off-color "Heptameron," cannot be had for less than $250, the highest price quoted in the list. A letter from the French painter, Meissonier, expressing "impatience to see the proof," is put down at $5, but if Mr. Benjamin wants letters from us expressing impatience on seeing the proofs, we dare say he can have any number from our publishers for fifty cents apiece. Negligence Cases. — The most prolific source of litigation in this country is alleged negligence. Our courts are loaded down with this class of suits, many of which are the merest and most barefaced experi ments to test the patience of judges and the gullibil ity of juries, and generally they are waged against corporations. A minor cause of the enormous number of such cases is the greed of lawyers who take them " on spec," as Messrs. Dodson & Fogg took the famous case of Bardell v. Pickwick. The Chairman has been informed by a judge of the Su preme Court of New York that on the Brooklyn cal endar alone are nearly two thousand negligence cases now pending for trial, of which it is asserted that some fifteen hundred, brought by one lawyer, are waged on the commercial basis above mentioned. This practice is legal in New York, and certain law yers have made great fortunes out of it. So crying has become the evil that an appeal to the court of appeals in that State has been restricted and hedged about by the amended Constitution. If one had time, industry and patience enough he might construct a very amusing chapter on preposterous claims of this description. By way of example, reference may be made to two recent ones in New York, both of them, oddly enough, concerning horses. In Magilton v. N. Y. Central, etc., R. Co., 11 App. Div. 373, the plaintiffs horse strayed from his pasture on the de fendant's track, through an open gate, and was killed. The gate, constructed by the defendant, had sagged, to the knowledge of the plaintiff, and the court, on appeal, held that it was his duty to see that it was kept in such repair that it could readily be fastened and kept fast, or at all events it was for a jury to say whether he was not negligent in exposing his horse to this manifest danger. But the funny part was this : the plaintiff gave evidence that flies bite horses in August, and that horses, in conse quence, rub their necks and bodies against fences, and have a propensity to bite the boards of gates and fences, and gave evidence of the marks of horses' teeth on the top board of this gate. The defendant asked the court to charge that the jury was not justi fied in finding that the gate was opened by such rub bing or biting, but the court refused, and this was held error. The court said it might also have been done by design, by carelessness or by a tramp.
The other case is Roblee v. Town of Indian Lake, 1 1 App. Div. 435. The plaintiff, traveling on a nar row corduroy road, along the edge of a lake in the wilderness of northern New York, a wave came in from the lake upon the horses' feet, and frightened them so that they plunged into a swamp on the other side of the road and ran away, and injured the plaintiff. The plaintiff claimed that there should have been a barrier on the lake side to prevent the influx of the waves, and a fence on the other. The plaintiff was non-suited on his opening — a very un usual procedure — but the general term awarded him a new trial. Two of the five judges dissented, one of them asserting that this court " should not forget that the law has regard to the fitness of things, and thus should hold that a wilderness road is good enough for a wilderness." So we should think. Men should not expect a Central Park road in the Adiron dack woods. Sir Frank Lockwood. — Those American law yers who met this brilliant and versatile gentleman on his visit to this country with Lord Chief-Justice Russell will grieve to learn of his recent death at the untimely age of fifty-one. Seldom has an eminent advocate so attached himself to his fellows by force of his beautiful personal qualities. He was one of the few men with that enviable temperament that could carry him through the strenuous strife of many law trials without becoming embittered and without embittering others. He seems to have been regarded by his brethren as quite sui generis. The tributes paid to his memory by the judges and his brethren at the bar are remarkably heartfelt and glowing. The "London Law Journal " says editorially : — "The sudden death of Sir Frank Lockwood leaves the world of English law, politics, and public life the poorer. Without pre-eminent legal knowledge or acquirements he gained a place peculiarly his own, and held it without a rival by his great forensic gifts, his insight into human character, his simple upright ness and goodness of heart, and his brilliant wit which never left a sting behind it. It is difficult to think of the Law Courts without him. The legal profession is often reproached as unduly critical and censorious in regard to its members, and no doubt these qualities are fostered by the mental habits which lawyers are compelled to form. Could there be more striking and convincing evidence of the unique position which Sir Frank Lockwood held at the bar than the fact that the chorus of regret which his untimely death has elicited has not been marred by a single note of derogatory criticism?" He possessed the literary and artistic faculties in a large measure. Of this the " Law Journal " says : — "His powers as a caricaturist made him a welcome
