soon overflow all proper limits. I forbear,
therefore, to do more than remind my readers of Thackeray's _Novels by
Eminent Hands_ and Bret Harte's _Sensation Novels_, only remarking, with
reference to the latter book, that "Miss Mix" is in places really
indistinguishable from _Jane Eyre_. The sermon by Mr. Jowett in Mr.
Mallock's _New Republic_ is so perfect an imitation, both in substance
and in style, that it suggested to some readers the idea that it had
been reproduced from notes of an actual discourse. On spoken as
distinguished from written eloquence there are some capital skits in the
_Anti-Jacobin_, where (under the name of Macfungus) excellent fun is
made of the too mellifluous eloquence of Sir James Mackintosh.

The differentiating absurdities of after-dinner oratory are photographed
in Thackeray's _Dinner in the City_, where the speech of the American
Minister seems to have formed a model for a long series of similar
performances. Dickens's experience as a reporter in the gallery of the
House of Commons had given him a perfect command of that peculiar style
of speaking which is called Parliamentary, and he used it with great
effect in his accounts of the inaugural meeting of the "United
Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual
Delivery Company" in _Nicholas Nickleby_ (where he introduces a capital
sketch of Tom Duncombe, Radical Member for Finsbury); and in the
interview between Mr. Gregsbury, M.P., and his constituents in a later
chapter of the same immortal book.

The parliamentary eloquence of a later day was admirably reproduced in
Mr. Edward Jenkins's prophetic squib (published in 1872) _Barney
Geoghegan, M.P., and Home Rule at St. Stephen's_. As this clever little
book has, I fear, lapsed into complete oblivion, I venture to cite a
passage. It will vividly recall to the memory of middle-aged politicians
the style and tone of the verbal duels which, towards the end of Mr.
Gladstone's first Administration, took place so frequently between the