Notwithstanding the seriousness of the “Bar” episode, there was a good deal of the comic element involved in it, and therefore the journal (quoted below), which is edited and conducted by and for barristers, evidently for once at least, carried out Pope’s advice:— “Eye Nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man.” JURISPRUDENCE IN MELBOURNE. Concerning the fact of the barrister and the solicitor for the defendants having been seen drinking in an hotel bar with the jurymen during the progress of a County Court case, the following comments appeared as a leading article in _The Australian Law Times_ of March 20, 1897:— “A QUESTION OF PROPRIETY. “PONTING _v._ HUDDART, PARKER & COMPANY. “When Ponting, the plaintiff, escaped from his watery grave when the S.S. _Alert_ foundered so suddenly, and was cast upon the back beach at Sorrento, he, no doubt, thought himself a fortunate man. Most solitary survivors from wrecks would so think themselves, and would settle down to a quiet life. Not so Ponting. He started to voyage on a sea hitherto unknown to him—bestrewn with far more wreckage than sweeps to and fro in the cross seas that wash our southern coast. Ponting went to law and sued his owners for damages. Now, law in the Supreme Court is not always without its risks, but law in the County Court and before a jury is never without its perils. We all know the result—verdict for the defendants. Of course, in a case of this kind there was the inevitable new trial application, and that unsuccessful, the still less inevitable (to use the phrase) appeal. And all because the counsel for the defendants was observed, after winking at the jury—in itself a venial offence—to go across to Menzies’ Hotel during an adjournment and have a ‘glass of wine’—that is the euphemism for whisky and soda—with the gentlemen, or some of the gentlemen, of the jury. [Illustration: PONTING AND “VICTOR HUGO” IN 1899.] “The counsel in question was, undoubtedly, very foolish to do so. Counsel remarked, in arguing the point for the respondents, that he was ‘heedlessly indiscreet’; instead of being, we presume, merely indiscreet, or, at worst, indiscreet with a certain amount of discretion; or, as it might be put, he should have gone to Menzies’, being discreetly thirsty, and have drunk at discretion by himself; _i. e._, failing the proximity of some fellow-counsel, whom he might have invited to drink with him, or failing such counsel accepting such invitation—two eventualities as uncommon in Melbourne as our old friend Fearne’s ‘Contingent Remainders’ are in the Mallee.