The unanswerable logic of these passages points at once to the fact that they must have emanated from a legal brain. But this is not enough. We must find signs that the author had a thorough grasp of the intricacies and technicalities of the common law. And such signs are easily found. For instance, note this beautiful quatrain : Diddelty, diddelty, dumpty, The cat run up the plum tree; Give her a plum, and down she'll come, Diddelty, diddelty, dumpty. No clearer exposition of the essentials of a contract has ever been put forward. Or again : To market, to market, to buy a plum cake, Home again, home again, market is late; To market, to market, to buy a plum bun, Home again, home again, market is done. Could there be a more explicit reference to the English doctrine tif market overt? ' A notable example of ferae naturae is found in the pathetic story of Little Bo-Peep. So in Little Tommy Tittlemouse, Lived in a little house; He caught fishes In other men's ditches is found a most careful treatise on the right to fisheries.
Nor are all the references to civil rights, for Coke was well versed in the criminal law. The essentials of larceny are well set forth in this poem : Lucy Locket, lost her pocket, Kitty Fisher found it; There was not a penny in it, But a ribbon round it. The most conclusive bit of eternal evi dence of all is found, however, in the follow ing lines : Tom, Tom, the piper's son, Stole a pig and away he run. The pig was eat, and Tom was beat, And went a-roaring down the street. In the time of Lord Coke it was held that a dog was not the subject of larceny. But the keen mind of the author at once grasped the all-important fact that a pig was not a dog. Nay, more, that a pig differed essen tially from a dog in its legal status. In view of this, it is impossible to believe that any sane man can say that there was a single per son in England capable of such a masterpiece of ingenuity except Edward Coke. It is believed that as time goes on Mother Goose's Melodies will be raised from the nursery to the law school, and that due credit will be given to Coke for an invaluable addition to legal literature.
A GRAVE PROBLEM. Bv W. Archtbald McCi.ean. NOTWITHSTANDING the immortal bard made the great Mark Anthony say, The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones, a rule is most respectfully asked for to show cause why the aforesaid saying should not read,
The good that men do lives after them, The evil is oft interred with their bones. In support of the rule this brief is sub mitted. The idea of burying the good and keeping the evil as Father Time gathers in the race, is accumulatively horrible. Necessarily this would mean that the influence of all men for
