Legal Reminiscences, it is the eve of St. Somebody's Day : not the anniversary itself, but its eve. Then you watch them try an Admiral ty case. With sweet inconsequence they group together those three unrelated classes of cases, admiralty, probate, and divorce. You discover that under the dis guise of Law some more tea-gowns, aided by two gentlemen in uniform (that is where the Admiralty part comes in), are con ducting a middle aged kindergarten, toys and all. Before the judge's bench is a counter with the points of the compass marked on it, and they pretend that this is the sea or river they are talking about. Then there is a box full of toy boats ready, and as the barrister pre sents his case he puts up one little boat to represent the vessel that was run into, then
dives down and gets another and sets it up to represent the one that ran into it. Every thing is made beautifully clear until the op posing counsel produces eight more boats, to represent vessels anchored in the vicinity. Then the gentlemen in uniform and the judge ask a confusing lot of questions, and then a plain, everyday sailor man with an impossi ble accent comes forward as a witness, and turns all the boats around, adds five more to the fleet, and talks about " nor'-nor'-east by north." Just as you begin to think it is a slow kind of game after all, word is brought you that Sir Francis Jeune has decided the divorce case; that the American barrister has won, of course; that, as nearly as you can find out, everybody is divorced from everybody else, and that they all lived hap pily ever after. — Ex.
LEGAL REMINISCENCES. XIV. BY L. E. CHITTENUEN. OPECIAL pleading was the science of rian. The antiquary who would know some bJ precision. Like other sciences only to thing of that history, must gather it, here a be acquired by hard study and close think little and there a little, from the multitudi ing, it had its evils. The skillful special nous volumes of its cotemporary law reports. pleader had advantages over his unlearned When in the coming years, some member adversary which did not always promote of our profession, of studious habits and justice. Its chief value was reflective. It unusual application, shall be impelled by his gave the legal mind a training of which it is love or respect for the past to write upon now deprived. The old lawyers were its; the subject, his sketches will have none but friends, and there were few of them who a historical value — interesting for the same could be enlisted in the crusade against it reason as the article of Mr. Westley, on the in the days when codification was young. "Quaint laws of Howel Dda." This once valued science has disappeared When such a student of the past encoun and scarcely left a sign. Gould and Chitty, ters the volumes comprising the litigation once as much studied as Blackstone, have of Torrey v. Field, one branch of which has been laid away on the top shelves of our been discussed in these Reminiscences, he law libraries, behind scores of frothy state will not only find one of the very best exam reports, valuable chiefly for their calf bind ples of special pleading, illustrating its value, but also a singularly sensational history. ing. Its great history has had no histo
