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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick, by Frank
+Lockwood
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick
+       A Lecture
+
+
+Author: Frank Lockwood
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 25, 2007  [eBook #21214]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAW AND LAWYERS OF PICKWICK***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1894 Roxburghe Press edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+The Law
+and
+Lawyers of Pickwick.
+
+
+_A LECTURE_.
+
+With an Original Drawing of "Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz."
+
+BY
+FRANK LOCKWOOD,
+Q.C. M.P.
+
+LONDON:
+_THE ROXBURGHE PRESS_,
+_3_, _Victoria Street_, _Westminster_,
+AND
+32, CHARING CROSS, S.W.
+
+Uniform with this Edition.
+
+CHARLES DICKENS' HEROINES AND WOMEN-FOLK:
+
+Some Thoughts Concerning Them.
+
+BY
+CHARLES F. RIDEAL.
+
+_With an original Drawing of Edith Dombey_.
+
+{Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz: p0.jpg}
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY.
+
+
+At the request of my friend Lord Russell of Killowen, then
+Attorney-General, I delivered this lecture at the Morley Hall, Hackney,
+on December 13th, 1893.  I had previously delivered it in the city of
+York at the request of some of my constituents.  I feel that some apology
+is required for its reproduction in a more permanent form, which apology
+I most respectfully tender to all who may read this little book.
+
+F. L.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAW AND LAWYERS OF "PICKWICK."
+
+
+Sir CHARLES RUSSELL: I stand but for a single instant between you and our
+friend, Mr. Lockwood.  He needs no introduction here; but I am sure I may
+in your name bid him a hearty welcome.
+
+Mr. FRANK LOCKWOOD: Mr. Attorney-General, Ladies and Gentlemen--It is
+some little time ago that I was first asked whether I was prepared to
+deliver a lecture.  Now I am bound at the outset to confess to you that
+lecturing has been and is very little in my way.  I spent some three
+years of my life at the University in avoiding lectures.  But it came
+about that in the constituency which I have the honour to represent, it
+was suggested to me that it was necessary for me to give a lecture, and
+it was further explained to me that it did not really very much matter as
+to what I lectured about.  I am bound to say there was a very great charm
+to me in the idea of lecturing my constituents.  I know it does sometimes
+occur that constituents lecture their representatives, especially in
+Scotland, and I was anxious, if I might, to have an opportunity of
+lecturing those who had so many opportunities of reading, no doubt very
+useful lectures to me.  But the difficulty was to find a subject.  My own
+profession suggested itself to me as a fit topic for a lecture, but
+unfortunately my profession is not a popular one.  I do not know how it
+is, but you never find a lawyer introduced either into a play or into a
+three-volume novel except for the purpose of exposing him as a scoundrel
+in the one, and having him kicked in the third act in the other.  I do
+not know how it is, but so it is.  All the heroes of fiction either in
+the drama or in the novel are found in the ranks--no, not in the ranks of
+the army, but in the officers of the army, or in the clergy.  It is so in
+novels, it is so in dramas; Mr. Attorney-General, I believe it is so in
+real life.
+
+And so, looking about for a subject, being reminded, as I was, that the
+subject of the law was unpopular, I turned--as I have often done in the
+hour of trouble--I turned to my Dickens, and there I found that at any
+rate in Dickens we have a great literary man who has been impartial in
+his treatment of lawyers.  He has seen both the good and the bad in them,
+and it occurred to me that my lecture might take the form of dealing with
+the lawyers of Dickens.  I soon found that was too great a subject to be
+dealt with within the short space which could be accorded to any
+reasonable lecturer by any reasonable audience.  I found that the novels
+of Dickens abounded with lawyers, to use a perhaps apt expression.  Having
+regard to my profession, they fairly bristled with them, and so I
+determined to take the lawyers of one of his books; and I chose as that
+book "Pickwick"; and I chose as my title "The Law and the Lawyers of
+'Pickwick.'"
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, it is an extraordinary thing when we look at this
+book, when we reflect that it contains within its pages no less than
+three hundred and sixty characters, all drawn vividly and sharply, all
+expressing different phases of human thought, and of human life, and
+every one of them original; when we reflect that that book was written by
+a young man of twenty-three years of age.  In that book I found that he
+portrayed with life-like fidelity constables, sheriffs' officers,
+beadles, ushers, clerks, solicitors, barristers, and last, but by no
+means least, a judge.  Every incident of the early life of this great
+author bore fruit in his writings.  No portion of his struggles and
+experiences seemed to have made a deeper impress on him than did those
+early days, as he said himself in the character of David Copperfield:--
+
+   If it should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative
+   that I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a
+   strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of
+   these characteristics.
+
+His first introduction to the terrors of the law was an unspeakably sad
+one--sad, indeed, to his affectionate and imaginative nature.  "I know,"
+he writes, "that we got on very badly with the butcher and baker, that
+very often we had not too much for dinner, and that at last my father was
+arrested."  He never forgot--how could he, knowing what we know the lad
+to have been?--often carrying messages to the dismal Marshalsea.  "I
+really believed," he wrote, "that they had broken my heart."  His first
+visit to his father he thus describes:--
+
+   My father was waiting for me in the lodge, and we went up to his room
+   (on the top story but one), and cried very much.  And he told me, I
+   remember, to take warning by the Marshalsea, and to observe that if a
+   man had twenty pounds a year and spent nineteen pounds nineteen
+   shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that a shilling spent
+   the other way would make him wretched.  I see the fire we sat before
+   now, with two bricks inside the rusted grate, one on each side, to
+   prevent its burning too many coals.  Some other debtor shared the room
+   with him, who came in by-and-by; and as the dinner was a joint stock
+   repast I was sent up to "Captain Porter" in the room overhead, with
+   Mr. Dickens's compliments, and I was his son, and could he, Captain
+   P., lend me a knife and fork?
+
+   Captain Porter lent the knife and fork, with his compliments in
+   return.  There was a very dirty lady in his room, and two wan girls,
+   his daughters, with shock heads of hair.  I thought I should not have
+   liked to borrow Captain Porter's comb.  The Captain himself was in the
+   last extremity of shabbiness; and if I could draw at all, I would draw
+   an accurate portrait of the old, old, brown great-coat he wore, with
+   no other coat below it.  His whiskers were large.  I saw his bed
+   rolled up in a corner; and what plates, and dishes, and pots he had on
+   a shelf; and I knew (God knows how!) that the two girls with the shock
+   heads were Captain Porter's natural children, and that the dirty lady
+   was not married to Captain P.  My timid, wondering station on his
+   threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes, I daresay;
+   but I came down to the room below with all this as surely in my
+   knowledge as the knife and fork were in my hand.
+
+When the stern necessities of the situation required the detention of Mr.
+Pickwick in the old Fleet Prison, we have produced a lifelike
+representation of the debtors' gaol; and I believe that the reforms which
+have made such an institution a thing of the past are in a great part
+owing to the vivid recollection which enabled him to point to the horrors
+and injustice which were practised in the sacred name of law.
+
+At the age of fifteen we find Dickens a bright, clever-looking youth in
+the office of Mr. Edward Blackmore, attorney-at-law in Gray's Inn,
+earning at first 13_s_. 6_d_. a week, afterwards advanced to 15_s_.
+Eighteen months' experience of this sort enabled him in the pages of
+Pickwick thus to describe lawyers' clerks:--
+
+   There are several grades of lawyers' clerks.  There is the articled
+   clerk, who has paid a premium, and is an attorney in perspective, who
+   runs a tailor's bill, receives invitations to parties, knows a family
+   in Gower Street, and another in Tavistock Square; who goes out of town
+   every Long Vacation to see his father, who keeps live horses
+   innumerable; and who is, in short, the very aristocrat of clerks.
+   There is the salaried clerk--out of door, or in door, as the case may
+   be--who devotes the major part of his thirty shillings a week to his
+   personal pleasure and adornment, repairs half-price to the Adelphi
+   Theatre at least three times a week, dissipates majestically at the
+   cider cellars afterwards, and is a dirty caricature of the fashion
+   which expired six months ago.  There is the middle-aged copying clerk,
+   with a large family, who is always shabby, and often drunk.  And there
+   are the office lads in their first surtouts, who feel a befitting
+   contempt for boys at day-schools; club as they go home at night for
+   saveloys and porter: and think there's nothing like "life."
+
+I fancy Dickens never rose above the status of office boy, and probably
+as such wore his first surtout.  We hear of him reporting later in the
+Lord Chancellor's Court, probably for some daily paper; but beyond the
+exception which I shall mention presently, we have no record of his
+taking an active and direct part in any of those mysterious rites that go
+to make up our legal procedure.
+
+Upon this question of the opportunities he had for knowing in what way a
+lawyer is trained, I must here acknowledge the debt of gratitude that I
+am under to my very good friend Mr. Henry Fielding Dickens, one of her
+Majesty's Counsel; and how rejoiced, Mr. Attorney-General, would that
+father have been had he been able to see the position which his son has
+won for himself.  He wrote to me a long and kind letter, in which he gave
+me further information as to his father's opportunity for observing
+lawyers and their mode of living, and he told me that which I did not
+know before, and which I think but few people knew before, namely, that
+his father had kept a term or two at one of the Inns of Court.  He had
+eaten the five or six dinners which is part of the necessary legal
+education for a barrister; and he had suffered in consequence the usual
+pangs of indigestion.  But it is not to that that I wish to allude to-
+night.  Dickens did that which I venture to think but few have done; for,
+giving up all idea of pursuing a legal education, and finding that the
+dinners did not agree with him, he got back from the Inns of Court some
+of the money which he had deposited at that Inn.  You are all familiar
+with the process which is known as getting butter out of a dog's mouth; I
+venture to think that that is an easy thing compared with getting money
+back from an Inn of Court.
+
+But that is not all that Mr. Dickens told me.  He wrote down for me an
+experience his father once had with the family solicitor, which, I think,
+is worth your hearing.  "My father's solicitor, Mr. Ouvry," he says, "was
+a very well-known man, a thorough man of the world, and one in whose
+breast reposed many of the secrets of the principal families of England.
+On one occasion my father was in treaty for a piece of land at the back
+of Gad's Hill, and it was proposed that there should be an interview with
+the owner, a farmer, a very acute man of business, and a very hard nut to
+crack.  It was arranged that the interview with him should be at Gad's
+Hill, and the solicitor came down for the purpose.  My father and Ouvry
+were sitting over their wine when the old man was announced.  'We had
+better go in to him,' said my father.  'No, no,' said the astute lawyer.
+'John,' said he, turning to the butler, 'show him into the study, and
+take him a bottle of the old port.'  Then turning to my father, 'A glass
+of port will do him good; it will soften him.'  After waiting about
+twenty minutes they went into the study; the farmer was sitting bolt
+upright in an arm-chair, stern and uncompromising; the bottle of port had
+not been touched.  Negotiations then proceeded very much in favour of the
+farmer, and a bargain was struck.  The old man then proceeded to turn his
+attention to the port, and in a very few minutes he had finished the
+bottle."
+
+Mr. Dickens also told me of his father's knowledge of the legal
+profession, and of the distinguished members of it.  Though not himself,
+he writes, of the legal profession, my father was very fond of lawyers.
+He numbered among his intimate friends Lord Denman, Lord Campbell, Mr.
+Justice Talfourd, Chief Justice Crockford; in fact, it is difficult to
+name any eminent lawyer who could not claim acquaintance, at any rate,
+with our great author.  And he tells me, too, an anecdote relating to a
+distinguished lawyer of the present day--Sir Henry Hawkins.  We nearly
+lost that great man, I think about the year 1851, on the occasion of some
+theatricals at Knebworth.  The play was _Every Man in his Humour_, and
+Frank Stone, the artist, father of Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A., was allowed to
+play a part with a sword.  (Those of you who have had any experience of
+theatrical matters know how dangerous it is to trust a sword to an
+amateur.)  He came up flourishing the sword, and if Mr. Hawkins had not
+ducked we should have lost that eminent man; but he did it just in time.
+
+Before I introduce you to the types of the judge, the counsel, the
+solicitors, let me say something to you of the district in which lawyers
+live, or rather in Dickens's time lived, and still do congregate.  From
+Gray's Inn in the north to the Temple in the south, from New Inn and
+Clement's Inn in the west to Barnard's Inn in the east.  I once lived
+myself in Clement's Inn, and heard the chimes go, too; and I remember one
+day I sat in my little room very near the sky (I do not know why it is
+that poverty always gets as near the sky as possible; but I should think
+it is because the general idea is that there is more sympathy in heaven
+than elsewhere), and as I sat there a knock came at the door, and the
+head of the porter of Clement's Inn presented itself to me.  It was the
+first of January, and he gravely gave me an orange and a lemon.  He had a
+basketful on his arm.  I asked for some explanation.  The only
+information forthcoming was that from time immemorial every tenant on New
+Year's Day was presented with an orange and a lemon, and that I was
+expected, and that every tenant was expected, to give half-a-crown to the
+porter.  Further inquiries from the steward gave me this explanation,
+that in old days when the river was not used merely as a sewer, the fruit
+was brought up in barges and boats to the steps from below the bridge and
+carried by porters through the Inn to Clare Market.  Toll was at first
+charged, and this toll was divided among the tenants whose convenience
+was interfered with; hence the old lines beginning "Oranges and lemons
+said the bells of St. Clement's."  I have often wondered whether the rest
+of the old catch had reason as well as rhyme.
+
+Dickens loved the old Inns and squares.  Traddles lived in Gray's Inn:
+Traddles who was in love with "the dearest girl in the world"; Tom Pinch
+and his sister used to meet near the fountain in the Middle Temple; Sir
+John Chester had rooms in Paper Buildings; Pip lived in Garden Court at
+the time of the collapse of Great Expectations; Mortimer Lightwood and
+Eugene Wrayburn had their queer domestic partnership in the Temple.  The
+scene of the murderous plot in "Hunted Down" is also laid in the Temple,
+"at the top of a lonely corner house overlooking the river," probably the
+end house of King's Bench Walk.  Mr. Grewgious, Herbert Pocket, and Joe
+Gargery are associated with Staple Inn and Barnard's Inn.
+
+Lincoln's Inn has not been forgotten; for though Mr. Tulkinghorn lived in
+the Fields, yet Serjeant Snubbin was to be found in Lincoln's Inn Old
+Square.
+
+I never could understand why Dickens located the Serjeant in the realms
+of Equity; but what should interest us more to-night is the fact that the
+greater part of "Pickwick" was written in Furnival's Inn, which, as
+Dickens describes it, was "a shady, quiet place echoing to the footsteps
+of the stragglers there, and rather monotonous and gloomy on summer
+evenings."
+
+But to know the Inns as Dickens knew them, let us accompany Mr. Pickwick
+to the Magpie and Stump in search of Mr. Lowten, Mr. Perker's clerk.
+
+   "Is Mr. Lowten here, ma'am?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
+
+   "Yes, he is, sir," replied the landlady.  "Here, Charley, show the
+   gentleman in to Mr. Lowten."
+
+   "The gen'lm'n can't go in just now," said a shambling pot-boy, with a
+   red head, "'cos Mr. Lowten's singin' a comic song, and he'll put him
+   out.  He'll be done d'rectly, sir."
+
+Well, you know, respectable solicitors (clerks) don't sing comic songs at
+public houses nowadays, but that is how Mr. Pickwick found Mr. Lowten.
+
+   "Would you like to join us?" said Mr. Lowten, when at length he had
+   finished his comic song and been introduced to Mr. Pickwick.  And I am
+   very glad that Mr. Pickwick did join them, as he heard something of
+   the old Inns from old Jack Bamber.
+
+   "I have been to-night, gentlemen," said Mr. Pickwick, hoping to start
+   a subject which all the company could take a part in discussing--"I
+   have been to-night in a place which you all know very well, doubtless,
+   but which I have not been in for some years, and know very little of;
+   I mean Gray's Inn, gentlemen.  Curious little nooks in a great place,
+   like London, these old Inns are."
+
+   "By Jove!" said the chairman, whispering across the table to Mr.
+   Pickwick, "you have hit upon something that one of us, at least, would
+   talk upon for ever.  You'll draw old Jack Bamber out; he was never
+   heard to talk about anything else but the Inns, and he has lived alone
+   in them till he's half crazy."
+
+   "Aha!" said the old man, a brief description of whose manner and
+   appearance concluded the last chapter, "aha! who was talking about the
+   Inns?"
+
+   "I was, sir," replied Mr. Pickwick; "I was observing what singular old
+   places they are."
+
+   "_You_!" said the old man, contemptuously.  "What do _you_ know of the
+   time when young men shut themselves up in those lonely rooms, and read
+   and read, hour after hour, and night after night, till their reason
+   wandered beneath their midnight studies; till their mental powers were
+   exhausted: till morning's light brought no freshness or health to
+   them; and they sank beneath the unnatural devotion of their youthful
+   energies to their dry old books?  Coming down to a later time, and a
+   very different day, what do _you_ know of the gradual sinking beneath
+   consumption, or the quick wasting of fever--the grand results of
+   'life' and dissipation--which men have undergone in these same rooms?
+   How many vain pleaders for mercy, do you think, have turned away heart-
+   sick from the lawyer's office, to find a resting-place in the Thames,
+   or a refuge in the gaol?  They are no ordinary houses, those.  There
+   is not a panel in the old wainscoting but what, if it were endowed
+   with the powers of speech and memory, could start from the wall and
+   tell its tale of horror--the romance of life, sir, the romance of
+   life!  Commonplace as they may seem now, I tell you they are strange
+   old places, and I would rather hear many a legend with a
+   terrific-sounding name than the true history of one old set of
+   chambers."
+
+   There was something so odd in the old man's sudden energy, and the
+   subject which had called it forth, that Mr. Pickwick was prepared with
+   no observation in reply; and the old man checking his impetuosity, and
+   resuming the leer, which had disappeared during his previous
+   excitement, said,--
+
+   "Look at them in another light; their most common-place and least
+   romantic.  What fine places of slow torture they are!  Think of the
+   needy man who has spent his all, beggared himself and pinched his
+   friends to enter the profession, which will never yield him a morsel
+   of bread.  The waiting--the hope--the disappointment--the fear--the
+   misery--the poverty--the blight on his hopes and end to his career--the
+   suicide, perhaps, or the shabby, slipshod drunkard.  Am I not right
+   about them?"  And the old man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in
+   delight at having found another point of view in which to place his
+   favourite subject.
+
+   Mr. Pickwick eyed the old man with great curiosity, and the remainder
+   of the company smiled, and looked on in silence.
+
+   "Talk of your German universities," said the little old man.  "Pooh!
+   pooh! there's romance enough at home without going half a mile for it;
+   only people never think of it.'"
+
+   "I never thought of the romance of this particular subject before,
+   certainly," said Mr. Pickwick, laughing.
+
+   "To be sure you didn't," said the little old man, "of course not.  As
+   a friend of mine used to say to me, 'What is there in chambers in
+   particular?'  'Queer old places,' said I.  'Not at all,' said he.
+   'Lonely,' said I.  'Not a bit of it,' said he.  He died one morning of
+   apoplexy, as he was going to open his outer door.  Fell with his head
+   in his own letter-box, and there he lay for eighteen months.  Everybody
+   thought he'd gone out of town.
+
+   "And how was he found out at last?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
+
+   "The benchers determined to have his door broken open, as he hadn't
+   paid any rent for two years.  So they did.  Forced the lock; and a
+   very dusty skeleton in a blue coat, black knee-shorts, and silks, fell
+   forward in the arms of the porter who opened the door.  Queer, that.
+   Rather, perhaps?"  The little old man put his head more on one side,
+   and rubbed his hands with unspeakable glee.
+
+   "I know another case," said the little old man, when his chuckles had
+   in some degree subsided.  "It occurred in Clifford's Inn.  Tenant of a
+   top set--bad character--shut himself up in his bedroom closet, and
+   took a dose of arsenic.  The steward thought he had run away; opened
+   the door and put a bill up.  Another man came, took the chambers,
+   furnished them, and went to live there.  Somehow or other he couldn't
+   sleep--always restless and uncomfortable.  'Odd,' says he.  'I'll make
+   the other room my bedchamber, and this my sitting-room.'  He made the
+   change, and slept very well at night, but suddenly found that,
+   somehow, he couldn't read in the evening; he got nervous and
+   uncomfortable, and used to be always snuffing his candles and staring
+   about him.  'I can't make this out,' said he, when he came home from
+   the play one night, and was drinking a glass of cold grog, with his
+   back to the wall, in order that he mightn't be able to fancy there was
+   any one behind him--'I can't make it out,' said he; and just then his
+   eyes rested on the little closet that had been always locked up, and a
+   shudder ran through his whole frame from top to toe.  'I have felt
+   this strange feeling before,' said he.  'I can't help thinking there's
+   something wrong about that closet.'  He made a strong effort, plucked
+   up his courage, shivered the lock with a blow or two of the poker,
+   opened the door, and there, sure enough, standing bolt upright in the
+   corner, was the last tenant, with a little bottle clasped firmly in
+   his hand, and his face--well!"  As the little old man concluded he
+   looked round on the attentive faces of his wondering auditory with a
+   smile of grim delight.
+
+   "What strange things these are you tell us of, sir," said Mr.
+   Pickwick, minutely scanning the old man's countenance by the aid of
+   his glasses.
+
+   "Strange!" said the little old man.  "Nonsense; you think them strange
+   because you know nothing about it.  They are funny, but not uncommon."
+
+   "Funny!" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, involuntarily.
+
+   "Yes, funny, are they not?" replied the little old man, with a
+   diabolical leer; and then, without pausing for an answer, he
+   continued,--
+
+   "I knew another man--let me see--forty years ago now--who took an old,
+   damp, rotten set of chambers in one of the most ancient Inns, that had
+   been shut up and empty for years and years before.  There were lots of
+   old women's stories about the place, and it certainly was very far
+   from being a cheerful one; but he was poor, and the rooms were cheap,
+   and that would have been quite a sufficient reason for him, if they
+   had been ten times worse than they really were.  He was obliged to
+   take some mouldering fixtures that were on the place, and, among the
+   rest, was a great lumbering wooden press for papers, with large glass
+   doors, and a green curtain inside; a pretty useless thing for him, for
+   he had no papers to put in it; and as to his clothes, he carried them
+   about with him, and that wasn't very hard work either.  Well, he had
+   moved in all his furniture--it wasn't quite a truck-full--and had
+   sprinkled it about the room, so as to make the four chairs look as
+   much like a dozen as possible, and was sitting down before the fire at
+   night, drinking the first glass of two gallons of whisky he had
+   ordered on credit, wondering whether it would ever be paid for, and if
+   so, in how many years' time, when his eyes encountered the glass doors
+   of the wooden press.  'Ah,' says he, 'if I hadn't been obliged to take
+   that ugly article at the old broker's valuation I might have got
+   something comfortable for the money.  I'll tell you what it is, old
+   fellow,' he said, speaking aloud to the press, having nothing else to
+   speak to, 'if it wouldn't cost more to break up your old carcase than
+   it would ever be worth afterwards, I'd have a fire out of you in less
+   than no time.'  He had hardly spoken the words when a sound,
+   resembling a faint groan, appeared to issue from the interior of the
+   case.  It startled him at first, but thinking, on a moment's
+   reflection, that it must be some young fellow in the next chamber, who
+   had been dining out, he put his feet on the fender, and raised the
+   poker to stir the fire.  At that moment the sound was repeated, and
+   one of the glass doors slowly opening disclosed a pale and emaciated
+   figure in soiled and worn apparel standing erect in the press.  The
+   figure was tall and thin, and the countenance expressive of care and
+   anxiety; but there was something in the hue of the skin, and gaunt and
+   unearthly appearance of the whole form, which no being of this world
+   was ever seen to wear.  'Who are you?' said the new tenant, turning
+   very pale, poising the poker in his hand, however, and taking a very
+   decent aim at the countenance of the figure.  'Who are you?'  'Don't
+   throw that poker at me,' replied the form.  'If you hurled it with
+   ever so sure an aim, it would pass through me without resistance, and
+   expend its force on the wood behind.  I am a spirit.'  'And, pray,
+   what do you want here?' faltered the tenant.  'In this room,' replied
+   the apparition, 'my worldly ruin was worked, and I and my children
+   beggared.  In this press the papers in a long, long suit, which
+   accumulated for years, were deposited.  In this room, when I had died
+   of grief and long-deferred hope, two wily harpies divided the wealth
+   for which I had contested during a wretched existence, and of which,
+   at last, not one farthing was left for my unhappy descendants.  I
+   terrified them from the spot, and since that day have prowled by
+   night--the only period at which I can re-visit the earth--about the
+   scenes of my long-protracted misery.  This apartment is mine; leave it
+   to me.'  'If you insist on making your appearance here,' said the
+   tenant, who had time to collect his presence of mind during this prosy
+   statement of the ghost's, 'I shall give up possession with the
+   greatest pleasure; but I should like to ask you one question, if you
+   will allow me.'  'Say on,' said the apparition, sternly.  'Well,' said
+   the tenant, 'I don't apply the observation personally to you, because
+   it is equally applicable to most of the ghosts I ever heard of; but it
+   does appear to me somewhat inconsistent that when you have an
+   opportunity of visiting the fairest spots of earth--for I suppose
+   space is nothing to you--you should always return exactly to the very
+   places where you have been most miserable.'  'Egad, that's very true;
+   I never thought of that before,' said the ghost.  'You see, sir,'
+   pursued the tenant, 'this is a very uncomfortable room.  From the
+   appearance of that press I should be disposed to say that it is not
+   wholly free from bugs; and I really think you might find much more
+   comfortable quarters, to say nothing of the climate of London, which
+   is extremely disagreeable.'  'You are very right, sir,' said the
+   ghost, politely; 'it never struck me till now; I'll try a change of
+   air directly.'  In fact, he began to vanish as he spoke--his legs,
+   indeed, had quite disappeared.  'And if, sir,' said the tenant,
+   calling after him, 'if you _would_ have the goodness to suggest to the
+   other ladies and gentlemen who are now engaged in haunting old empty
+   houses, that they might be much more comfortable elsewhere, you will
+   confer a very great benefit on society.'  'I will,' replied the ghost;
+   'we must be dull fellows, very dull fellows indeed; I can't imagine
+   how we can have been so stupid.'  With these words the spirit
+   disappeared; and what is rather remarkable," added the old man, with a
+   shrewd look round the table, "he never came back again."
+
+But I must not delay longer over where the lawyers live.  The lawyers of
+Dickens furnish me with three types of the practising solicitor or
+attorney, each admirable in its way.  First, Mr. Perker, whose aid Mr.
+Wardle seeks to release Miss Rachel Wardle from that scoundrel Jingle.  He
+is described as a little high-dried man, with a dark squeezed-up face,
+and small restless black eyes, that kept winking and twinkling on each
+side of his little inquisitive nose, as if they were playing a perpetual
+game of peep-bo with that feature.  He was dressed all in black, with
+boots as shiny as his eyes, a low white neckcloth, and a clean shirt with
+a frill to it.  A gold watch-chain and seals depended from his fob.  He
+carried his black kid gloves _in_ his hands, and not _on_ them; and as he
+spoke, thrust his wrists beneath his coat-tails, with the air of a man
+who was in the habit of propounding some regular posers.
+
+He lived at Montague Place, Russell Square, and had offices in Gray's
+Inn, and appears to have had a large and very respectable business, into
+the details of which we have not time to travel; but perhaps the
+cleverest piece of business he ever did was when, as Agent to the
+Honourable Samuel Slumkey, of Slumkey Hall, he brought about the return
+of that honourable gentleman as Member of Parliament.  I suppose we have
+all read the account of that memorable election, which is a pretty
+accurate record of what went on at Eatanswill, and I am credibly informed
+at many other places.
+
+Mr. Pickwick and his companions, in their quest for experience, set out
+for the excitement of a contested election, and found their way to the
+agent's room.
+
+   "Ah--ah, my dear sir," said the little man, advancing to meet him;
+   "very happy to see you, my dear sir, very.  Pray sit down.  So you
+   have carried your intention into effect.  You have come down here to
+   see an election--eh?"
+
+   Mr. Pickwick replied in the affirmative.
+
+   "Spirited contest, my dear sir," said the little man.
+
+   "I'm delighted to hear it," said Mr. Pickwick, rubbing his hands.  "I
+   like to see sturdy patriotism, on whatever side it is called
+   forth;--and so it's a spirited contest?"
+
+   "Oh, yes," said the little man, "very much so indeed.  We have opened
+   all the public-houses in the place, and left our adversary nothing but
+   the beer-shops--masterly stroke of policy that, my dear sir, eh?"
+
+   The little man smiled complacently, and took a large pinch of snuff.
+
+   "And what are the probabilities as to the result of the contest?"
+   inquired Mr. Pickwick.
+
+   "Why, doubtful, my dear sir; rather doubtful as yet," replied the
+   little man.  "Fizkin's people have got three-and-thirty voters in the
+   lock-up coach-house at the White Hart."
+
+   "In the coach-house!" said Mr. Pickwick, considerably astonished by
+   this second stroke of policy.
+
+   "They keep 'em locked up there till they want 'em," resumed the little
+   man.  "The effect of that is, you see, to prevent our getting at them;
+   and even if we could, it would be of no use, for they keep them very
+   drunk on purpose.  Smart fellow Fizkin's agent--very smart fellow
+   indeed."
+
+   Mr. Pickwick stared, but said nothing.
+
+   "We are pretty confident, though," said Mr. Perker, sinking his voice
+   almost to a whisper.  "We had a little tea-party here last night--five-
+   and-forty women, my dear sir--and gave every one of 'em a green
+   parasol when she went away."
+
+   "A parasol?" said Mr. Pickwick.
+
+   "Fact, my dear sir, fact.  Five-and-forty green parasols at seven and
+   sixpence a-piece.  All women like finery--extraordinary the effect of
+   those parasols.  Secured all their husbands, and half their
+   brothers--beat stockings, and flannel, and all that sort of thing
+   hollow.  My idea, my dear sir, entirely.  Hail, rain, or sunshine, you
+   can't walk half-a-dozen yards up the street without encountering half-
+   a-dozen green parasols."
+
+   On the day of the election the stable yard exhibited unequivocal
+   symptoms of the glory and strength of the Eatanswill Blues.  There was
+   a regular army of blue flags, some with one handle, and some with two,
+   exhibiting appropriate devices, in golden characters four feet high,
+   and stout in proportion.  There was a grand band of trumpets,
+   bassoons, and drums, marshalled four abreast, and earning their money,
+   if ever men did, especially the drum beaters, who were very muscular.
+   There were bodies of constables with blue staves, twenty committee men
+   with blue scarves, and a mob of voters with blue cockades.  There were
+   electors on horseback and electors on foot.  There was an open
+   carriage and four, for the Honourable Samuel Slumkey; and there were
+   four carriages and pair, for his friends and supporters; and the flags
+   were rustling, and the band was playing, and the constables were
+   swearing, and the twenty committee men were squabbling, and the mob
+   were shouting, and the horses were backing, and the post-boys were
+   perspiring; and everybody, and everything, then and there assembled,
+   was for the special use, behoof, honour, and renown, of the Honourable
+   Samuel Slumkey, of Slumkey Hall, one of the candidates for the
+   representation of the Borough of Eatanswill, in the Commons House of
+   Parliament of the United Kingdom.
+
+   Loud and long were the cheers, and mighty was the rustling of one of
+   the blue flags, with "Liberty of the Press" inscribed thereon, when
+   the sandy head of Mr. Pott was discerned in one of the windows by the
+   mob beneath; and tremendous was the enthusiasm when the Honourable
+   Samuel Slumkey himself, in top boots, and a blue neckerchief, advanced
+   and seized the hand of the said Pott, and melodramatically testified
+   by gestures to the crowd his ineffaceable obligations to the
+   _Eatanswill Gazette_.
+
+   "Is everything ready?" said the Honourable Samuel Slumkey to Mr.
+   Perker.
+
+   "Everything, my dear sir," was the little man's reply.
+
+   "Nothing has been omitted, I hope?" said the Honourable Samuel
+   Slumkey.
+
+   "Nothing has been left undone, my dear sir--nothing whatever.  There
+   are twenty washed men at the street door for you to shake hands with;
+   and six children in arms that you're to pat on the head, and inquire
+   the age of; be particular about the children, my dear sir,--it has
+   always a great effect, that sort of thing."
+
+   "I'll take care," said the Honourable Samuel Slumkey.
+
+   "And perhaps, my dear sir," said the cautious little man, "perhaps if
+   you _could_--I don't mean to say it's indispensable--but if you
+   _could_ manage to kiss one of 'em it would produce a very great
+   impression on the crowd."
+
+   "Wouldn't it have as good an effect if the proposer or seconder did
+   that?" said the Honourable Samuel Slumkey.
+
+   "Why, I am afraid it wouldn't," replied the agent; "if it were done by
+   yourself, my dear sir, I think it would make you very popular."
+
+   "Very well," said the Honourable Samuel Slumkey, with a resigned air,
+   "then it must be done.  That's all."
+
+   "Arrange the procession," cried the twenty committee men.
+
+   Amidst the cheers of the assembled throng, the band, and the
+   constables, and the committee men, and the voters, and the horsemen,
+   and the carriages took their places--each of the two-horse vehicles
+   being closely packed with as many gentlemen as could manage to stand
+   upright in it; and that assigned to Mr. Perker containing Mr.
+   Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, Mr. Snodgrass, and about half-a-dozen of the
+   committee beside.
+
+   There was a moment of awful suspense as the procession waited for the
+   Honourable Samuel Slumkey to step into his carriage.  Suddenly the
+   crowd set up a great cheering.
+
+   "He has come out," said little Mr. Perker, greatly excited; the more
+   so as their position did not enable them to see what was going
+   forward.
+
+   Another cheer, much louder.
+
+   "He has shaken hands with the men," cried the little agent.
+
+   Another cheer, far more vehement.
+
+   "He has patted the babies on the head," said Mr. Perker, trembling
+   with anxiety.
+
+   A roar of applause that rent the air.
+
+   "He has kissed one of 'em!" exclaimed the delighted little man.
+
+   A second roar.
+
+   "He has kissed another," gasped the excited manager.
+
+   A third roar.
+
+   "He's kissing 'em all!" screamed the enthusiastic little gentleman.
+   And hailed by the deafening shouts of the multitude the procession
+   moved on.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, according to our modern ideas this account does not
+do much to raise Mr. Perker in our estimation; but the best testimonial
+to his memory is to be found in Mr. Pickwick's observation when, being at
+last free from all his legal difficulties, he proposed to settle up with
+his lawyer.
+
+   "Well, now," said Mr. Pickwick, "let me have a settlement with you."
+
+   "Of the same kind as the last?" inquired Perker, with another laugh,
+   for Mr. Pickwick had just been dismissing Messrs. Dodson and Fogg with
+   some strong language indeed.
+
+   "Not exactly," said Mr. Pickwick, drawing out his pocket-book, and
+   shaking the little man heartily by the hand; "I only mean a pecuniary
+   settlement.  You have done me many acts of kindness that I can never
+   repay, and have no wish to repay, for I prefer continuing the
+   obligation."
+
+   With this preface the two friends dived into some very complicated
+   accounts and vouchers, which, having been duly displayed and gone
+   through by Perker, were at once discharged by Mr. Pickwick with many
+   professions of esteem and friendship.
+
+Never was bill of costs so pleasantly discharged, though I know many
+lawyers who have won the friendship and esteem of their clients.
+
+The next type is that of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, of Freeman's Court,
+Cornhill.  The character of the genial partner is best described by one
+of his clerks in a conversation overheard by Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller
+while waiting for an interview with this celebrated firm.
+
+   "There was such a game with Fogg here this morning," said the man in
+   the brown coat, "while Jack was upstairs sorting the papers, and you
+   two were gone to the stamp-office.  Fogg was down here opening the
+   letters when that chap as we issued the writ against at Camberwell,
+   you know, came in--what's his name again?"
+
+   "Ramsey," said the clerk who had spoken to Mr. Pickwick.
+
+   "Ah, Ramsey--a precious seedy-looking customer.  'Well, sir,' says old
+   Fogg, looking at him very fierce--you know his way--'well, sir, have
+   you come to settle?'  'Yes, I have, sir,' said Ramsey, putting his
+   hand in his pocket and bringing out the money; 'the debt's two pound
+   ten, and the costs three pound five, and here it is, sir,' and he
+   sighed like bricks as he lugged out the money, done up in a bit of
+   blotting-paper.  Old Fogg looked first at the money, and then at him,
+   and then he coughed in his rum way, so that I knew something was
+   coming.  'You don't know there's a declaration filed, which increases
+   the costs materially, I suppose?' said Fogg.  'You don't say that,
+   sir,' said Ramsey, starting back; 'the time was only out last night,
+   sir.'  'I do say it, though,' said Fogg; 'my clerk's just gone to file
+   it.  Hasn't Mr. Jackson gone to file that declaration in Bullman and
+   Ramsey, Mr. Wicks?'  Of course I said yes, and then Fogg coughed
+   again, and looked at Ramsey.  'My God!' said Ramsey; 'and here have I
+   nearly driven myself mad, scraping this money together, and all to no
+   purpose.'  'None at all,' said Fogg, coolly; 'so you had better go
+   back and scrape some more together, and bring it here in time.'  'I
+   can't get it, by God!' said Ramsey, striking the desk with his fist.
+   'Don't bully me, sir,' said Fogg, getting into a passion on purpose.
+   'I am not bullying you, sir,' said Ramsey.  'You are,' said Fogg; 'get
+   out, sir; get out of this office, sir, and come back, sir, when you
+   know how to behave yourself.'  Well, Ramsey tried to speak, but Fogg
+   wouldn't let him, so he put the money in his pocket and sneaked out.
+   The door was scarcely shut when old Fogg turned round to me, with a
+   sweet smile on his face, and drew the declaration out of his coat
+   pocket.  'Here, Wicks,' said Fogg, 'take a cab and go down to the
+   Temple as quick as you can and file that.  The costs are quite safe,
+   for he's a steady man with a large family, at a salary of five-and-
+   twenty shillings a week; and if he gives us a warrant of attorney, as
+   he must in the end, I know his employers will see it paid, so we may
+   as well get all we can out of him, Mr. Wicks; it's a Christian act to
+   do it, Mr. Wicks, for with his large family and small income he'll be
+   all the better for a good lesson against getting into debt--won't he,
+   Mr. Wicks, won't he?' and he smiled so good-naturedly as he went away
+   that it was delightful to see him.  'He is a capital man of business,'
+   said Wicks, in a tone of the deepest admiration; 'capital, isn't he?'"
+
+Mr. Fogg, we are told, was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable diet sort
+of man, in a black coat, and dark-mixtured trousers; and Mr. Dodson was a
+plump, portly, stern-looking man, with a loud voice.  And it was from
+these worthies that Mr. Pickwick had received a letter dated the 28th of
+August, 1827.
+
+   FREEMAN'S COURT, CORNHILL.
+   _Bardell against Pickwick_.
+
+   SIR,--Having been instructed by Mrs. Martha Bardell to commence an
+   action against you for a breach of promise of marriage, for which the
+   plaintiff lays her damages at fifteen hundred pounds, we beg to inform
+   you that a writ has been issued against you in this suit in the Court
+   of Common Pleas, and request to know, by return of post, the name of
+   your attorney in London, who will accept service thereof.
+
+   We are, Sir,
+   Your obedient servants,
+   DODSON AND FOGG.
+   MR. SAMUEL PICKWICK.
+
+I am bound to say that Mr. Pickwick did not conduct himself with his
+usual dignity on the occasion of his interview on the subject of this
+letter.  The two sharp practitioners had certainly commenced an action
+against him on grounds which, though definite, were wholly inadequate.
+But in this alone there was nothing to justify the very violent language
+of Mr. Pickwick.
+
+   "Very well, gentlemen, very well," said Mr. Pickwick, rising in person
+   and wrath at the same time; "you shall hear from my solicitor,
+   gentlemen."
+
+   "We shall be very happy to do so," said Fogg, rubbing his hands.
+
+   "Very," said Dodson, opening the door.
+
+   "And before I go, gentlemen," said the excited Mr. Pickwick, turning
+   round on the landing, "permit me to say, that of all the disgraceful
+   and rascally proceedings--"
+
+   "Stay, sir, stay," interposed Dodson, with great politeness.  "Mr.
+   Jackson!  Mr. Wicks!"
+
+   "Sir," said the two clerks, appearing at the bottom of the stairs.
+
+   "I merely want you to hear what this gentleman says," replied Dodson.
+   "Pray go on, sir--disgraceful and rascally proceedings, I think you
+   said?"
+
+   "I did," said Mr. Pickwick, thoroughly roused.  "I said, sir, that of
+   all the disgraceful and rascally proceedings that ever were attempted
+   this is the most so.  I repeat it, sir."
+
+   "You hear that, Mr. Wicks?" said Dodson.
+
+   "You won't forget these expressions, Mr. Jackson?" said Fogg.
+
+   "Perhaps you would like to call us swindlers, sir," said Dodson.  "Pray
+   do, sir, if you feel disposed; now pray do, sir."
+
+   "I do," said Mr. Pickwick.  "You _are_ swindlers."
+
+   "Very good," said Dodson.  "You can hear down there, I hope, Mr.
+   Wicks?"
+
+   "Oh, yes, sir," said Wicks.
+
+   "You had better come up a step or two higher if you can't," added Mr.
+   Fogg.  "Go on, sir; do go on.  You had better call us thieves, sir; or
+   perhaps you would like to assault one of us.  Pray do it, sir, if you
+   would; we will not make the slightest resistance.  Pray do it, sir."
+
+   As Fogg put himself very temptingly within the reach of Mr. Pickwick's
+   clenched fist there is little doubt that gentleman would have complied
+   with his earnest entreaty but for the interposition of Sam, who,
+   hearing the dispute, emerged from the office, mounted the stairs, and
+   seized his master by the arm.
+
+   "You just come avay," said Mr. Weller.  "Battledore and shuttlecock's
+   a wery good game, when you ain't the shuttlecock and two lawyers the
+   battledores, in which case it gets too excitin' to be pleasant.  Come
+   avay, sir.  If you want to ease your mind by blowing up somebody come
+   out into the court and blow up me; but it's rayther too expensive work
+   to be carried on here."
+
+With that good advice Mr. Weller took Mr. Pickwick away from the lawyers'
+office.  But before we say anything about the trial itself let me
+introduce to you another solicitor not so well known as either Perker or
+Dodson and Fogg, but to my mind the most interesting as he certainly is
+the most humorous.
+
+Mr. Pell had the honour of being the legal adviser of Mr. Weller, Senior.
+The latter gentleman always stoutly maintained that if Mr. Pickwick had
+had the services of Mr. Pell, and had established an _alibi_, the great
+case of Bardell against Pickwick would have been decided otherwise.  Mr.
+Pell practised in the Insolvency Court.  He "was a fat, flabby, pale man,
+in a surtout which looked green one moment, and brown the next, with a
+velvet collar of the same chameleon tints.  His forehead was narrow, his
+face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature,
+indignant with the propensities she observed in him at his birth, had
+given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered.  Being short-necked
+and asthmatic, however, he respired principally through this feature; so,
+perhaps, what it wanted in ornament, it made up in usefulness."
+
+Mr. Pell had successfully piloted Mr. Weller through the Insolvency
+Court, and his services were sought to carry out the process by which Sam
+Weller became a voluntary prisoner in the Fleet at the suit of his
+obdurate parent.
+
+   "The late Lord Chancellor, gentlemen, was very fond of me," said Mr.
+   Pell.
+
+   "And wery creditable in him, too," interposed Mr. Weller.
+
+   "Hear, hear," assented Mr. Pell's client.  "Why shouldn't he be?"
+
+   "Ah, why, indeed!" said a very red-faced man, who had said nothing
+   yet, and who looked extremely unlikely to say anything more.  "Why
+   shouldn't he?"
+
+   A murmur of assent ran through the company.
+
+   "I remember, gentlemen," said Mr. Pell, "dining with him on one
+   occasion.  There was only us two, but everything as splendid as if
+   twenty people had been expected--the great seal on a dumb-waiter at
+   his right, and a man in a bag-wig and suit of armour guarding the mace
+   with a drawn sword and silk stockings--which is perpetually done,
+   gentlemen, night and day; when he said, 'Pell,' he said, 'no false
+   delicacy, Pell.  You're a man of talent; you can get anybody through
+   the Insolvent Court, Pell; and your country should be proud of you.'
+   Those were his very words.  'My lord,' I said, 'you flatter me.'
+   'Pell,' he said, 'if I do I'm damned.'"
+
+   "Did he say that?" inquired Mr. Weller.
+
+   "He did," replied Pell.
+
+   "Vell, then," said Mr. Weller, "I say Parliament ought to ha' took it
+   up; and if he'd been a poor man they _would_ ha' done it."
+
+   "But, my dear friend," argued Mr. Pell, "it was in confidence."
+
+   "In what?" said Mr. Weller.
+
+   "In confidence."
+
+   "Oh! wery good," replied Mr. Weller, after a little reflection.  "If
+   he damned hisself in confidence, o' course that was another thing."
+
+   "Of course it was," said Mr. Pell.  "The distinction's obvious, you
+   will perceive."
+
+   "Alters the case entirely," said Mr. Weller.  "Go on, sir."
+
+   "No, I will not go on, sir," said Mr. Pell, in a low and serious tone.
+   "You have reminded me, sir, that this conversation was private--private
+   and confidential, gentlemen.  Gentlemen, I am a professional man.  It
+   may be that I am a good deal looked up to in my profession--it may be
+   that I am not.  Most people know.  I say nothing.  Observations have
+   already been made in this room injurious to the reputation of my noble
+   friend.  You will excuse me, gentlemen; I was imprudent.  I feel that
+   I have no right to mention this matter without his concurrence.  Thank
+   you, sir; thank you."
+
+   Thus delivering himself, Mr. Pell thrust his hands into his pockets,
+   and, frowning grimly around, rattled three-halfpence with terrible
+   determination.
+
+We hear also of Mrs. Pell.
+
+   Mrs. Pell was a tall figure, a splendid woman, with a noble shape, and
+   a nose, gentlemen, formed to command, gentlemen, and be majestic.  She
+   was very much attached to me--very much--highly connected, too.  Her
+   mother's brother, gentlemen, failed for eight hundred pounds, as a law
+   stationer.
+
+So we have, ladies and gentlemen, these three types of this honourable
+profession.  To my mind they have never been quite placed in their proper
+order.  Perker has been universally admired and looked up to; Dodson and
+Fogg have been universally denounced; Mr. Pell has been suffered to
+remain unnoticed.  Well, let us judge fairly the merits of these three
+gentlemen.
+
+If Mr. Perker had lived to-day instead of in the year 1827, he would
+undoubtedly have been tried for the part he took in the Eatanswill
+election.  What is the charge, after all, against Messrs. Dodson and
+Fogg, except that question with regard to poor Ramsey?--which, after all,
+is only a story told by the clerk Wicks, upon whom I do not think we can
+place very much reliance.  What else did Dodson and Fogg do that should
+make them the object of obloquy and universal execration?  They brought
+an action for breach of promise of marriage--some people think such
+actions should never be brought at all--they brought the action for
+breach of promise of marriage; they made a little arrangement with regard
+to costs, unprofessional if you like, but still nothing to bring down
+upon them the denouncement to which they have been made subject.  So far
+as Mr. Pickwick was concerned, he had absolutely nothing to complain of
+in their conduct; and I venture to say it was most reprehensible in him
+under the circumstances to use the language which he did upon the
+occasion which I have quoted.  But against Mr. Pell there is absolutely
+nothing to be said.  He perhaps romanced a little with regard to his
+friendship with the Lord Chancellor; but which of us would not like to be
+on friendly terms with the Lord Chancellor?  On that trifling
+exaggeration there is nothing practically to be urged against him; and
+while I claim for Mr. Pell the position of premier in this matter, I am
+sorry I have to accord to Mr. Perker the third place.
+
+Well, now, although I would love to linger over Mr. Pell, I must pass on
+to say something of the counsel mentioned in this admirable work.  But
+before I consider the more eminent and the more conspicuous of these,
+there is one member of the Bar who is seldom alluded to, but of whom I
+wish to say something to-night.  I refer to Mr. Prosee.  Mr. Prosee very
+few of you have ever heard of.  He dined with Mr. Perker at Montague
+Place, Russell Square, on one occasion.  It must have been rather a dull
+dinner party, for there were present two good country agents, Mr. Snicks,
+the Life Office Secretary, Mr. Prosee, the eminent counsel, three
+solicitors, one Commissioner of Bankrupts, a special pleader from the
+Temple, a small-eyed, peremptory young gentleman, his pupil, who had
+written a lively book about the law of demises, with a vast quantity of
+marginal notes and references; and several other eminent and
+distinguished personages, including the Mr. Prosee just mentioned.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, I do not know how it is, but I have always
+associated Mr. Prosee with the Equity Bar.  It may be that his name
+suggests it.
+
+   Well, I come now to the counsel which is better known to you, namely
+   Serjeant Snubbin.
+
+   "We've done everything that's necessary," said Mr. Perker.  "I have
+   retained Serjeant Snubbin."
+
+   "Is he a good man?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
+
+   "Good man!" replied Perker.  "Bless your heart and soul, my dear sir,
+   Serjeant Snubbin is at the very top of his profession.  Gets treble
+   the business of any man in court--engaged in every case.  You needn't
+   mention it abroad, but we say--we of the profession--that Serjeant
+   Snubbin leads the court by the nose."
+
+   "I should like to see him," said Mr. Pickwick.
+
+   "See Serjeant Snubbin, my dear sir!" rejoined Perker, in utter
+   amazement.  "Pooh, pooh! my dear sir, impossible!  See Serjeant
+   Snubbin!  Bless you, my dear sir, such a thing was never heard of
+   without a consultation fee being previously paid, and a consultation
+   fixed.  It couldn't be done, my dear sir--it couldn't be done!"
+
+Thus was Mr. Pickwick brought face to face with the difficulty of seeing
+his own counsel.  He could not understand why, having retained the
+services of a professional man and paid for them, there should exist any
+impediment to prevent access to him.  I won't discuss to-night the
+advisability or non-advisability of dividing the profession of the law
+into two parts, but I do say that any system which prevents litigants
+having the fullest personal communication with those they have paid to
+represent them is an anomaly and an absurdity.
+
+But Mr. Pickwick was a person of determination, and he did see Serjeant
+Snubbin, and he delivered to that learned gentleman a short address that
+was well worthy of his attention, as it is of every member of the Bar,
+including your very humble servant.
+
+   "Gentlemen of your profession, sir," continued Mr. Pickwick, "see the
+   worst side of human nature.  All its disputes, all its ill-will and
+   bad blood, rise up before you.  You know from your experience of
+   juries (I mean no disparagement to you, or them) how much depends upon
+   _effect_; and you are apt to attribute to others a desire to use, for
+   purposes of deception and self-interest, the very instruments which
+   you, in pure honesty and honour of purpose, and with a laudable desire
+   to do your utmost for your client, know the temper and worth of so
+   well, from constantly employing them yourselves.  I really believe
+   that to this circumstance may be attributed the vulgar but very
+   general notion of your being, as a body, suspicious, distrustful, and
+   overcautious.  Conscious as I am, sir, of the disadvantage of making
+   such a declaration to you, under such circumstances, I have come here,
+   because I wish you distinctly to understand, as my friend Mr. Perker
+   has said, that I am innocent of the falsehood laid to my charge; and
+   although I am very well aware of the inestimable value of your
+   assistance, sir, I must beg to add that, unless you sincerely believe
+   this, I would rather be deprived of the aid of your talents than have
+   the advantage of them."
+
+   The only effect this had upon Serjeant Snubbin was to cause him to ask
+   rather snappishly,--
+
+   "Who is with me in this case?"
+
+   "Mr. Phunky, Serjeant Snubbin," replied the attorney.
+
+   "Phunky, Phunky," said the Serjeant, "I never heard the name before.
+   He must be a very young man."
+
+   "Yes, he is a very young man," replied the attorney.  "He was only
+   called the other day.  Let me see--he has not been at the Bar eight
+   years yet."
+
+   "Ah, I thought not," said the Serjeant, in that sort of pitying tone
+   in which ordinary folks would speak of a very helpless little child.
+   "Mr. Mallard, send round to Mr.--Mr.--"
+
+   "Phunky's--Holborn Court, Gray's Inn," interposed Perker.  (Holborn
+   Court, by-the-bye, is South Square now.)
+
+   "Mr. Phunky, and say I should be glad if he'd step here a moment."
+
+   Mr. Mallard departed to execute his commission, and Serjeant Snubbin
+   relapsed into abstraction until Mr. Phunky himself was introduced.
+
+   Although an infant barrister he was a full-grown man.  He had a very
+   nervous manner, and a painful hesitation in his speech; it did not
+   appear to be a natural defect, but seemed rather the result of
+   timidity, arising from the consciousness of being "kept down" by want
+   of means, or interest, or connection, or impudence, as the case might
+   be.  He was overawed by the Serjeant, and profoundly courteous to the
+   attorney.
+
+   "I have not had the pleasure of seeing you before, Mr. Phunky," said
+   Serjeant Snubbin, with haughty condescension.
+
+   Mr. Phunky bowed.  He _had_ had the pleasure of seeing the Serjeant,
+   and of envying him too, with all a poor man's envy, for eight years
+   and a quarter.
+
+   "You are with me in this case, I understand?" said the Serjeant.
+
+   If Mr. Phunky had been a rich man he would have instantly sent for his
+   clerk to remind him; if he had been a wise one he would have applied
+   his forefinger to his forehead, and endeavoured to recollect whether,
+   in the multiplicity of his engagements, he had undertaken this one or
+   not; but as he was neither rich nor wise (in this sense, at all
+   events) he turned red and bowed.
+
+   "Have you read the papers, Mr. Phunky?" inquired the Serjeant.
+
+   Here again Mr. Phunky should have professed to have forgotten all
+   about the merits of the case; but as he had read such papers as had
+   been laid before him in the course of the action, and had thought of
+   nothing else, waking or sleeping, throughout the two months during
+   which he had been retained as Mr. Serjeant Snubbin's junior, he turned
+   a deeper red and bowed again.
+
+   "This is Mr. Pickwick," said the Serjeant, waving his pen in the
+   direction in which that gentleman was standing.
+
+   Mr. Phunky bowed to Mr. Pickwick with a reverence which a first client
+   must ever awaken, and again inclined his head towards his leader.
+
+   "Perhaps you will take Mr. Pickwick away," said the Serjeant,
+   "and--and--and--hear anything Mr. Pickwick may wish to communicate.  We
+   shall have a consultation, of course."  With this hint that he had
+   been interrupted quite long enough, Mr. Serjeant Snubbin, who had been
+   gradually growing more and more abstracted, applied his glass to his
+   eye for an instant, bowed slightly round, and was once more deeply
+   immersed in the case before him, which arose out of an interminable
+   law-suit originating in the act of an individual, deceased a century
+   or so ago, who had stopped up a pathway leading from some place which
+   nobody ever came from to some other place which nobody ever went to.
+
+   Mr. Phunky would not hear of passing through any door until Mr.
+   Pickwick and his solicitor had passed through before him, so it was
+   some time before they got into the Square; and when they did reach it
+   they walked up and down, and held a long conference, the result of
+   which was that it was a very difficult matter to say how the verdict
+   would go; that nobody could presume to calculate on the issue of an
+   action; that it was very lucky they had prevented the other party from
+   getting Serjeant Snubbin; and other topics of doubt and consolation
+   common in such a position of affairs.
+
+Mr. Pickwick's lawsuit was to be tried in the Court of Common Pleas, a
+division in which Serjeants-at-Law had the exclusive right to practise.
+At this time, 1827, and indeed up till 1873, every common law judge was
+turned into a Serjeant, if he were not one ere he was promoted to the
+Bench.  It was a solemn kind of ceremony.  The subject of the operation
+was led out of the precincts of the Inns of Court; the church bell tolled
+as for one dead.
+
+He was then admitted member of Serjeants' Inn; and the judge would
+address the Serjeants who practised before him as Brother So-and-So.
+Justice Lindley was the last judge who took the degree, a degree the only
+outward visible sign of which is the black patch or coif which is
+attached to the top of the wig.  I do not know what kind of counsel
+Serjeant Snubbin, retained by Mr. Perker for the defendant, was; but
+Dodson and Fogg had retained Serjeant Buzfuz for the plaintiff, and we
+all know that Serjeant Snubbin was no match for Serjeant Buzfuz.  It has
+been objected by a writer in _Fraser's Magazine_, to the account of this
+trial, that it is full of inconsistencies.  Serjeant Buzfuz' case, he
+says, was absurd, and that he would not have been able to browbeat any
+witness, and that no jury could have given a verdict on such evidence.
+This criticism resembles many other criticisms of Pickwick.  Had the
+description in Pickwick been intended as a serious picture of the
+proceedings in a court of justice, it would have been open to much
+serious dissection and examination.
+
+But the writer just quoted did not, it seems, possess a sufficient sense
+of humour to enable him to see that this chapter of "Pickwick" was
+intended for broad fun amounting to burlesque, and nothing more; and to
+examine Mr. Buzfuz' proceedings by the light of the law is to strip them
+of their meaning.
+
+I mentioned just now that this trial took place in 1827.  At that time,
+as I daresay some of you are aware, the parties to the action could not
+be called upon to give evidence; and Lord Denman did not, I think, till
+1843 remove the Arcadian fetters which bound the litigants in this
+fashion.  But, ladies and gentlemen, what a fortunate thing it was for
+Mr. Pickwick that he could not be called upon that occasion.  If Mr.
+Pickwick had been called he would have been cross-examined.  Let us
+imagine for a moment what that cross-examination would have been.  Suppose
+merely for the sake of example that that operation had been performed by
+my honourable and learned friend the Attorney-General.  Cannot you
+imagine how in the first place he would forcibly but firmly have
+interrogated Mr. Pickwick with regard to his conduct after the cricket
+match at Muggleton; how he would have asked him whether he was prepared
+to admit, or whether he was prepared to deny, that he was drunk upon that
+occasion?  Could you not imagine how my honourable and learned friend,
+passing on from that topic, would have alluded to what I think he would
+have termed the disgraceful incident when, on the 1st of September, Mr.
+Pickwick was found in a wheelbarrow on the ground of Captain Boldwig, and
+was removed to the public pound, from which he was only extricated by the
+violence of his friends and servant?  Passing on from that topic, would
+not my honourable and learned friend have reminded him of how he had been
+bound over at Ipswich before Mr. Nupkins, together with his friend Mr.
+Tupman, and called upon to find bail for good behaviour for six months?
+Then in conclusion how my friend would have turned to that incident in
+the double-bedded room at Ipswich, at the Great White Horse, and how my
+learned friend, with that skill which he possesses, would, bit by bit, by
+slow degrees, have extricated from that miserable man the confession that
+he had been found in that double-bedded room, a spinster lady being there
+at the same time.  Ladies and gentlemen, what would have been left of Mr.
+Pickwick after that process had been gone through?  His only relief would
+have been to write to the _Times_ newspaper, and to complain of cross-
+examination.
+
+Indeed, no notice of this case, as indeed no reference to the lawyers of
+"Pickwick," would be regarded as in any sense complete that did not
+include the remarkable forensic efforts of Serjeant Buzfuz.  Oft read,
+oft recited, oft quoted, it stands to-day, perhaps, the best-known speech
+ever delivered at the Bar.
+
+We are told that the speech of Serjeant Snubbin was long and emphatic,
+but at any rate it was ineffective, and that learned gentleman committed
+a grave error in entrusting the cross-examination of Mr. Winkle to Mr.
+Phunky.  Now it does sometimes happen, in the course of a case, that
+owing to the absence of the leading counsel, which sometimes occurs, the
+cross-examination of a witness, perchance an important one, is left to
+some junior; but this excuse did not exist in this case.  Serjeant
+Snubbin was there in Court, because we hear that he winked at Mr. Phunky
+to intimate to him that he had better sit down; and this, as we know,
+from what I have told you just now, was the first brief that Mr. Phunky
+had ever had.  No, Serjeant Snubbin was over-matched throughout by
+Serjeant Buzfuz, and Mr. Phunky was no match even for the scheming junior
+on the other side, and Perker was no match for Dodson and Fogg.  The law,
+as we are told in one of George Eliot's books, is a kind of cock-fight,
+in which it is the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with
+the best pluck and the strongest spurs; and I venture to think that the
+combined pluck of Buzfuz and Skimpin by far outweighed any of that
+commodity possessed by Snubbin and Phunky.  No wonder Mr. Pickwick lost
+his case; but his case never recovered the effect of the speech which I
+now propose to read to you.
+
+   Serjeant Buzfuz began by saying that never, in the whole course of his
+   professional experience--never, from the very first moment of his
+   applying himself to the study and practice of the law--had he
+   approached a case with feelings of such deep emotion, or with such a
+   heavy sense of the responsibility imposed upon him--a responsibility,
+   he would say, which he could never have supported, were he not buoyed
+   up and sustained by a conviction so strong, that it amounted to
+   positive certainty that the cause of truth and justice, or, in other
+   words, the cause of his much injured and most oppressed client, must
+   prevail with the high-minded and intelligent dozen of men whom he now
+   saw in that box before him.
+
+   Counsel usually begin in this way, because it puts the jury on the
+   very best terms with themselves, and makes them think what sharp
+   fellows they must be.  A visible effect was produced immediately;
+   several jurymen beginning to take voluminous notes with the utmost
+   eagerness.
+
+   "You have heard from my learned friend, gentlemen," continued Serjeant
+   Buzfuz--well knowing that, from the learned friend alluded to, the
+   gentlemen of the jury had heard just nothing at all--"you have heard
+   from my learned friend, gentlemen, that this is an action for breach
+   of promise of marriage, in which the damages are laid at 1,500 pounds.
+   But you have not heard from my learned friend, inasmuch as it did not
+   come within my learned friend's province to tell you, what are the
+   facts and circumstances of the case.  Those facts and circumstances,
+   gentlemen, you shall hear detailed by me, and proved by the
+   unimpeachable female whom I will place in that box before you."
+
+   Here Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, with a tremendous emphasis on the word
+   "box," smote his table with a mighty sound, and glanced at Dodson and
+   Fogg, who nodded admiration to the Serjeant, and indignant defiance of
+   the defendant.
+
+   "The plaintiff, gentlemen," continued Serjeant Buzfuz, in a soft and
+   melancholy voice, "the plaintiff is a widow; yes, gentlemen, a widow.
+   The late Mr. Bardell, after enjoying, for many years, the esteem and
+   confidence of his sovereign, as one of the guardians of his royal
+   revenues, glided almost imperceptibly from the world, to seek
+   elsewhere for that repose and peace which a custom house can never
+   afford."
+
+   At this pathetic description of the decease of Mr. Bardell, who had
+   been knocked on the head with a quart pot in a public-house cellar,
+   the learned Serjeant's voice faltered, and he proceeded with emotion,--
+
+   "Some time before his death he had stamped his likeness upon a little
+   boy.  With this little boy, the only pledge of her departed exciseman,
+   Mrs. Bardell shrunk from the world, and courted the retirement and
+   tranquillity of Goswell Street; and here she placed in her front
+   parlour-window a written placard, bearing this inscription--'Apartments
+   furnished for a single gentleman.  Inquire within.'"  Here Serjeant
+   Buzfuz paused, while several gentlemen of the jury took a note of the
+   document.
+
+   "There is no date to that, is there?" inquired a juror.
+
+   "There is no date, gentlemen," replied Serjeant Buzfuz; "but I am
+   instructed to say that it was put in the plaintiff's parlour-window
+   just this time three years.  I entreat the attention of the jury to
+   the wording of this document.  'Apartments furnished for a single
+   gentleman!'  Mrs. Bardell's opinions of the opposite sex, gentlemen,
+   were derived from a long contemplation of the inestimable qualities of
+   her lost husband.  She had no fear, she had no distrust, she had no
+   suspicion, all was confidence and reliance.  'Mr. Bardell,' said the
+   widow, 'Mr. Bardell was a man of honour, Mr. Bardell was a man of his
+   word, Mr. Bardell was no deceiver, Mr. Bardell was once a single
+   gentleman himself; _to_ single gentlemen I look for protection, for
+   assistance, for comfort, and for consolation; _in_ single gentlemen I
+   shall perpetually see something to remind me of what Mr. Bardell was
+   when he first won my young and untried affections: to a single
+   gentleman, then, shall my lodgings be let.'  Actuated by this
+   beautiful and touching impulse (among the best impulses of our
+   imperfect nature, gentlemen) the lonely and desolate widow dried her
+   tears, furnished her first floor, caught the innocent boy to her
+   maternal bosom, and put the bill up in her parlour-window.  Did it
+   remain there long?  No.  The serpent was on the watch, the train was
+   laid, the mine was preparing, the sapper and miner was at work.  Before
+   the bill had been in the parlour-window three days--three days,
+   gentlemen--a Being, erect upon two legs, and bearing all the outward
+   semblance of a man, and not of a monster, knocked at the door of Mrs.
+   Bardell's house.  He inquired within--he took the lodgings; and on the
+   very next day he entered into possession of them.  The man was
+   Pickwick--Pickwick, the defendant."
+
+   Serjeant Buzfuz, who had proceeded with such volubility that his face
+   was perfectly crimson, here paused for breath.  The silence awoke Mr.
+   Justice Stareleigh, who immediately wrote down something with a pen
+   without any ink in it, and looked unusually profound, to impress the
+   jury with the belief that he always thought most deeply with his eyes
+   shut.  Serjeant Buzfuz proceeded.
+
+   "Of this man Pickwick I will say little; the subject presents but few
+   attractions; and I, gentlemen, am not the man, nor are you, gentlemen,
+   the men, to delight in the contemplation of revolting heartlessness
+   and of systematic villainy."
+
+   Here Mr. Pickwick, who had been writhing in silence for some time,
+   gave a violent start, as if some vague idea of assaulting Serjeant
+   Buzfuz, in the august presence of justice and law, suggested itself to
+   his mind.  An admonitory gesture from Perker restrained him, and he
+   listened to the learned gentleman's continuation with a look of
+   indignation, which contrasted forcibly with the admiring faces of Mrs.
+   Cluppins and Mrs. Sanders.
+
+   "I say systematic villainy, gentlemen," said Serjeant Buzfuz, looking
+   through Mr. Pickwick, and talking _at_ him; "and when I say systematic
+   villainy, let me tell the defendant Pickwick, if he be in Court--as I
+   am informed he is--that it would have been more decent in him, more
+   becoming, in better judgment, and in better taste, if he had stopped
+   away.  Let me tell him, gentlemen, that any gestures of dissent or
+   disapprobation in which he may indulge in this Court will not go down
+   with you; that you will know how to value and how to appreciate them;
+   and let me tell him further, as my lord will tell you, gentlemen, that
+   a counsel, in the discharge of his duty to his client, is neither to
+   be intimidated, nor bullied, nor put down; and that any attempt to do
+   either the one or the other, or the first, or the last, will recoil on
+   the head of the attempter, be he plaintiff or be he defendant, be his
+   name Pickwick, or Noakes, or Stoakes, or Stiles, or Brown, or
+   Thompson."
+
+   This little divergence from the subject in hand had, of course, the
+   intended effect of turning all eyes to Mr. Pickwick.  Serjeant Buzfuz,
+   having partially recovered from the state of moral elevation into
+   which he had lashed himself, resumed,--
+
+   "I shall show you, gentlemen, that for two years Pickwick continued to
+   reside constantly, and without interruption or intermission, at Mrs.
+   Bardell's house.  I shall show you that Mrs. Bardell, during the whole
+   of that time, waited on him, attended to his comforts, cooked his
+   meals, looked out his linen for the washerwoman when it went abroad,
+   darned, aired, and prepared it for wear, and, in short, enjoyed his
+   fullest trust and confidence.  I shall show you that, on many
+   occasions, he gave halfpence, and on some occasions even sixpences, to
+   her little boy; and I shall prove to you, by a witness whose testimony
+   it will be impossible for my learned friend to weaken or controvert,
+   that on one occasion he patted the boy on the head, and, after
+   inquiring whether he had won any _alley tors_ or _commoneys_ lately
+   (both of which I understand to be a particular species of marbles much
+   prized by the youth of this town), made use of this remarkable
+   expression: 'How should you like to have another father?'  I shall
+   prove to you, gentlemen, that about a year ago Pickwick suddenly began
+   to absent himself from home during long intervals, as with the
+   intention of gradually breaking off from my client; but I shall show
+   you also that his resolution was not at that time sufficiently strong,
+   or that his better feelings conquered, if better feelings he has, or
+   that the charms and accomplishments of my client prevailed against his
+   unmanly intentions; by proving to you that on one occasion, when he
+   returned from the country, he distinctly and in terms offered her
+   marriage; previously, however, taking special care that there should
+   be no witnesses to their solemn contract; and I am in a situation to
+   prove to you, on the testimony of three of his own friends--most
+   unwilling witnesses, gentlemen--most unwilling witnesses--that on that
+   morning he was discovered by them holding the plaintiff in his arms,
+   and soothing her agitation by his caresses and endearment."
+
+   A visible impression was produced upon the auditors by this part of
+   the learned Serjeant's address.  Drawing forth two very small scraps
+   of paper, he proceeded,--
+
+   "And now, gentlemen, but one word more.  Two letters have passed
+   between these parties, letters which are admitted to be in the
+   handwriting of the defendant, and which speak volumes indeed.  These
+   letters, too, bespeak the character of the man.  They are not open,
+   fervent, eloquent epistles, breathing nothing but the language of
+   affectionate attachment.  They are covert, sly, underhanded
+   communications; but, fortunately, far more conclusive than if couched
+   in the most glowing language and the most poetic imagery--letters that
+   must be viewed with a cautious and suspicious eye--letters that were
+   evidently intended at the time, by Pickwick, to mislead and delude any
+   third parties into whose hands they might fall.  Let me read the
+   first:--'Garraway's, twelve o'clock.  Dear Mrs. B.--Chops and Tomato
+   sauce; Yours, PICKWICK.'  Gentlemen, what does this mean?  Chops and
+   Tomato sauce.  Yours, PICKWICK!  Chops!  Gracious heavens! and Tomato
+   sauce!  Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding
+   female to be trifled away by such shallow artifices as these?  The
+   next has no date whatever, which is in itself suspicious.  'Dear Mrs.
+   B., I shall not be at home till to-morrow.  Slow coach.'  And then
+   follows this very remarkable expression: 'Don't trouble yourself about
+   the warming-pan.'  The warming-pan!  Why, gentlemen, who _does_
+   trouble himself about a warming-pan?  When was the peace of mind of
+   man or woman broken or disturbed by a warming-pan, which is in itself
+   a harmless, a useful, and I will add, gentlemen, a comfortable article
+   of domestic furniture?  Why is Mrs. Bardell so earnestly entreated not
+   to agitate herself about this warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the
+   case) it is a mere cover for hidden fire--a mere substitute for some
+   endearing word or promise, agreeably to a preconcerted system of
+   correspondence, artfully contrived by Pickwick with a view to his
+   contemplated desertion, and which I am not in a condition to explain!
+   And what does this allusion to the slow coach mean?  For aught I know,
+   it may be a reference to Pickwick himself, who has most unquestionably
+   been a criminally slow coach during the whole of this transaction, but
+   whose speed will now be very unexpectedly accelerated, and whose
+   wheels, gentlemen, as he will find to his cost, will very soon be
+   greased by you!"
+
+   Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz paused in this place to see whether the jury
+   smiled at his joke; but as nobody took it but the greengrocer, whose
+   sensitiveness on the subject was very probably occasioned by his
+   having subjected a chaise cart to the process in question on that
+   identical morning, the learned Serjeant considered it advisable to
+   undergo a slight relapse into the dismals before he concluded.
+
+   "But enough of this, gentlemen," said Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, "it is
+   difficult to smile with an aching heart; it is ill jesting when our
+   deepest sympathies are awakened.  My client's hopes and prospects are
+   ruined, and it is no figure of speech to say that her occupation is
+   gone indeed.  The bill is down--but there is no tenant.  Eligible
+   single gentlemen pass and repass--but there is no invitation for them
+   to inquire within or without.  All is gloom and silence in the house;
+   even the voice of the child is hushed--his infant sports are
+   disregarded when his mother weeps; his 'alley tors' and his
+   'commoneys' are alike neglected; he forgets the long familiar cry of
+   'knuckle down,' and at tip-cheese, or odd or even, his hand is out.
+   But Pickwick, gentlemen, Pickwick, the ruthless destroyer of this
+   domestic oasis in the desert of Goswell Street--Pickwick, who has
+   choked up the well and thrown ashes on the sward--Pickwick, who comes
+   before you to-day with his heartless tomato sauce and
+   warming-pans--Pickwick still rears his head with unblushing
+   effrontery, and gazes without a sigh on the ruin he has made.  Damages,
+   gentlemen--heavy damages--is the only punishment with which you can
+   visit him; the only recompense you can award to my client.  And for
+   those damages she now appeals to an enlightened, a high-minded, a
+   right-feeling, a conscientious, a dispassionate, a sympathising, a
+   contemplative jury of her civilised countrymen."
+
+With this beautiful peroration, Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz sat down, and Mr.
+Justice Stareleigh woke up.
+
+Of the judge of this famous case we hear but little.  He went to sleep,
+and he woke up again, and he tried to look as though he hadn't been
+asleep; in fact, he behaved very much as judges do.
+
+   Mr. Justice Stareleigh summed up in the old-established and most
+   approved form.  He read as much of his notes to the jury as he could
+   decipher on so short a notice, and made running comments on the
+   evidence as he went along.  If Mrs. Bardell were right, it was
+   perfectly clear that Mr. Pickwick was wrong; and if they thought the
+   evidence of Mrs. Cluppins worthy of credence they would believe it,
+   and, if they didn't, why they wouldn't.  If they were satisfied that a
+   breach of promise of marriage had been committed, they would find for
+   the plaintiff, with such damages as they thought proper; and if, on
+   the other hand, it appeared to them that no promise of marriage had
+   ever been given, they would find for the defendant, with no damages at
+   all.
+
+So, ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion, let me point out to you how all
+these types and instances of lawyers and lawyer life have received fair
+and impartial consideration from Charles Dickens, for which I, at any
+rate, am grateful.  The public, however, to my mind, owe a deeper debt of
+gratitude to the man who, by his wit, his courage, and his industry, has
+brought about reforms in our legal administration for which all litigants
+and honourable practitioners should alike be grateful.
+
+Sir CHARLES RUSSELL: Ladies and gentlemen,--We have spent, I am sure you
+will all think, a most enjoyable, as well as a most instructive evening,
+thanks to the vivid picture of the great novelist of our generation put
+before us by my friend Mr. Lockwood, who has pointed out with force and
+effect the serious obligation we are under for many reforms which exist
+in our day through the influence, sometimes serious, sometimes comic,
+which the great Charles Dickens gave to the world.  It is an interesting
+occasion, and not the less interesting when you are informed that in this
+room to-night is the son of Mr. Charles Dickens--Mr. Henry Fielding
+Dickens--referred to by my friend Mr. Lockwood.  Mr. Henry Dickens has
+not followed in his father's footsteps; he has chosen for himself the
+profession of the bar; and in that profession he has gained for himself a
+high and honourable name.  At this hour I cannot permit myself to say
+more than to ask you to join in the vote of thanks which I now move to my
+friend Mr. Lockwood for the very admirable lecture which he has just
+given.
+
+Vote of thanks seconded by MR. HILLIARD.
+
+Mr. HENRY FIELDING DICKENS: Sir Charles Russell, ladies and gentlemen,--I
+assure you that when I came into this room to-night I had no more idea
+that I was to make any observations than--the man in the moon.  I came
+here with the idea of listening to my old friend Mr. Frank Lockwood, with
+the sure and certain knowledge that I should derive a great deal of
+amusement and interest from his lecture.  In that I need hardly say I
+have not been disappointed; but I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that
+I have not only been interested, I have been touched.  I am not alluding
+to the very graceful allusions and far too flattering observation upon
+myself given by the Attorney-General, but I am alluding to the spirit
+pervading this hall this evening--a spirit which proves to me that the
+memory of my father is still green among you all.  To us who have the
+honour of bearing his name, that memory, I need hardly tell you, is still
+sacred; and to find that among his fellow-countrymen, though twenty-three
+years have passed since his death, there is still that feeling of
+affection felt for him that was felt for him in his lifetime, is most
+gratifying to us all.  I assure you with all the warmth in my heart, and
+in the name of my sister and other members of the family, that I thank
+you most sincerely, not only for your generous reception of myself, but
+for the feeling you have demonstrated that you bear for my dear father.
+
+Mr. FRANK LOCKWOOD: Sir Charles Russell, ladies and gentlemen,--I shall
+only detain you to say that I thank you for your great kindness to me to-
+night; it has been a pleasure to me to come.  I was to have come, if I
+remember rightly, in June or July, 1892; I could not come because there
+was a General Election.  I am very glad that I was not prevented from
+coming to-night by a--General Election.
+
+THE END.
+
+Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAW AND LAWYERS OF PICKWICK***
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