But though the doctor, like a soldier skulking from the field of battle, might with impunity decline visiting the wretched captives, the judge was forced to do his part of the social duty to them--to sit in their presence during their trial in a close, fetid court; to brow-beat them when they presumed to make any declaration of their innocence beyond a brief "not guilty"; to read them an energetic homily on the consequences of giving way to corrupt passions and evil manners; and, finally, to order them their proper apportionments of whipping, or incarceration, or banishment, or death. Such was the abominable condition of our prisons, that the poor creatures dragged from them and placed in the dock often by the noxious effluvia of their bodies made seasoned criminal lawyers turn pale--partly, perhaps, through fear, but chiefly through physical discomfort. Then arose the custom of sprinkling aromatic herbs before the prisoners--so that if the health of his Lordship and the gentlemen of the long robe suffered from the tainted atmosphere, at least their senses of smell might be shocked as little as possible. Then, also, came the chaplain's bouquet, with which that reverend officer was always provided when accompanying a criminal to Tyburn. Coke used to go circuit carrying in his hand an enormous fan furnished with a handle, in the shape of a goodly stick--the whole forming a weapon of offence or defence. It is not improbable that the shrewd lawyer caused the end of this cumbrous instrument to be furnished with a vinaigrette. So much for the head of the physician's cane. The stick itself was doubtless a relic of the conjuring paraphernalia with which the healer, in ignorant and superstitious times, worked upon the imagination of the credulous. Just as the ? which the doctor affixes to his prescription is the old astrological sign (ill-drawn) of Jupiter, so his cane descended to him from Hermes and Mercurius. It was a relic of old jugglery, and of yet older religion--one of those baubles which we know well where to find, but which our conservative tendencies disincline us to sweep away without some grave necessity. The charming-stick, the magic Æsculapian wand of the Medicine-man, differed in shape and significance from the pole of the barber-surgeon. In the "British Apollo," 1703, No. 3, we read:-- "I'd know why he that selleth ale Hangs out a chequer'd part per pale: And why a barber at port-hole Puts forth a parti-coloured pole?" ANSWER.