ows they are!--how they do quiz the witness as he sits
trembling on the table--what funny allusions to his habits of
life--his age--his station--turning the whole battery of their powers
of ridicule against him--ready, if he venture to retort, to throw
themselves on the protection of the court. And truly, if a little
Latin suffice for a priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court.
A joke is a universal blessing: the judge, who, after all, is only "an
old lawyer," loves it from habit: the jury, generally speaking, are
seldom in such good company, and they laugh from complaisance; and the
bar joins in the mirth, on that great reciprocity principle, which
enables them to bear each other's dulness, and dine together
afterwards. People are insane enough to talk of absenteeism as one of
the evils of Ireland, and regret that we have no resident aristocracy
among us--rather let us rejoice that we have them not, so long as the
lawyers prove their legitimate successors.

[Illustration]

How delightful in a land where civilization has still some little
progress before it, and where the state of crime is not quite
satisfactory--to know that we have those amongst us who know all
things, feel all things, explain all things, and reconcile all
things--who can throw such a Claude Lorraine light over right and
wrong, that they are both mellowed into a sweet and hallowed softness,
delightful to gaze on. How the secret of this universal acquirement is
accomplished I know not--perhaps it is the wig.

What set me first on this train of thought, was a trial I lately read,
where a cross action was sustained for damage at sea--the owners of
the brig Durham against the Aurora, a foreign vessel, and _vice
versa_, for the result of a collision at noon, on the 14th of October.
It appeared that both vessels had taken shelter in the Humber from
stress of weather, nearly at the same time--that the Durham, which
preceded the Prussian vessel, "clewed up her top-sails, and dropped
her anchor _rather_ suddenly; and the Aurora being in the rear, the
vessels came in collision." The question, therefore, was, whether the
Durham came to anchor too precipitately, and in an unseamanlike
manner; or, in other words, whether, when the "Durham clewed up
top-sails and let go her anchor, the Aurora should not have luffed up,
or got sternway on her," &c. Nothing could possibly be more
instructive, nor anything scarcely more amusing, than the lucid
arguments e