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A LONG SERMON.

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distant period to have possessed goods. He was asked by the counsel who opposed him, whether he had not some property which he had omitted to insert in his schedule? "The divil a bit of property," says he, "have I, at all at all." "Why, what's become of your furniture and your cows? Cows you were known to have, as you sold milk.” “So I had,” replied the Irishman; "but I have none now." "Why, what have you done with them ?" "I have signed away everything I had." "How have you assigned them ?" "I have made my will, and given them all away." "What! are you dead, man?" said the judge. "No, please your honour," says Pat; "but I soon will, if you take everything I have to live on from me." He refused to make any assignment or schedule, and was remanded.

A LONG SERMON.

LORD CHIEF BARON YELVERTON once went a Lent circuit, and to an assize town where one of his college contemporaries happened to be beneficed. The reverend gentleman, anxious to make a display of his zeal and talents, and at the same time show his respect for the Chief Baron, obtained permission from the Sheriff to preach the assize sermon before the judge. It was in the month of March, and the weather was intensely cold; the sermon was tediously long, and the Chief Baron most annoyingly chilled. When the sermon was over, the preacher descended from the pulpit, and, seemingly highly satisfied with his own performance, went to the judge, rubbing his hands, in expectation

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of thanks for his discourse, and congratulation on the excellence of its delivery and matter. "Well, my lord," said he, "how did you like the sermon ? "Wonderfully, my dear friend," replied Yelverton; "it passed all understanding; and I thought it would have endured for ever."

CHARLES I. AND THE LAW.

Ir is related by Laud, in his Diary, that when he was standing, one day, during dinner, near his unfortunate master, then Prince Charles, the Prince, who was in cheerful spirits, said, that if necessity compelled him to choose any particular profession in life, he could not be a lawyer; for, said he, "I can neither defend a bad cause, nor yield in a good one."

À DISTINCTION.

SIR THOMAS JONES, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in the reign of Charles II. and James II., is celebrated for his reply to the latter, who consulted him on his dispensing power, and said he could soon have twelve judges of his opinion. Sir Thomas answered "Twelve judges you may possibly find, Sire, but not twelve lawyers."

LORD BROUGHAM'S CHANCELLORSHIP. LORD BROUGHAM had a great horror of hearing the almost interminable speeches which some of the junior counsel were in the habit of making, after he conceived everything had been said which could be said on the real merits of the case before

VARIETIES OF RULING.

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the court by the gentlemen who preceded them His hints to them to be brief on such occasions were sometimes extremely happy. Once, after listening with the greatest attention to the speeches of two counsel on one side, from ten o'clock until half-past two, a third rose to address the court on the same side. His lordship was quite unprepared for this additional infliction, and exclaimed, "What! Mr. A- are you really going to speak on the same side ?"

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"Yes, my lord, I mean to trespass on your lordship's attention for a short time."

"Then," said his lordship, looking the orator significantly in the face, and giving a sudden twitch of his nose- "then, Mr. A- you had better cut your speech as short as possible, otherwise you must not be surprised if you see me dozing; for really this is more than human nature can endure."

The young barrister took the hint: he kept closely to the point at issue—a thing not always done by barristers and condensed his arguments into a reasonable compass.

VARIETIES OF RULING.

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WHEN Lord Ellenborough was Attorney-General, he was one day listening with some impatience to the judgment of a learned judge, afterwards his colleague, who said, "In "You v. —, I rule that," &c. --9 rule!" said the Attorney-General, in a tone of suppressed indignation, loud enough to be heard, however, by many of his brethren of the bar-" You rule! you were never fit for anything but a copybook!”

CHOICE OF A JUDGE.

A CHAIRMAN of the Dublin Quarter Sessions, who was so lenient to female culprits that a woman was seldom convicted when he presided-was on one occasion absent from the chair, which was occupied by not so gallant a gentleman, when a woman was put to the bar of the Commission Court, indicted for uttering forged bank notes. According to the usual form of law, the Clerk of the Crown asked the prisoner if she was ready to take her trial. With great disdain, she answered, "No, my lord; I'll be tried by the other judge, or not at all." The simplicity of the woman, coupled with the well-known character of the absent chairman, caused a roar of laughter in the court. The chairman, about to explain the impossibility of being tried by the popular judge, said, “He can't try you," when the woman stopped him short, and with an inimitable sneer exclaimed, “Can't try me! Why, he tried me twice before." She was tried, however, and for the third time acquitted.

FORENSIC IMITATIONS.

THEY who never had seen Lord Thurlow might well imagine they had heard him, if they enjoyed access to such excellent imitators as George the Fourth and Lord Holland. As perfect a substitute for Lord Mansfield's manner was to be found in Lord Erskine. -(Lord Brougham.) The elder Charles Mathews, in the character of "Flexible," in the farce of Love, Law, and Physic, gave so close an imitation of Lord Ellen

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borough, that, soon after the production of the piece, Mathews received a hint from the Lord Chamberlain's office to desist from so telling a piece of mimicry.

LORD CAMDEN'S RISE.

IT was a remarkable circumstance, (says Lord Brougham,) that although Lord Camden entered the profession with all the advantages of elevated station, he was less successful in its pursuit, and came more slowly into its emoluments, than almost all others that can be mentioned, who have raised themselves to its more eminent heights, from humble and even obscure beginnings. One can hardly name any other chief judge, except Bacon himself, who was the son of a chief justice. Lord Camden's father presided in the Court of King's Bench. He himself was called to the bar in his twenty-fourth year, and he continued to await the arrival of clients-" their knocks at his door while the cock crew" for fourteen long years; but to wait in vain. In his thirty-eighth year, he was, like Lord Eldon, on the point of retiring from Westminster Hall, and had resolved to shelter himself from the frowns of Fortune within the walls of his college, there to live upon a fellowship till a vacant living in the country should fall to his share. This resolution he communicated to his friend, Lord Henley, afterwards so well-known as Lord Keeper, and then as Lord Chancellor Northington, who vainly endeavoured to rally him out of a despondency for which, it must be confessed, there seemed good ground. He consented, however, at his friend's solicitation, to go once more the western

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