last
said to him, "You d--d infernal fool, if you do not immediately follow
his lordship's recommendation, I shall be obliged to use strong language
to you." Once, in a council of the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn, the same
gentleman very conscientiously opposed their calling a Jew to the Bar.
Some tried to point out the hardship to be imposed upon the young
gentleman, who had been allowed to keep his terms, and whose prospects
in life would thus be suddenly blasted. "Hardship!" said the zealous
churchman, "no hardship at all! Let him become a Christian, and be d--d
to him!"

It is sometimes imagined by laymen that verdicts may be obtained by the
trickery of counsel. Doubtless counsel may try to throw dust in the
eyes of jurors, but they are not very successful. Lord Campbell tells a
story of Clarke, who by such tactics brought a case to a satisfactory
compromise. The attorney, coming to him privately, said, "Sir, don't you
think we have got very good terms? But you rather went beyond my
instructions."--"You fool!" retorted Clarke; "how do you suppose you
could have got such terms if I had stuck to your instructions."

[Illustration: JOHN ADOLPHUS, BARRISTER.]

In the biography of John Adolphus, a famous criminal lawyer, we are told
that the judges of his time were much impressed with the following table
of degrees. "The three degrees of comparison in a lawyer's progress are:
getting on; getting on-er (honour); getting on-est (honest)." He
declared the judges acknowledged much truth in the degrees. The third
degree in Mr. Adolphus' table reminds us of the story of the farmer who
was met by the head of a firm of solicitors, who inquired the name of a
plant the farmer was carrying. "It's a plant," replied the latter, "that
will not grow in a lawyer's garden; it is called honesty."

One night, walking through St. Giles's by way of a short cut towards
home, an Irish woman came up to Mr. Adolphus. "Why, Misther Adolphus!
and who'd a' thought of seeing you in the Holy Ground?"--"And how came
you to know who I am?" said Adolphus. "Lord bless and save ye, sir!
not know ye? Why, I'd know ye if ye was boiled up in a soup!"

Mr. Montagu Chambers was counsel for a widow who had been put in a
lunatic asylum, and sued the two medical men who signed the certificate
of her insanity. The plaintiff's case was to prove that she was not
addicted to drinking, and that there was no pretence for treating hers
as a case of _delirium tremens_.