Amongst old circuit stories of questionable truthfulness there is a singular anecdote recorded by the biographers of Chief Justice Hale, who, whilst riding the Western Circuit, tried a half-starved lad on a charges of burglary. The prisoner had been shipwrecked upon the Cornish coast, and on his way through an inhospitable district had endured the pangs of extreme hunger. In his distress, the famished wanderer broke the window of a baker's shop and stole a loaf of bread. Under the circumstances, Hale directed the jury to acquit the prisoner: but, less merciful than the judge, the gentlemen of the box returned a verdict of 'Guilty'--a verdict which the Chief Justice stoutly refused to act upon. After much resistance, the jurymen were starved into submission; and the youth was set at liberty. Several years elapsed; and Chief Justice Hale was riding the Northern Circuit, when he was received with such costly and excessive pomp by the sheriff of a northern county, that he expostulated with his entertainer on the lavish profuseness of his conduct. "My lord," answered the sheriff, with emotion, "don't blame me for showing my gratitude to the judge who saved my life when I was an outcast. Had it not been for you, I should have been hanged in Cornwall for stealing a loaf, instead of living to be the richest landowner of my native county." A sketch of circuit-life in the middle of the last century may be found in 'A Northern Circuit, Described in a Letter to a Friend: a Poetical Essay. By a Gentleman of the Middle Temple. 1751.'--a piece of doggrel that will meet with greater mercy from the antiquary than the poetical critic.