these meals the collegians argued points. "The cases were put" after the
earlier repast, and twice or thrice a week moots were "brought in" after
the later meal. The students were also encouraged to assemble towards
the close of each day and practise 'case-putting' in their gardens and
in the cloisters of the Temple or Lincoln's Inn. The 'great fire' of
1678-9 having destroyed the Temple Cloisters, some of the benchers
proposed to erect chambers on the ground, to and fro upon which
law-students had for generations walked whilst they wrangled aloud; but
the Earl of Nottingham, recalling the days when young Heneage Finch used
to put cases with his contemporary students, strangled the proposal at
its birth, and Sir Christopher Wren subsequently built the Cloisters
which may be seen at the present day.

But there is reason to fear that at a very early period in their history
the Inns of Court began to pay more attention to certain outward forms
of instruction than to instruction itself. The unbiassed inquirer is
driven to suspect that 'case-putting' soon became an idle ceremony, and
'mooting' a mere pastime. Gentlemen ate heartily in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries; and it is not easy to believe that immediately
after a twelve o'clock dinner benchers were in the best possible mood to
teach, or students in the fittest condition for learning. It is credible
that these post-prandial exercitations were often enlivened by sparkling
quips and droll occurrences; but it is less easy to believe that they
were characterised by severe thought and logical exactness. So also with
the after-supper exercises. The six o'clock suppers of the lawyers were
no light repasts, but hearty meals of meat and bread, washed down by
'_green pots_' of ale and wine. When 'the horn' sounded for supper, the
student was in most cases better able to see the truth of knotty points
than when in compliance with etiquette he bowed to the benchers, and
asked if it was their pleasure to hear a moot. It seems probable that
long before 'case-puttings' and 'mootings' were altogether disused, the
old benchers were wont to wink mischievously at each other when they
prepared to teach the boys, and that sometimes they would turn away from
the proceedings of a moot with an air of disdain or indifference. The
inquirer is not induced to rate more highly the intellectual effort of
such exercises because the teachers refreshed their exhausted powers
with bread and b