ight be
written on the ancient ceremonies and usages obsolete and extant, of our
courts of law. Here are a few of the practices which such a chapter
would properly notice:--The custom, still maintained, which forbids the
Lord Chancellor to utter any word or make any sign, when on Lord Mayor's
Day the Lord Mayor of London enters the Court of Chancery, and by the
mouth of the Recorder prays his lordship to honor the Guildhall banquet
with his presence; the custom--extant so late as Lord Brougham's
Chancellorship--which required the Holder of the Seals, at the
installation of a new Master of Chancery, to install the new master by
placing a cap or hat on his head; the custom which in Charles II.'s
time, on motion days at the Chancellor's, compelled all barristers
making motions to contribute to his lordship's 'Poor's Box'--barristers
within the bar paying two shillings, and outer barristers one
shilling--the contents of which box were periodically given to
magistrates, for distribution amongst the deserving poor of London; the
custom which required a newly-created judge to present his colleagues
with biscuits and wine; the barbarous custom which compelled prisoners
to plead their defence, standing in fetters, a custom enforced by Chief
Justice Pratt at the trial of the Jacobite against Christopher Layer,
although at the of trial of Cranburne for complicity in the
'Assassination Plot,' Holt had enunciated the merciful maxim, "When the
prisoners are tried they should stand at ease;" the custom which--in
days when forty persons died of gaol fever caught at the memorable Black
Sessions (May, 1759) at the Old Bailey, when Captain Clark was tried for
killing Captain Innes in a duel--strewed rue, fennel, and other herbs on
the ledge of the dock, in the faith that the odor of the herbage would
act as a barrier to the poisonous exhalations from prisoners sick of
gaol distemper, and would protect the assembly in the body of the court
from the contagion of the disease.

CHAPTER XLIV.

LAWYERS AND SAINTS.

Notwithstanding the close connexion which in old times existed between
the Church and the Law, popular sentiment holds to the opinion that the
ways of lawyers are far removed from the ways of holiness, and that the
difficulties encountered by wealthy travellers on the road to heaven are
far greater with rich lawyers than with any other class of rich men. An
old proverb teaches that wearers of the long robe never reach para