conflicts with other boys of their own age, who are employed in similar capacities in the same house. These are the young gentlemen who, if you tell them to remain strictly in chambers during your unavoidable absence, whilst you are calling upon a friend, straightway, the moment your back is turned, affix a notice upon your outer door: 'Mr. Idle at Westminster; will return at five; clerk gone out, but will return at 1.45 precisely;' and forthwith depart upon a round of visits to their friends. Some excuse undoubtedly must be made for these lads. Shut up all day in a back-room, with nothing to do except to open the door to their master's callers, or to clean his boots, or to run out into Fleet Street to buy him some tobacco or an evening paper, their life is so dull and monotonous, that I have often wondered how they contrive to bear up under it. Did not most of them enjoy, to the full, that enviable power of 'turning to mirth all things of earth as only boyhood can,' I am disposed to think that Bethlehem or St. Luke's would speedily claim them as inmates.

The manner in which the evening hours are spent by the residents in the Temple is of course very various. Some men read hard, some men write hard, some men smoke hard; others speak nearly every night at some of those numerous

debating societies which abound in the neighbourhood of Fleet Street; whilst another class sit down to a quiet rubber at whist in their own rooms with three or four friends, who share their liking for that game. Some quiet men, again, spend their evenings in having an enjoyable chat over a pipe and glass of grog with another man of their own tastes. Four times a year the serene calm which generally broods over the Temple in the evening hours, is broken by the noisy 'call parties' which, upon the occasion of his call to the bar, each man gives to his friends. At these gatherings a good deal of indifferent wine is drunk, a number of bad speeches are made, and usually some good songs are sung. Only last evening, 'night was made hideous' to me by the boisterous shouting which came from a call party which was being held on the other side of Flag Court.

But there goes the horn which, in accordance with a custom-doubtless originating in an age when clocks and watches were not-is still blown by an official of the Temple, in each court of the Inn, half-an-hour before dinner-time, as a warning to the members of the society to prepare for that repast. I must lay down my pen, or else I shall be too late for that event, which is to me not the least important one in each day's life in the Temple.

23

WESTMINSTER HALL.

THE stranger who may have chanced to be in Parliament Street about two o'clock on the afternoon of the second day of November in any year, will probably have beheld a curious procession slowly wending its way along that thoroughfare. He will have noticed that it consisted of some twenty carriages-in the interiors of which about double that number of rubicund faces, enshrouded in enormous wigs, can be perceived. Vague ideas that it was the Queen proceeding to open parliament in person will probably have flitted through the spectator's mind, only, however, to be dissipated by the remarks of the passers-by, which inform him audibly enough that 'it's h'only those h'old judges a-goin' to h'open the law-courts!' And the information would have been correct; for in accordance with an old custom, the judges and leading Q.C.s invariably breakfast with the Lord Chancel

lor, at his private residence, upon the first day of Michaelmas term (November 2); after which the judges proceed in state to Westminster Hall to open the law-courts, and thereby inaugurate the legal year.

If the spectator's curiosity induced him to follow the string of carriages down Parliament Street, he would see them draw up in succession at the principal entrance of Westminster Hall, and he would behold their occupants alight in order of precedence, and slowly make their way through the narrow lane kept for them by the police among the spectators to their respective courts. First would come the Lord Chancellor-erect, pale, and gorgeous to behold in his gold-embroidered robes; whilst, closely treading upon his heels, would follow the Lord Chief-Justice of England, attired in scarlet and ermine, and with the massive gold chain of his office depending from his neck. Then there would come the Lord Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas, and the Lord Chief-Baron of the Exchequer; after whom, but longo intervallo, the

comparatively insignificant crowd of puisne judges of the three courts of Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer. In a few moments, the spectator would see the judges disappear within the doors of their respective courts, and

the crowd of spectators which had filled Westminster Hall disperse.

Let us, however, my reader, instead of following the unthinking multitude, which departs the moment the show is over, enter the first door on the right of Westminster Hall-namely, that which leadeth unto Her Majesty's Court of Queen's Bench. Pushing back the door, we find ourselves in a narrow passage-the first object in which that attracts our attention is an apple-woman's stall! Yes, my country reader--you whose ideas of the precincts of a court of law are taken from the assize courts of the town of Cotton-cum-Barley, from which such a sacrilegious intruder would be ruthlessly expelled by fussy policemen-it is right that you should know that there is actually established at the very door of the supreme court of common law in England that most familiar of objects, an apple-woman's stall! Nay, it is even whispered in Westminster Hall that an eminent Attorney-General has been seen more than once to stop and buy a piece of hardbake of the decent old woman who presides at it. This report must, however, have surely been set afloat by those misguided men who assert-what I, with my respect for the constituted authorities of my country, will never bring myself to believe that an eminent Lord Chancellor is in