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The Green Bag.

that although women were prohibited from pleading causes for others in the court of imperial Rome, they might plead their own, and frequently received a legal education. He says : — "Valerius Maxima? tells us that there was a certain lady named Cafrania, wife of a Senator, who was addicted to verbal onslaughts of so violent a character upon a certain ГгоЛог whenever she appeared before him, that in selfdefense and in the interest of justice he made an edict forbidding all females from pleading for others in the courts of Rome. Valerius calls this disbarred lady the most shocking names, which we deem it prudent not to translate. This pretorial inhibition found its way into the Pandects, where the reason for its promulgation is also stated in language quite as denunciatory of the embargoed Cafrania as that above referred to. [See Dig. 3, I, § i, in Galisset's "Corpus Juris Civilis. "] It would seem, however, that, notwithstanding this ban upon female pleaders, the study of the law was regarded as a becoming pursuit by educated women in the reign of Justinian. Testimony of this fact is to be had in the following epigram by Agathias upon the death of his sister Eugenia, translated by Lord Neaves in his notes to the fourth edition of Lord Mackenzie's ' Roman Law': — ' Blooming in beauty and in song before, Skilled in ¡he sfltmiiii truths of legal lore, Here hid in earth Eugenie's seen no more. Venus, the Muse, and Themis, at her tomb, Cut their fair locks, in sorrow for her doom.'"

A PRIVILEGED CLERIC. — In our youth we dis ported ourselves in writing about the Ecclesiastical Courts and the Privileges of the Clergy in England. Just now there comes to us, in the •• Law Times," the following account of a highly privileged ecclesiastical person : — "There is a specially privileged clerk in Holy Orders of the Church of Scotland who is a member of the College of Vicars-Choral of Hereford Cathedral. He draws his salary with regularity, but declines to intone the prayers or to as sist in chanting the Litany in the cathedral. The Dean and Chapter attempted to cite him before Lord Решапсе in the Court of Arches, but in a considered judgment, delivered be fore hearing the parties, that learned and leisured and wellpaid functionary held that the clerk of the Scottish Church was not subject to the Clergy Discipline Act of the Church of England, even though installed in an English benefice. And now the clerk is engaged in trying to prohibit the Dean and Chapter of Hereford from exercising a domestic disci pline over him by citing him before their own body. This he objects to because ( I ) they already promoted the suit against him in the Arches Court, and (2) they cannot, he says, proceed against individual vicars-choral, but only against the body in its corporate capacity. A Divisional Court has granted a rule nisi to settle this nice question of ecclesiastical ethics."

As Ralph Waldo Emerson asked concerning pie, so we are led to ask. what is this person for? A man

in a boat must row, fish, or cut bait, and we are curi ous to know what use can be extracted from this ob stinate clerk. More especially do we desire to know why the kingdom should be taxed to support this luxurious official and to pay for his lawsuits.

ESCAPE. — An account in the English newspapers of a recent dash for liberty by a Dartmoor prisoner will remind readers of the opening scene in Dickens' "Great Expectations, "and of that piteous episode in "The Silence of Dean Maitland." This prisoner panted for freedom, but he failed to achieve it because he could not steal any « pants " to take the place of his telltale striped nether garments. He tells the story in his artless way as follows: — "I did take a swig or two out of some of the decanters of port wine and other Christmas drinks about, and I got two 'alves of plum pudden and a lot of breast of turkey stowed away in the pockets of that parson's overcoat which I stole in the first house I entered. But it must lie a queer country as lies around that prison; why, there don't seem a single man to live there as 'as got more than one pair of pants to his legs, and it seems as 'ow they must all sleep with them under their pillows. Why, I was in one bloke's bedroom while he was in bed, and, s' help me. I think he must have been sleeping with his trousers on!"

This poor fellow should have reflected that perhaps the wives wore them, and have searched among the feminine apparel. It would certainly have been so in this favored country.

EARLY RISING. — The ancient sawyer said : — "Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise."

But it doesn't do anything of the sort. Take for a test that class of men who follow this maxim most literally, the farmers, and it certainly is not true of them. They are not especially healthy — they are very apt to be insane, and no wonder. They are never wealthy. And when we say that we think they cannot claim any superiority in wisdom, we are putting it ver)' mildly and respectfully. Of course the Chairman, whose favorite theory of passing vacation is to loaf and lie down, cannot be expected to advocate early rising, whatever he may think of early going to bed. He thinks it very disrespectful to get up before the sun. That is the most unhealthful time of day, when all Nature is reeking with night-dam]), and, so to speak, has not brushed her teeth. A walk on an empty stomach and before the sun has clone his beneficent office is a distressful and unwholesome exercise. But the Chairman is becoming an involuntary early riser, the victim of a species of insomnia. His trouble strongly resembles