year, Lord Eldon never drank less
than three pints of port daily with or after his dinner.

Of eminent lawyers who were steady port-wine drinkers, Baron Platt--the
amiable and popular judge who died in 1862, aged seventy-two years--may
be regarded as one of the last. Of him it is recorded that in early
manhood he was so completely prostrated by severe illness that beholders
judged him to be actually dead. Standing over his silent body shortly
before the arrival of the undertaker, two of his friends concurred in
giving utterance to the sentiment: "Ah, poor dear fellow, we shall never
drink a glass of wine with him again;" when, to their momentary alarm
and subsequent delight, the dead man interposed with a faint assumption
of jocularity, "But you will though, and a good many too, I hope." When
the undertaker called he was sent away a genuinely sorrowful man; and
the young lawyer, who was 'not dead yet,' lived to old age and good
purpose.

[36] In old Sir Herbert's later days it was a mere pleasantry, or bold
figure of speech to say that his court had risen, for he used to be
lifted from his chair and carried bodily from the chamber of justice by
two brawny footmen. Of course, as soon as the judge was about to be
elevated by his bearers, the bar rose; and also as a matter of course
the bar continued to stand until the strong porters had conveyed their
weighty and venerable burden along the platform behind one of the rows
of advocates and out of sight. As the _trio_ worked their laborious way
along the platform, there seemed to be some danger that they might
blunder and fall through one of the windows into the space behind the
court; and at a time when Sir Herbert and Dr. ---- were at open
variance, that waspish advocate had on one occasion the bad taste to
keep his seat at the rising of the court, and with characteristic
malevolence of expression to say to the footmen, "Mind, my men, and take
care of that judge of yours--or, by Jove, you'll pitch him out of the
window." It is needless to say that this brutal speech did not raise the
speaker in the opinion of the hearers.

CHAPTER XLVII.

LAW AND LITERATURE.

At the present time, when three out of every five journalists attached
to our chief London newspapers are Inns-of-Court men; when many of our
able and successful advocates are known to ply their pens in organs of
periodical literature as regularly as they raise their voices in courts
of justice; and when