“Then, to be sure, what droll fellows they are!--how they do quiz the witness as he sits trembling on the table; what funny allusions to his habits of life, his age, his station; turning the whole battery of their powers of ridicule against him--ready, if he ventured to retort, to throw themselves on the protection of the court! And truly, if a little Latin suffice for a priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court. A joke is a universal blessing; the judge, who, after all, is only ‘an old lawyer,’ loves it from habit: the jury, generally speaking, are seldom in such good company, and they laugh from complaisance; and the Bar joins in the mirth, on that great reciprocity principle, which enables them to bear each other’s dulness, and dine together afterwards. “What set me first on this train of thought was a trial I lately read, where a cross action was sustained for damage at sea--the owners of the brig _Durham_ against the _Aurora_, a foreign vessel, and _vice versâ_, for the result of a collision at noon, on the 14th of October. It appeared that both vessels had taken shelter in the Humber from stress of weather, nearly at the same time--that the _Durham_, which preceded the Prussian vessel, ‘clewed up her topsails, and dropped her anchor _rather_ suddenly: and the _Aurora_ being in the rear, the vessels came into collision.’ The question, therefore, was, whether the _Durham_ came to anchor too precipitately, and in an unseamanlike manner; or, in other words, whether, when the ‘_Durham_ clewed up topsails and let go her anchor, the _Aurora_ should not have luffed up, or got sternway on her,’ etc. “Nothing could possibly be more instructive, nor anything scarcely more amusing, than the lucid arguments employed by the counsel on both sides. The learned Thebans, who would have been sick in a ferry-boat, spoke as if they had circumnavigated the globe. Stay-sails, braces, top-gallants, clews, and capstans they hurled at each other, like _bon bons_ at a carnival; and this naval engagement lasted from daylight to dark. Once only, when the judge ‘made it noon,’ for a little reflection, did they cease conflict, to renew the strife afterwards with more deadly daring, until, at last, so confused were the witnesses--the plaintiff, defendant, and all, that they half wished they had gone to the bottom, before settling their differences in the Admiralty Court.