it. Come, Bompas, I have had enough of this. Let us walk up to Chambers."

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Hush, Wrangham," cried the third of the knot which had attracted Harold's notice, and who evidently had some concern in 'Cheat against Meek.' "I can't hear a word he says; hang him for bringing it on out of his turn; I've not looked at my brief. May I-" continued he, addressing his leader, who was leisurely opening the case in his usual colloquial toneMay I trouble you, Sir" but the remainder of his entreaty was drowned in another peremptory Silence, gentlemen, pray, Silence," from the quick-eared usher; and the last thing that Harold saw was the bland Mr. Croker left once more in undisputed possession of the Court.

Now much that he had overheard was of course of a technical kind, and could not be intelligible to him; but the general drift of it, and of the whole proceeding, he was now no longer at a loss to comprehend. A so-called Court of Justice, bereft of all that can inspire

respect and awe-the indispensable attributes of a Judicial tribunal-attended by no curious or learning-loving throngs-deserted even by the profession itself, except those few unfailing disputants in it, who by professional connections, and unflinching pertinacity, rather than by their own intellectual strength, held sway there;the whole business transacted in a way befitting rather a lady's drawing room than an arena for the educated sons of Genius to wrestle onthese anomalies crowded on his recollection, and made a lasting impression upon him. Whilst Flood, once more postponed and defeated in his endeavour to bring his cause to a hearing, declaimed still more loudly against both Law and Lawyers.

Plowden alone, serene and self-complacent, glorified the system, which enriched him by its abuses. He cared nothing for its corruptions; he troubled himself not with its anomalies. To be on the roll of the Solicitors of the High Court of Chancery; to bow condescendingly to briefless barristers; to be familiarly recognised

by Her Majesty's Counsel; to address an occasional word to the Bench; to be complimented on his great run of business; to have a Right Honourable or two on his list of Clients, and a long bill of costs against them honour, ambition, conquest, social usefulness, sufficient for his third-rate pretensions.

was

CHAPTER V.

"Southward a mountain rose with easy swell, Whose long long groves eternal murmur made: And toward the Western sun a streamlet fell, Where, through the cliffs, the eye, remote, survey'd, Blue hills, and glittering waves, and skies in gold array'd.” BEATTIE.

E must now ask the gentle reader to

accompany us awhile from the turmoil of Term-time in Westminster Hall, to the delicious contrast of a lovely lonely spot in the remote hill country of North Britain. The village of Glen-mŏrā is one of the most picturesque in Scotland. Buried among the mountains of Moray, and far from the track of any beaten thoroughfare, to the general traveller it is hardly known by name. Its valley will never reverberate to the whistling steam; the dashing team of a four horsed mail will

never prance through its quiet street: yet the enthusiastic tourist visits it, and many a true sportsman remembers how hospitably he has been regaled in its old fashioned rustic inn at the end of a long day's 'work' by the kind ministrations of good Mrs. Grant and her two pretty daughters. Celebrated as a station for lovers of the rod and rifle, the Highland crofter finds in it little encouragement for his industrial labours. Ptarmigan people the granite summits, the red deer roars in the pathless corries; and the inhabitants, it must be confessed, derive more benefit from their lawless ambuscades against fur and feather, than from honester agricultural pursuits.

About a mile from the end of the village the thin smoke is curling, through a coppice of graceful larch, from the chimneys of a rose-clad cottage. See how it waves, through the early green, with a delicious blueness! The thin blue smoke-how dear in the mellowing landscape to the touch of the artist! A laughing burn-now a peaceful and waveless ford, in winter a hoarse