nk finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if
it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our
temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous
disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England.
I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the
very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the
memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir
John Linkwater, or Drinkwater,--but I think the jolly old knight could
hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last,--while
sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to
the clerk. "Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the most
indifferent fact in the world, "I was drunk last night. There are my
five shillings."

During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with the
gentlemen on either side of me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with
great unction on the social standing of the judges. Representing the
dignity and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during
assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, of the
Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes,
and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they are the greatest
men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to
enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal dinner, a
judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm
and take the Queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company with
some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occasions, it appeared
to me that the judges are fully conscious of their paramount claims to
respect, and take rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial
inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if it
be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a similar
characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he
needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with his
nature from its original germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it
obtrusively in the faces of innocent by-standers.

My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth
in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn
visage, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the
machinery