K. C.'s, indeed, are afforded their title in the reports--even in the newspapers--but nowhere does it appear that "Leaders" are appointed by the judge of a particular equity court to "take their seats" and practice before him exclusively, being associated in each case with "Juniors," who in turn have "Devils" to prepare their cases; or that a leader may sever this relation and thereafter "go special"; yet all these, and many other peculiar and inviolable customs, are handed down from one generation to another to be followed as if by instinct: and the profession would no more trouble the busy world with such matters than a dog would feel it necessary to explain that he turns thrice before lying down, simply because his wolfish ancestor did so in order to make a bed in the grass. In this environment of ancient custom, however, the American is surprised to find the most up-to-date courts in the world and an administration of law which is so prompt, so colloquial, so simple, so free from formality and so thoroughly in touch with the ordinary man's every-day life, as to provoke a blush for the tribunals of the vaunted New World, still lagging in their archaic conventionality and their diffuse and dilatory methods. At home, the American has been perplexed by the threadbare assertion that we have as many judges in a large city as has all England, but he shortly learns that such comparison considers only the few judges of the High Court, and ignores the others and the officials performing judicial functions, so numerous that the little Island fairly teems with its justiciary and that the implied criticism is due to ignorance of the facts. The trials, both civil and criminal, will reveal the complete triumph of common sense and the Englishman will appear at his best in his court, for there he leads the world. The hearty good humor, alacrity and crispness of the proceedings, the absence of declamation but the avoidance of monotony by the proper distribution of emphasis, all combine to delight the practised observer. The disciplining of the profession by means of a body to whom may be privately submitted questions of morals and manners, mostly solved by gentle admonition and rarely by severe action, will suggest that our single punishment--disbarment--is so drastic as rarely to be invoked and hence largely fails as a corrective. From the "bobby" in the street, to the Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack, from a hearing by a registrar to collect a petty debt, to the donning of the black cap in order to sentence a murderer; all will prove suggestive to the alert American who will nevertheless depart with a feeling that, while there is room for improvement at home, yet, upon the whole, there is much of which to be proud in our administration of the sound old law of our ancestors. The kindly aid of a number of English judges, barristers and solicitors, by way of suggestion and criticism, is gratefully acknowledged.