of royalty, have been called upon to furnish precisely similar articles for the mock coronation, to gratify an English audience. In the grand procession the actors, clothed in the glittering dresses of royal personages, archbishops and noblemen, strut with all the dignity which the occasion demands. The mock heroic king, however, simpered whilst the ceremony of disrobing took place, and the oil was dripping upon his head to make him " the Lord's anointed." The sword of Charlemagne unluckily was dropped in the midst of the ceremony with such awkward essays to clutch it in its precipitate course, that the performances were for a few minutes interrupted by the laughter of the uncourteous audience.

INNS OF COURT, AND COURTS OF LAW.

Having business to transact with a gentleman engaged in the profession of the law, I took a survey of the various Inns of Court, as well as of the several Courts in session. The Inns of Court, of which there are above half a dozen in London, are plain quadrangular brick buildings, inclosing small interior yards. They are divided into numerous chambers for the offices of lawyers, whose little signs appear in clusters upon the walls of the stairways and passages. Each lawyer commonly has two rooms, one for private consultation with clients, and a second for students and clerks.

The costume of a lawyer, whilst attending the Courts, consists of a black gown, and of a large wig fabricated from grey wool. The latter occasionally seems to afford hospitable shade and shelter as a substitute for a hat, as I have observed lawyers in the streets amid the bustling population walking from their offices to the adjacent courts, with no other screen to protect their heads from the sun than these grotesque, grisly, curled wigs.

EXPENSES OF ENGLISH LAW-SUITS.-FEES.

265

The fees of the lawyers, except for drawing up pleas and writings, &c. are paid by clients in advance, being considered, as Blackstone terms them, "quiddam honorarium". —a sort of honorary present for their services; as was formerly the case, when men of talents and of high standing undertook to speak in behalf of their friends and clients, before the profession of a lawyer was established as a regular branch of business. The lawyers cannot even maintain a suit for their fees, or recover charges for their services as counsel; and with prudent foresight and regard to security, they remain as motionless as icy statues until their clients warm and thaw them by the gipsy-like process of crossing their palms with silver, or more commonly with gold-in broad round pieces too. The fees of physicians were also once considered nearly on the same footing; and so much of this ancient custom still exists in London, that during the rounds of their professional visits, the guinea is usually handed them at the door, at the termination of every visit; and no long scores are kept, as is customary in the United States.

*

The expenses of a lawsuit in London are exorbitant. A seven years' suit might be carried on in New-England for a sum which would be just sufficient to introduce the client well into the courts of Old England, in order to make a systematic commencement. It is stated that a poor fellow who had his horse stolen, caused the thief to be prosecuted. The prosecutor, as usual, was required to give bonds to appear in court to give evidence in the action against the criminal; and was subsequently compelled to sell the very horse to defray his ordinary expenses of attendance during a protracted trial, although the expenses of the court were defrayed by the government.

*It has been previously stated that tracts of land containing iron mines were contracted for in Staffordshire in 1825 at very high prices. It appears from a paragraph in a late English paper, that a suit was in VOL. II. 24

266 DELAYS OF CHANCERY PROCEEDINGS.

The delays attendant upon Chancery proceedings, it is well known, have procrastinated suits for one or two gen erations. Virgil's description of the judge of the lower regions has been humorously applied to Chancellor Eldon; -"sedet et semper sedebit," "he sits and will forever sit." The delays of the Court of Chancery should rather be attributed to the system of its establishment, by which too many services are exacted from one individual. The duties of the Lord Chancellor are not only multiplied upon him, but they are also of a kind requiring the deepest attention, and intense and uninterrupted research. He is hurried from one sort of service to another with so much rapidity, that it may rather be deemed surprising if he should be able to perform the duties of his office with promptitude and efficiency. At one hour he is called to attend the king in council, as a cabinet minister; at another he is mounted on the wool-sack as presiding officer of the House of Peers; and at other times he is occupied in listening to long discussions, or reading the ponderous folios of perplexing law papers in the Court of Chancery, and in attending to the various subordinate branches of pecuniary trusts incident to that court, and to the appointment of Justices of the Peace throughout the Kingdom. At the same time, as one of the most distinguished subjects

stituted to set aside a contract for some of those over-rated tracts, for which £550,000 were to have been paid; but which, in the allegations produced in court, were stated to be worth only £160,000, making a difference of about 1 millions of dollars to the purchasers in this bargain.

In the suit which ensued, the mere statement of the Bill, Answers, and Pleadings, it is stated in a late English paper, “occupied 1300 folio pages ; and eighty-eight large skins of parchment were filled with the plaintiff's interrogatories. The examination of the witnesses cost £1,500 on each side, and £2000 were expended in procuring office copies of the evidence. The cause in this stage came before the court with the view of procuring further evidence, and without the prospect of the su it being brought to a speedy conclusion." The very retaining fee to a lawyer engaged in this case, it appears, was 3000 guineas, or about 14,000 dollars.

EMOLUMENTS AND DUTIES OF A CHANCELLOR. 267

in the kingdom, his rank requires that he should do credit to his station by the display of the usual courtesies of life in his social intercourse.

Nearly two hundred millions of dollars, it appears from published statements, are placed to the credit of the accountant of the Court of Chancery. Of this great amount more than forty millions of dollars are supposed to belong to the heirs of unclaimed estates, and to other persons who are either ignorant of their claims, or unable to produce proper proof to substantiate them. On a final failure on the part of the claimants to make out satisfactory titles, much of this property must revert to the government.

This accumulation of various offices on the shoulders of one individual seems to be an anomaly in Great-Britian, where, to insure profitable skill and despatch even in the manufacture of a pin, as has been before observed, laborious duties are sufficiently subdivided. The emoluments attached to all these several offices, amounting to about 320,000 dollars per annum, induce the prime minister of England to undertake these many duties. The tenure by which he holds his office depends so much on popular favor on the one hand, and on kingly favor on the other, that it becomes necessary for him to reap his harvest with all practicable despatch.

The Lord Chancellor, seated on the bench of the Court of Chancery, is attired in the fashion of past ages, muffled in fur-trimmed robes, and capped with a huge white wig. The wig appears to be deemed in England as indispensable an appendage to a judge, as a crown, in the old pictured representations, to a king. On a sultry summer day, the uncomfortable fur and smothering wig might almost cause a trans-atlantic spectator to pity the man who suffers under the burthen, although remunerated by a compensation of three hundred thousand dollars per annum. The rigid mass of crisped hair is curled into volutes, saturated

268

COSTUME OF JUDGES AND LAWYERS.

with hair powder, and really forms an exotic crop, transplanted to the head of the first man of the kingdom, which duly distributed would serve for covering nearly as many men as his equally disproportionate salary would liberally support.*

The lawyers, also arrayed in their peculiar costume and wigs, in front of the Chancellor, confirm the fancied impression that you are viewing the law-proceedings of a former century; but the clients, dressed in modern fashion, have too much of the care-worn aspect of present, palpable trouble, to be mistaken for ideal figures of men of other times.

The hall of the Court of Chancery, as well as that of the court of the King's Bench, is not spacious; but the former has windows of stained glass, which impart no small degree of interest to the contemplation of its ancient Gothic architecture. Upon the walls of these halls of justice are suspended the portraits of a long line of judges, in the proper order of their succession.

No regular course of legal study is exacted from each law student, previously to admittance to practice in the courts; but the student must make his appearance at the public dinner table of the great hall of one of the Inns of Court for a certain number of times each year, during their terms of three or five years. The necessary initiatory expenses, amount to about five hundred and fifty dollars. The Hall of the Middle Temple, in which the stated dinners take place, is well worth a visit, having many decorations of oak curiously carved from the solid blocks, and also pictures of some of the English Kings, executed by eminent painters.

*The Lord Chancellor in 1831, took his seat without the usual wig, and the extraordinary innovation on ancient customs, judging from the comments on this important subject in public papers, excited the wonder of the British people.