Judges._)

"That which she had by birth subsists
Until another's gained."

In the early months of his married life, whilst playing the part of an
Oxford don, Lord Eldon was required to decide in an important action
brought by two undergraduates against the cook of University College.
The plaintiffs declared that the cook had "sent to their rooms an
apple-pie _that could not be eaten_." The defendant pleaded that he had
a remarkably fine fillet of veal in the kitchen. Having set aside this
plea on grounds obvious to the legal mind, and not otherwise then
manifest to unlearned laymen, Mr. John Scott ordered the apple-pie to be
brought in court; but the messenger, dispatched to do the judge's
bidding, returned with the astounding intelligence that during the
progress of the litigation a party of undergraduates had actually
devoured the pie--fruit and crust. Nothing but the pan was left.
Judgment: "The charge here is, that the cook has sent up an apple-pie
that cannot be eaten. Now that cannot be said to have been uneatable
which has been eaten; and as this apple-pie has been eaten, it was
eatable. Let the cook be absolved."

But of all the judicial decisions on record, none was delivered with
more comical effect than Lord Loughborough's decision not to hear a
cause brought on a wager about a point in the game of 'Hazard.' A
constant frequenter of Brookes's and White's, Lord Loughborough was well
known by men of fashion to be fairly versed in the mysteries of
gambling, though no evidence has ever been found in support of the
charge that he was an habitual dicer. That he ever lost much by play is
improbable; but the scandal-mongers of Westminster had some plausible
reasons for laughing at the virtuous indignation of the spotless
Alexander Wedderburn, who, whilst sitting at _Nisi Prius_, exclaimed,
"Do not swear the jury in this case, but let it be struck out of the
paper. I will not try it. The administration of justice is insulted by
the proposal that I should try it. To my astonishment I find that the
action is brought on a wager as to the mode of playing an illegal,
disreputable, and mischievous game called 'Hazard;' whether, allowing
seven to be the main, and eleven to be a nick to seven, there are more
ways than six of nicking seven on the dice? Courts of justice are
constituted to try rights and redress injuries, not to solve the
problems of the gamesters. The gentlemen of the jury and I may have
heard of