career, have for the most part to elect between three roads in life: the Church, the Bar, the public service. Large numbers of these youths throng the halls of the Inns of Court, and form in after life the most valuable addition to the legal ranks.

Some few, leaving the lower branches of the profession, come in middle life to try their fortune at the Bar. These bring with them experience and habits of industry, and rarely fail to achieve moderate success, though seldom attaining to the highest posts; others again turning with disappointment from widely differing walks of life—as from a naval or military career -assume the uniform of the law, to find too often that their previous training and habits have unfitted them for its labours. There are certainly several instances of the highest legal eminence having been attained by men who in early life have served in the army or the navy. Still, as a rule, the law is a jealous mistress; one who, to be won, must be early wooed, and with the earnest devotion of a first passion. The orators of the platform, whatever their original calling may have been, not uncommonly seek to repair, by forensic practice, fortunes for which their reputed powers of oratory have previously done but little; often also the legal and parliamentary reporters for the public press quit their humbler occupation for the more exalted honours of the Bar.

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Here and there in the crowd we mark, with pity for his too certain fate, the care worn face of some self-educated peasant. The ambition which has inspired his toil in the unwonted fields of legal labour is doomed to inevitable blight. He may have assiduously sown, but to him the harvest-time comes not, and at length, with broken heart, and perhaps, alas! in the bitterness of poverty, he learns how fallacious have been his hopeshow fatal his mistake.

From this sad but faithful picture we turn to some with brighter promise in the future, who await only their call to the Bar to bid their native land a long farewell. These are students training for the Colonial Law Courts, and we are happy to believe that in most instances these learned exiles

reap an abundant harvest in the far-off fields of their labour; success thus compensating their banishment. Finally, the students from the sister kingdom, destined for the Irish Bar, contribute to fill the dining halls of our Inns. But they, with the class lastly before named, have no actual place among the Bar of England, the subject of our present consideration.

We find, then, that the gates of the Inns of Court are open to all comers. In the forensic republic they know at the outset of each man's career no distinction of rank or degree. Every combatant in the arena has his reputation in his own hands, to make or to mar; as he uses his weapons so will he be regarded by his competitors, and by the measure of their goodwill will he be esteemed beyond their circle.

Of those who pursue the profession, some succeed in obtaining business, many fail. It should, however, be observed that failure in this respect does not by any means imply the absence of the qualities essential to forensic success. A barrister may be fully competent, he may have done his utmost to merit, but he may not solicit, and without legal connection he cannot command, employment. Years roll on: circuit succeeds circuit; his contemporaries leave him behind; his juniors pass him by; but the golden opportunity may never come to him; and men grow grey as—

"They learn to labour and to wait."

None but those who have experienced the "heart-sickness of hope deferred" can tell the utter weariness of these mens' lives, as, with hope extinct, they pursue the tedious routine of terms and circuits. They have our warmest sympathy; but their successful rivals, the men who transact the business of the courts, who fill the public eye, who must in course of time occupy the judicial seats at home and in our colonies, claim our present attention. These drawers of the prizes of the profession may be divided into those who obtain and conduct their business fairly and honestly as regards both their brethren and the public, and those who court employment by practices

which honour condemns. This latter class is, we fear, more numerous than beyond the legal world is commonly believed; we must explain, however, for the benefit of the general reader, in what this censurable malpractice consists. Many acts are in violation of the rules of the Bar, which are not in the ordinary sense of the word dishonest; but surely all the members of a profession are morally bound to observe its laws, and to break them for selfish objects is certainly unfair, not to use a stronger term, towards those who observe them.

A few words upon the general laws which govern the practice of the Bar will serve to elucidate our meaning.

One rule of the profession is that in no case can a barrister receive any instructions or fee excepting through an attorney. To this rule there is but one exception: in the case of a prisoner in the dock awaiting his trial. Such a prisoner is entitled, upon tendering the lowest fee which a barrister can accept, to instruct personally any counsel there practising to defend him. This is a privilege belonging to the accused, and not a right appertaining to the Bar. It should be added that it is the duty of the barrister, whom a prisoner under such circumstances selects, to undertake his defence. The general rule being as above stated, it is manifest that the amount of a barrister's business in his early days must depend upon the favour which he finds in the eyes of the other branch of the profession. Hence the temptation to attract that all-important good-will by means other than the fair display of ability and knowledge, proves too strong for men whose need or whose ambition overpowers their sense of honour. Among the lowest sort of attorneys, these arts are, we regret to say, only too successful; but we imagine that even while they continue to employ such men, their patrons view with disgust and repay with contempt the simulated friendship and ready subservience of these forensic toadies. Another rule recognised by both branches of the profession is that a barrister may not solicit business or in any direct way advertise his desire for employment. Upon his call to the Bar, the aspirant for business takes

some suitable chambers in one of the Inns of Court, and instals therein a youth dignified by the title of clerk to answer for his master whilst he attends the Courts of Common Law or Equity, according to the side of the law he has adopted.

If of the common law, the young barrister joins some circuit and usually selects for attendance some sessions upon that circuit. Should he be fortunate enough, however, to have any connection or prospect of employment in town, he probably neglects sessions and disdains criminal practice, looking for business in the civil courts only.

In these early years, before clients come to himself, the tyro perhaps "devils " for some fortunate brother blessed with a surplus of work, or he enrols himself amongst the reporters for some legal periodical. If laborious as well as ambitious, perchance he writes or edits a new work on some legal subject, thus combining profitable study with a legitimate advertisement. But such a task must not be rashly undertaken, for should the work prove worthless, the advertisement will be something worse than fruitless. All or any of these courses may be fairly taken to show the desire and capability for work, but a barrister, honestly intending to observe the rules of conduct, allegiance to which, on his call, he tacitly owns, cannot actually solicit the employment he covets. The position is a peculiar one. Beneath an appearance of indifference, the nice observer of professional etiquette has to conceal real anxiety and often urgent necessity for business. He must also, in pursuance of the same honourable course, maintain a strict reserve in his intercourse with those who practically are the arbiters of his fate. We know upright and learned men who, even under the pressure of great need, have nevertheless acted up to this rule in its fullest integrity, despite the prevalence of contrary example and the promptings of poverty. We must not by any means be understood to approve of an assumption of superiority by the barrister towards his client; any such pretence must be always a breach of good manners, often utterly misplaced,

The great majority of either branch of the legal profession, being gentlemen by both education and position, are as such upon a footing of entire equality; but custom and convenience have imposed certain restrictions upon the intercourse between them. There is a wide distance, and surely some golden mean, between assumption of imaginary superiority and degrading subservience the former a dire offence against good breeding, the latter fatal to independence and self-respect.

It is, moreover, a rule, not only of the professsion but of law, that barristers cannot maintain an action at law to recover their fees; that is, they have no legal claim for compensation in respect of their professional services. The rule is thus laid down in Mr Serjeant Stephen's edition of Blackstone's Commentaries :—“ A counsel can maintain no action for his fees, which are given, not as locatio vel conductio, but as quiddam honorarium—not as a salary or hire, but as a mere gratuity."

There is also a solemn decision to the same effect in the case before referred to-Kennedy v. Brown and wife. Much laxity as to payment of counsel's fees prevails-we quote a very general rumour-among practitioners of a certain class. Some attorneys, so long as they can find advocates willing to take their briefs without payment of fees, unless in case of success, gladly employ them upon that understanding. So also, it is said, there are members of the Bar too eager for business to be scrupulous as to the terms on which it is given; any such bargain between advocates and their employers is, in our opinion, injurious to the public interests as well as discreditable to those concerned. It is held to be essential to the pure administration of justice, that counsel should not have any pecuniary stake in the issue of their cases, and this exclusion of personal profit is, we think, right; for, were it otherwise, we fear that a direct and selfish interest in their client's success would too strongly tempt many advocates to exceed the powers and abuse the privileges entrusted to them.

So great, indeed, are these privileges, that a strict sense of duty should ever be on the watch, lest in the ardour of forensic