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litigating temperature. It is here, too, that the political idlers of the town resort, to drop or pick up the rumors of the day. There is also a plentiful admixture of the lower orders, among whom it is not difficult to distinguish the country-litigant. You know him by his mantle of frieze, his two boots and one spur; by the tattered lease, fit emblem of his tenement, which he unfolds as cautiously as Sir Humphrey Davy would a manuscript of Herculaneum; and, best of all, by his rueful visage, in which you can clearly read that some clause in the last ejectment-act lies heavy on his heart.

. These form the principal materials of the scene; but it is not so easy to enumerate the manifold and ever-shifting combinations into which they are diversified. The rapid succession of so many objects, passing and repassing eternally before you, perplexes and quickly exhausts the eye. It fares still worse with the ear. The din is tremendous. Besides the tumult of some thousand voices in ardent discussion, and the most of them raised to the declamatory pitch, you have ever and anon the stentorian cries of the tipstaffs, bawling out, "The gentlemen of the special jury to the box!" or the still more thrilling vociferations of attorneys or attorneys' clerks, hallooing to a particular counsel that “their case is called on, and all is lost if he delays an instant!" Whereupon the counsel, catching up the sound of his name, wafted through the hubbub, breaks precipitately from the circle that engages him, and bustles through the throng, escorted, if he be of any eminence, by a posse of applicants, each claiming to monopolize him, until he reaches the entrance of the court, and, plunging in, escapes for that time from their importunate solicitations.

The bustle among the members of the bar is greatly increased by the circumstance of them all, with very few exceptions, practising in all the courts.* Hence at every moment

* The custom that prevails in Ireland, of counsel dividing themselves among the several courts, produces, particularly in important cases, an inconvenience similar to one that Cicero complains of as peculiar to the Roman forum in his day-the multiplicity of advocates retained upon each trial, and the absence of some of them during parts of the proceedings upon which they have afterward to comment.

you see the most eminent darting across the hall, flushed and palpitating from the recent conflict, and, no breathing-time allowed them, advancing with rapid strides and looks of fierce intent, to fling themselves again into the thick of another fight. It daily happens that two cases are to be heard in different courts, and in which the same barrister is the client's main support, are called on at the same hour. On such occasions it is amusing to witness the contest between the respective attorneys to secure their champion.

Mr.. O'Connell, for instance, who is high in every branch of his profession, and peculiarly in request for what is termed "battling a motion," is perpetually to be seen, a conspicuous figure in this scene of clamor and commotion, balancing between two equally pressing calls upon him, and deploring his want of ubiquity. The first time he was pointed out to me, he was in one of these predicaments, suspended like Garrick in the picture between conflicting solicitations. On the one side an able-bodied, boisterous catholic attorney, from the county of Kerry, had laid his athletic gripe upon "the coun sellor," and swearing by some favorite saint, was fairly hauling him along in the direction of the Exchequer; on the other side a more polished town-practitioner, of the established faith, pointed with pathetic look and gesture to the Common Pleas, and in tones of agony implored the learned gentleman to remember that "their case was actually on, and that if he were not at his post, the court would grant the motion, costs and all, against their client." On such occasions a counsel has a delicate task; but long habit enables him to assume a neutrality, if he has it not. In the instance alluded to, I could not sufficiently admire the intense impartiality manifested by the subject of contention toward each of the competitors for his learned carcass; but the physical force of the man from Kerry, aided perhaps by some local associations-for the counsellor is a "Kerry-man" himself-prevailed over all the moral wooing of his rival, and he carried off the prize.

The preceding are a few of the constant and ever-acting elements of noise and motion in this busy scene; but an extra sensation is often given to the congregated mass. The detec

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tion of a pickpocket (I am not speaking figuratively) causes a sudden and impetuous rush of heads, with wigs and without them, to the spot where the culprit has been caught in flagrante. At other times the scene is diversified by a group of fine girls from the country, coming, as they all make a point of doing, to see the courts, and show themselves to the junior bar. A crowd of young and learned gallants instantaneously collects, and follows in their wake: even the arid veteran will start from his legal revery as they pass along, or, discontinuing the perusal of his deeds and counterparts, betray by a faint leer that, with all his love of parchment, a fine skin, glowing with the tints that life and nature gave it, has yet a more prevailing charm. Lastly, I must not omit that the Hall is not unfrequently thrown into "confusion worse confounded" by that particular breach of his majesty's Irish peace, improperly called a "horsewhipping." When an insult is to be avenged, this place is often chosen for its publicity as the fittest scene of castigation.

But this scene, though at first view the emblem of inextricable confusion, will yet, when frequently contemplated, assume certain forms approaching to regular combination: thus, after an attendance of a few days, if you perambulate the arena, or stand upon some elevated point from which you can take in the whole, you will recognise, especially among the members of the bar, the same individuals, or classes, occupied or grouped in something like an habitual manner. On the steps outside the entrance to the Court of Chancery, your eye will probably be caught by the imposing figure and the courteous and manly features of Bushe,* waiting there till his turn comes to refute some long-winded argument going on within, and to which, as a piece of forensic finesse, he affects a disdain to listen: or, near the same spot, you will light upon the less social but more pregnant and meditative countenance of Plunket, as he paces to and fro alone, resolving some matter of imperial moment, until he is roused from these more congenial musings, and hurries on to court, at the call of the shrill-tongued crier, to simplify or em* Charles Kendal Bushe, afterward lord chief-justice of Ireland.-M. Now Lord Plunket, ex-lord chancellor of Ireland.-M.

barrass some question of equitable altercation: or, if it be a nisi-prius day in any of the law-courts, you may observe outside, the delight of Dublin jurors, Mr. H. D. Grady, working himself into a jovial humor against the coming statement, and with all the precaution of an experienced combatant, squibbing his "jury-eye," lest it should miss fire when he appears upon the ground.

Or, to pass from individuals to groups, you will daily find, and pretty nearly upon the same spot, the same little circles. or coteries, composed chiefly of the members of the junior bar, as politics, or community of tastes, or family connections, may bring them together. Among these you will readily distinguish those who by birth or expectations consider themselves to be identified with the aristocracy of the country; you see it in their more fashionable attire and attitudes, their joyous and unworn countenances, and in the lighter topics of discussion on which they can afford to indulge. At a little distance stands. a group of quite another stamp-pallid, keen-eyed, anxious aspirants for professional employment, and generally to be found in vehement debate over some dark and dreary point of statute or common law, in the hope that, by violently rubbing their opinions together, a light may be struck at last. A little farther on you will come upon another, a group of learned vetoists and anti-vetoists, where some youthful or veteran theologian is descanting upon the abominations of a schism, with a running accompaniment of original remarks upon the politics of the Vatican, and the character of Cardinal Gonsalvi. Close to these again—but I find that I should never have done, were I to attempt comprising within a single view the endless and complicated details of this panoramic spectacle, or to specify the proportions in which the several subjects discussed here respectively contribute to form the loud and ceaseless buzz that rises and reverberates through the roof..

This daily assemblage of the Irish Bar, in a particular spot, enables you to estimate at a glance the extraordinary numbers of that body, and to perceive what an enormous excess they bear to the professional occupation which the country can by possibility afford. After all the Courts are filled to the brim,

there still remains a legal population to occupy the vast arena without. I was particularly struck by the number of young men (many of them, I was assured, possessed of fine talents, which, if differently applied, must have forced their way) who from term to term, and year to year, submit to " trudge the Hall," waiting till their turn shall come at last, and too often harassed by forebodings that it may never come. It was not difficult to read their history in their looks: their countenances wore a sickly, pallid, and jaded expression;* the symbols of hope deferred, if not extinguished; there was even something, as they sauntered to and fro, in their languid gait and undecided movements, from which it could be inferred that their sensations were melancholy and irksome. I was for some time at a loss to account for this extreme disproportion between the supply and the demand. so much greater than any ever known to exist in England.

During my stay in Dublin, I accidentally fell into conversation with an intelligent, Irish gentleman, who in the early part of his life had been connected for some years with the

* I have heard several medical men of Dublin speak of the air of the courts and hall, as particularly unwholesome. Besides the impurity communicated to the atmosphere by the crowds that collect there, the situation is low and marshy. The building is so close to the river Liffey, that fears have been entertained for the safety of the foundation. Formerly, before the present quay was constructed, the water in high tides sometimes made its way into the hall. The mention of this reminds me of one or two of Curran's jokes :-upon one occasion, not only the hall, but the subterraneous cellars in which the bar-dresses are kept, were inundated. When the counsel went down to robe, they found their wigs and gown afloat; Curran, for whom a cause was waiting seized the first that drifted within reach, and appeared in court, dripping like a river-god. "Well, Mr. Curran," asked one of the judges, "how did you leave your friends coming on below ?"" Swimmingly, my lord." In the course of the morning, one of these learned friends (who, from missing his footing, had come in fo thorough sousing) repeatedly protested to their lordships, that he should feel ashamed to offer such and such arguments to the court. Curran, in reply, complimented him upon his delicacy of feeling, which he represented as "truly a high and rare strain of modesty, in one who had just been dipped in the Liffey." [As an Irishman who has that facility of speech and compliment called "the gift of the gab," is usually mentioned as having kissed the Blarney-stone; so if a native be particularly impudent (which is impossible, of course!) it is said that he has been dipped in the Liffey-the river which runs through Dublin.-M.