of half-bred pointers, be able "to take
the water when required."

A NUT FOR A "NEW VERDICT."

Money-getting and cotton-spinning have left us little time for fun of
any kind in England--no one has a moment to spare, let him be ever so
droll, and a joke seems now to be esteemed a _bona fide_ expenditure;
and as "a pin a day" is said to be "a groat a year," there is no
calculating what an inroad any manner of pleasantry might not make
into a man's income. Book-writers have ceased to be laughter-moving--the
stage has given it up altogether, except now and then in a new
tragedy--society prefers gravity to gaiety--and, in fact, the spirit
of comic fun and drollery would seem to have died out in the land--if
it were not for that inimitable institution called trial by jury.
Bless their honest hearts! jurymen do indeed relieve the drab-coloured
look of every-day life--they come out in strong colour from the sombre
tints of common-place events and people. Queer dogs! nothing can damp
the warm ardour of their comic vein--all the solemnity of a court of
justice--the look of the bar and the bench--the voice of the crier--the
blue bags of briefs--the "terrible show," has no effect on their
minds--"ruat coelum," they will have their joke.

It is in vain for the judge, let him be ever so rigid in his charge,
to tell them that their province is simply with certain facts, on
which they have to pronounce an opinion of yea or nay. They must be
jurymen, and "something more." It's not every day Mr. Sniggins, of
Pimlico, is called upon to keep company with a chief-justice and
sergeant learned in the law--Popkins don't leave his shop once a week
to discuss Coke upon Littleton with an attorney-general. No: the event
to them is a great one--there they sit, fawned on, and flattered by
counsel on both sides--called impartial and intelligent, and all
that--and while every impertinence the law encourages has been bandied
about the body of the court, _they_ remain to be lauded and praised by
all parties, for they have a verdict in their power, and when it
comes--what a thing it is!

There is a well-known story of an English nobleman, desiring to remain
_incog._ in Calais, telling his negro servant--"If any one ask who I
am, Sambo, mind you say, 'a Frenchman.'" Sambo carried out the
instruction by saying--"My massa a Frenchman, and so am I." This
anecdote exactly exemplifies a verdict of a jury--it cannot stop short
at sense, but must,