the forensic car to victory, the " pleader counsel," abounded at that time on the circuit. There seemed slight chance of an opening to a young barrister of this class joining a circuit which already possessed a Tindal, a Parke, a Starkie, an Alderson and a Patteson, with many others deserving a more particular mention. The increase of the number of judges from twelve to fifteen drew two away, Alderson and Patteson, at one stroke, and yet left no hiatus valde deflendus; successors were ready. Promotion had drawn away Tindal and Parke earlier. The ranks opened and were filled up, and in a short time Charles Crompton, known as an excellent lawyer and pleader, took his fit place, and kept it amongst the foremost and best of his many competitors at the Bar in that line of practice. He went the Lancaster, Preston, and Liverpool sessions. He also attended the Chester assizes. The Lancaster sessions were chosen by him, and by a few other persons, not for any amount of business which was transacted there, nor for any opening to more important practice which they offered, but simply because, the attendance of counsel at them being small, a junior had an earlier prospect of employment. It is some gain to such an one to have an early start anywhere; he becomes, whilst a very young man, accustomed to the sound of his own voice, and acquires confidence. Diffidence pleases at that age, and is regarded rather as a promising sign, whilst, five years later, it meets with no sympathy. The business of the sessions was generally despatched in a few hours; the sessions were held in the Crown Court at Lancaster, and they looked, when contrasted with the assizes, rather like a flower garden in November; no beauties graced the bench, and no smiles beamed on the young wigged aspirants to fame. The audience consisted solely of those whom business drew to the spot. A rural constable, sober as yet, on very good terms with his prisoner; an over sands attorney or two wearing top boots and managing a pauper appeal; a smart Lancaster lawyer's clerk, the gaol officials, and half a score of witnesses-such was the formidable audience before which the future judge conducted

his first case. The business of the sessions was generally despatched in a few hours; it commonly consisted of a settlement appeal (a good sessions might afford two), of two or three criminal trials, and occasionally of an appeal against a conviction. The chairman, Mr. Hornby, had been formerly a member of the Northern Circuit. He represented for many years the borough of Preston in Parliament. He possessed a competent knowledge of law, and was besides a clever well-informed man of the world. His invariable good-temper and courtesy made him a great favourite with all who practised at those sessions, especially with the juniors, to whom he listened with a courteous and benign attention. The leader of the sessions, Fletcher Raincock, a provincial barrister of eminence at Liverpool, was a man so different from all other men, that he could not fail to attract the curious attention of one who, like Charles Crompton, was an observer and a judge of character. A high wrangler at Cambridge, a senior fellow of Pembroke College in that University, an excellent mathematician, a good classical scholar, a man of general and profound learning, whose powerful memory had enabled him to accumulate vast stores of knowledge, Raincock nevertheless did little, and turned his powers of mind, which were considerable, to little fruitful use. In waste or nonuse of power he lived a legal Porson. He was so singular, that Crompton once said of him, that as the human race had been said to have been formed of men, women, and Harveys, so Raincock was entitled to claim to be a genus in himself. Yet whilst he indulged in this pleasantry at the expense of his senior declining in power and practice, he spoke with the highest respect of that senior's vast knowledge, and high and honourable conduct throughout life, dwelling on his freedom from envy, gentlemanly mind, and dignified forbearance of complaint at the slights of fortune. Raincock had had a large practice at the Bar. Though he had a slight impediment in his speech and a troubled delivery, he was, when roused to exertion, often powerful as an advocate. Always full of good matter, and dexterous in his management of a case, his clients had certainly

no cause to complain of him; but he shared the common fate, and gave place to successful juniors. Sconer or later the young cock becomes master of the yard. In some moulting time the young chanticleer prevails. The old bird takes refuge in the roost, and crows no more; and a rising leader on a circuit sometimes drives his senior to the roost of the bench. At the close of the light business of the sessions, the Court adjourned to the King's Arms at Lancaster to discuss the pièces de résistance, with which the table groaned. The fiery port, not exactly ruby bright, more like a draught from the Styx, was sipped by servient lips. The landlord was the dominant power. All are born subject to tribute. To pay for nothing, or for worse than nothing, is the old custom of the world. Charon had a waterman's fare, and the headsman his fee. All must grind at some mill. Hope empties many a cash-box. The juniors paid their bills, and groaned. They cast their coin into the sea, and looked to get it back from the mouth of a fish. They were as one who whistles for a wind, prays to fortune, fees a lady's maid, sacrifices to false gods, advances to alchemists or coffee planters, buys shares in a bubble company or preferential debentures over a rolling stock. The womb of fortune is like that of a prolific cat, which bears all but one for the pond. The chairman presided, his croupier was the deputy clerk of the peace. The crier opened his session in another room. The senior magistrate sat on the right hand of the chairman; to preserve a due distribution of seats, the senior barrister sat at his left. The other magistrates and the barristers, pretty equally distributed, mingled at the table and represented the court and the eternal interests of justice. The junior barristers, generally mute in court, found little opening for speech at the dinner table; their chief talked for them, and not only for them, but for the whole world besides. His voice was heard above all voices, and suppressed all. If attention flagged, an admonition, sometimes not of the most gentle, recalled it. "Sir, pray favour me with your attention. I perceive you are not listening to me." Some

things-he told good enough not to displease even on a tenth repetition, but who could endure repetitions ten times ten? Anecdote, epigram, pun, witticism, each one introducing another, like the tales in the "Arabian Nights,” or those of the Tota Kahani, came jostling from his lips. The deviations in this slow voyage of narrative were many, but it never failed to reach its port, the one inevitable epigram. The course of the monopolylogue would run somewhat thus

A dish of cherries on the table would introduce Lucullus, Pliny, Pliny the Elder, volcanoes, craters, a descent into hell, tortures, the rack, Bacon, Selden, Coke, Somers, “Old Dismal," Bettesworth, Swift, and end in the celebrities of the Northern Circuit, with anecdotes of Bozzy, Christian, Wallace, Lee, Wedderburne, Scott, Law, Cockell, and Topping, the quizzers and the quizzed of the olden time. He would tell how Professor Christian simply and pathetically once lamented at the circuit table his own hard fate who never had, as he confessed, a servant in his life that lived with him three months without thinking him a fool. Then would he repeat epigramatic squibs, turning on the blessing of light withheld, and exhorting Christian to thankfulness that his household knew him not so long. Then would follow stories, many in number, of hoaxes practised upon Bozzy. Turning to the chairman, he would say, "Do you remember so and so?" "Oh! surely," the chairman would reply. "Do you remember his fondness for Ormskirk gingerbread, and Eccles cakes?" "Yes; very singular." "Do you remember my epigram on that subject?" "Not perfectly," would be the courteous answer, and then would follow "The Inevitable Epigram” :—

"From famine to preserve the nation,

Pharaoh, Joseph called, the Jew:

Would it be wise, in such vexation,

No. You'd devour whate'er is wash'd by Nile,

Frog, mummy, hippopotamus, and crocodile,

Yet still exclaim, still craving to be fed,

Oh! that the pyramids were made of gingerbread!"

From this exhausting symposium, a walk on a summer evening, by the dark waters of the Lune was a pleasant relief. No one delighted more than Charles Crompton in natural scenery, nor had a more complete sense of enjoyment in a ramble over a wild mountain side or heath; he lived beneath the habitual sway of this passion in youth, in manhood, and in age. He panted for the vacation, when he might get to "the dear blue mountains." From the noisy revel of the circuit table he would lead to a ramble at York or Lancaster, by the river banks, the Ouse or Lune, streams as different as a Blue Book from a Bible, and open out many a pleasant view of "salt and sharpness," without one grain of ill-nature in the composition. To understand this propensity aright, and how a sharp tongue was found in one who owned a tender, loving, and affectionate heart, it is necessary to advert as well to the impressions made on his young mind in his father's house, and the imitative habits of youth, as to the license to joke which prevailed on his circuit, and the unrestrained freedom of that "chartered libertine" and demagogue in a court dress, a witty tongue. The freedom of fun, the right, liberty, and privilege of unrestrained trade in the art of ingeniously tormenting were subsequently recorded

in

a canon, framed by an Attorney-General of the circuit, one of its most polished wits, the late Leycester Adolphus. This canon enforced the due subordination of the claims of friendship to the paramount right of the circuit to be supplied with jests, and kept in a healthy state of fattening laughter. The canon ran thus: "Never sacrifice your friend to your joke, but remember that man is not your friend who would stand in the way of your joke." No canon, it must be confessed, was ever more scrupulously or more cheerfully observed. It fixed the faith of the followers of Momus. All young animals delight to practise mimic war. The young cattle in the pastures butt at each other in sport, before their horns have sprouted; young toothless puppies worry each other, and young cock chickens, without spurs, ruffle their neck feathers, and aim to become heelers. In like manner, and with no malicious intent, the