oners doomed to execution. It was quite accidental, I assure
you, and I ask your pardon for my mistake. I am very sorry, and can
only add that you will be hanged with the rest."

CHAPTER XIII.

GLORIOUS OLD DAYS--THE HON. BOB GRIMSTON, AND MANY
OTHERS--CHICKEN-HAZARD.

The old glories of the circuit days vanished with stage-coaches and
post-chaises. If you climbed on to the former for the sake of economy
because you could not afford to travel in the latter, you would be
fined at the circuit mess, whose notions of propriety and economy were
always at variance.

Those who obtained no business found it particularly hateful to keep
up the foolish appearance of having it by means of a post-chaise. You
might not ride in a public vehicle, or dine at a public table, or
put up at an inn for fear of falling in with attorneys and obtaining
briefs from them surreptitiously. The Home Circuit was very strict
in these respects, but it was the cheapest circuit to travel in the
kingdom, so that its members were numerous and, I need not say,
various in mind, manner, and position.

But it was a circuit of brilliant men in my young days. Many of them
rose to eminence both in law and in Parliament. It was a time, indeed,
when, if judges made law, law made judges.

I should like to say a word or two about those times and the necessary
studies to be undergone by those who aspired to eminence.

In the days of my earliest acquaintance with the law, an ancient order
of men, now almost, if not quite, extinct, called Special Pleaders,
existed, who, after having kept the usual number of terms--that is to
say, eaten the prescribed number of dinners in the Inn of Court to
which they belonged--became qualified, on payment of a fee of L12, to
take out a Crown licence to plead under the Bar. This enabled them to
do all things which a barrister could do that did not require to be
transacted in court. They drew pleadings, advised and took pupils.

Some of them practised in this way all their lives and were never
called. Others grew tired of the drudgery, and were called to the Bar,
where they remained _junior_ barristers as long as they lived, old age
having no effect upon their status. Some were promoted to the ancient
order of Serjeants-at-Law, or were appointed her Majesty's Counsel,
while some of the Serjeants received from the Crown patents of
precedence with priority over all Queen's Counsel appointed after
them, and with the privi