It would be interesting, if it were possible, to compare the proportion of the population of England, which pursues the law as a vocation, with that of the United States, but no figures exist for the purpose. The number of barristers includes, as already stated, those who do not practice, while an enumeration of the solicitors' offices would exclude individual solicitors employed by others, as will be explained hereafter. The aggregate of these two uncertain elements, however, would be about 27,000. The legal directories give the names of something like 95,000 lawyers in America of whom about 27,000 appear in fifteen large cities--New York, for example, being credited with over 10,000, Chicago with over 3,500 and San Francisco with about 1,500--leaving about 69,000 in the smaller towns and scattered throughout the land. These tentative, and necessarily vague, suggestions rather indicate that the proportion of lawyers may not be very unequal in the two countries. CHAPTER IV BARRISTERS--THE COMMON LAW AND THE CHANCERY BARS BAR DIVIDED INTO TWO PARTS--NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN CRIMINAL AND CIVIL PRACTICE--LEADERS--"TAKING HIS SEAT" IN A PARTICULAR COURT--"GOING SPECIAL" --LIST OF SPECIALS AND LEADERS--SIGNIFICANCE OF GOWNS AND "WEEPERS"--"BANDS"--"COURT COATS"-- WIGS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS--BARRISTERS' BAGS, BLUE AND RED. The Bar is divided into two separate parts--the Common Law Bar and the Chancery Bar; for a barrister does not try cases of both kinds as in America. The solicitor knows whether he has a law or equity case in hand, and takes it to the appropriate barrister. Common law barristers have their chambers chiefly in the Middle Temple and Inner Temple; chancery men, largely in Lincoln's Inn, and the two kinds of barristers know little of, and seem even to have a kind of contempt for, each other. Thus a common law barrister passes his life in jury trials and appeals; whereas a chancery man knows nothing but courts of equity, unless he follows a will case into a jury trial as a colleague of a common law man to determine an issue of _devisavit vel non_. And there are further specializations--although the divisions are not so marked--into probate, divorce or admiralty men. Besides, there is what is known as the Parliamentary Bar, practicing entirely before Parliamentary committees, boards and commissions. It is, however, curious that in England no apparent distinction exists between civil and criminal practice and common law barristers accept both kinds of briefs indiscriminately.