on "Trials." These works are too well known to American lawyers to require de scription or even comment here. Coming as they do from the pen of one whose other work alone would fill the time of most active men, they testify to the author's remarkable industry and to an unusual vigor of body and brain. In this connection it may be said that Judge Thompson's wonderful mem ory forms a great part of his intellectual capital. Nothing that he reads is ever for gotten. His friends who have heard him repeat accurately from memory — twenty years after reading it — a large portion of "Paradise Lost," are not surprised to find citations and cases always ready at his tongue's end for every point suggested.
Such is a brief sketch of a typical west ern life, — too brief to do full justice to the subject. If those who have had the privi lege of friendly intercourse with Judge Thompson would record the experiences he has confessed, — the details of his hard boyish life; of his struggles for an educa tion; of his experiences in the army, es pecially of his adventurous scout within the lines of Price's army in 1861; of his per sistent study of Latin and German in the leisure intervals of a soldier's life; of his romantic endeavors to conquer a livelihood before he entered the Clerk's office in Mem phis, — a biography could be written which would be far more interesting than this bare skeleton of facts.
In person, Judge Thompson is of medium height, of stout, sturdy figure, and square, grave features, slow in movement and delib erate in speech.
BENEFIT OF CLERGY.
MANY of our readers to whom the phrase " benefit of clergy " is per fectly familiar, may not, nevertheless, have acquainted themselves with the origin and importance of these words. It is the pur pose of this brief article to point out some of the peculiarities of a practice which is among the most ancient of those recorded in our earliest Christian annals, and men tion of which is found in the general history, profane and ecclesiastical, of past times.
Its origin may be traced to the regard which was paid by the various princes of Europe to the Church, and to the endeavors of the Popes to withdraw the clergy alto gether from subjection to secular authority. The earlier English kings after the Con quest resisted this ecclesiastical assumption, as an interference with their prerogative, but the result was only partial; one instance be ing the exemption of places consecrated to religious purposes from arrest for crimes, which led to the institution of sanctuaries, and also the exemption of clergymen in certain cases from criminal punishment by secular judges; from this came the benefit of clergy, the claim of privilegium clericale. It was then necessary that the prisoner should appear in his clerical habit and ton sure at trial; but in the course of time this was considered unnecessary, and the only proof required of the offender was his show ing to the satisfaction of the court that he could read, — a rare accomplishment except among the clergy previous to the fifteenth century. At length all persons who could read, whether clergymen or lay clerks (as they were called in some ancient statutes), were admitted to the benefit of clergy in all prosecutions for offences to which the privilege extended.
In his " Merchant and Friar," Sir Francis Palgrave gives a vivid picture of the pro ceedings that took place at these trials. A thief had been apprehended in Chepe, in the very act of cutting a purse from the
