ters present,
and a mock tribunal was immediately constituted before which he was
arraigned and his case duly set forth with all solemnity. The victim was
invariably fined--generally in wine, which had to be paid at once, and
consumed before the company retired to bed. On one such occasion
Serjeant Prime, who is represented as a good-natured but rather dull
man, and as a barrister wearisome beyond comparison, was engaged in an
important case in an over-crowded courtroom. He had been speaking for
three hours, when a boy, seated on a beam above the heads of the
audience, overcome by the heat and the serjeant's monotonous tones, fell
asleep, and, losing his balance, tumbled down on the people below. The
incident was made the subject of a charge against the serjeant at the
mess, and he was duly sentenced to pay a fine of two dozen of wine,
which he did with the greatest good humour.

Serjeant Wilkins, on one occasion, on defending a prisoner, said: "Drink
has upon some an elevating, upon others a depressing, effect; indeed,
there is a report, as we all know, that an eminent judge, when at the
Bar, was obliged to resort to heavy drinking in the morning, to reduce
himself to the level of the judges." Lord Denman, the judge, who had no
love for Wilkins, bridled up instantly. His voice trembled with
indignation as he uttered the words: "Where is the report, sir? Where is
it?" There was a death-like silence. Wilkins calmly turned round to the
judge and said: "It was burnt, my lord, in the Temple fire." The
effect of this was considerable, and it was a long time before order
could be restored, but Lord Denman was one of the first to acknowledge
the wit of the answer.

Difference of manner or temperament sometimes gives point to the
collisions which occasionally occur in Court between rival counsel.
Serjeant Wilkins, who had an inflated style of oratory, was once opposed
in a case to Serjeant Thomas, whose manner of delivery was lighter and
more lively. On the conclusion of a heavy bombardment of ponderous
Johnsonian sentences from the former, Thomas rose, and, with his eyes
fixed on his opponent, prefaced his address to the jury with the words,
delivered with much solemnity of manner and intonation: "And now the
hurly-burly's done."

* * * * *

Dunning was defending a gentleman in an action brought from _crim. con._
with the plaintiff's wife. The chief witness for the plaintiff was the
lady's m