in all the Inns of Court layd aside;
and to speak truth, with great reason, for it was a step at once to the
dignity of a sergeant, but not soe now." Marking the time when moots
became farcical forms, Roger North having stated that his brother
Francis, when a student, was "an attendant (as well as exerciser) at the
ordinary moots in the Middle Temple and at New Inn," goes on to say, "In
those days, the moots were carefully performed, and it is hard to give a
good reason (bad ones are prompt enough) why they are not so now." But
it should be observed, that though for all practical purposes 'moots'
and 'case-puttings' ceased in Charles II.'s time, they were not formally
abolished. Indeed, they lingered on throughout the eighteenth century,
and to the present time--when vestiges of them may still be observed in
the usages and discipline of the Inns. Before the writer of this page
was called to the bar by the Masters of the Society of Lincoln's Inn,
he, like all other students of his time, had to go through the form of
putting a case on certain days in the hall after dinner. The ceremony
appeared to him alike ludicrous and interesting. To put his case, he was
conducted by the steward of the inn to the top of the senior bar table,
when the steward placed an open MS. book before him, and said, "Read
that, sir;" whereupon this deponent read aloud something about "a femme
sole," or some such thing, and was still reading the rest of the MS.,
kindly opened under his nose by the steward, when that worthy officer
checked him suddenly, saying, "That will do, sir; you have _put_ your
case--and can sign the book." The book duly signed, this deponent bowed
to the assembled barristers, and walked out of the hall, smiling as he
thought how, by an ingenious fiction, he was credited with having put an
elaborate case to a college of profound jurists, with having argued it
before an attentive audience, and with having borne away the laurels of
triumph. Recently this pleasant mockery of case-putting has been swept
away.

In Roger North's 'Discourse on the Study of the Laws,' and 'Life of the
Lord Keeper Guildford,' the reader may see with clearness the course of
an industrious law-student during the latter half of the seventeenth
century, and it differs less from the ordinary career of an industrious
Temple-student in our time, than many recent writers on the subject
think.

Under Charles II., James II., and William III. the law-student was