The demolition of Hare Court, prior to its being rebuilt, is now complete; and Middle Temple Lane presents a strangely unfamiliar appearance, with the huge gap in its continuity occasioned by the process. In other thirty years the greater part of the Temple will have been rebuilt, and few of the quaint, dingy tenements will remain, — not alto gether, I apprehend, to the satisfaction of the profession, for while the new sets of chambers possess what are styled modern conveniences, the rooms in the old buildings were in many respects more comfortable and more conveniently arranged. During the present recess I visited Edinburgh, and rambled through the Parliament House and the endless corridors of the magnificent library, of which the Faculty of Advocates is so justly proud. None of the libraries of the Inns of Court in Lon don can for a moment compare with the legal department of the Advocates Library. While their shelves contain most well-known treatises of every day importance, they are signally deficient in many juristic writings of a more recondite char acter. Year by year there is a regular withdrawal from
the ranks of the bar of a number of young men who have given the profession a period of trial. and finding it unproductive of satisfactory results, pursue occupation for their capacities elsewhere. Secretaryships of joint-stock companies are highly coveted; journalism and literature of course absorb perhaps the greatest number, while here and there a despairing barrister becomes a schoolmaster, or enters some phase of commercial life which earlier in his career he would have heartily despised. It is a wise course to turn to some fresh industry ere the faculties have lost the necessary elasticity. In this respect the English barrister enjoys an indis putable superiority to his Scottish brother. In the larger community little notice is taken of a man's changing his profession, and few remember that the prosperous wine-merchant was a couple of years before a disappointed claimant for forensic glory; but in Scotland it is different. Where society is conceived on so much smaller a scale, local curi osity would continually track the career of an advo cate who became a trader or a journalist. He would be branded as a failure, as one who began to build and was not able to finish.
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