there are many ways of accounting for them, without having recourse to a supposition involving such serious imputations upon the honour of counsel--arising out of _bona fide_ accident and mistake--the unavoidable hurry and sudden emergencies of business--misunderstandings between a counsel and his clerks;[B] between either or both, and the client--and the perplexity and confusion almost necessarily attending the movements of very eminent counsel. On such occasions every thing is usually done which can be dictated by liberality and honour, and fees are returned without hesitation. If, however, the case can be looked at from another point of view--if the eager client be fairly apprised by the clerk, that Sir ---- or Mr ---- "may not be able to attend"--or, "there is a _chance_ of his attending"--or "he is very likely to be elsewhere"--and, aware of the multifarious and conflicting calls upon the time of Sir ---- or Mr ----, will be content to take his "chance," and deliver his brief, and pay his fee; in such a case the client will have had all which he had a right to expect,--viz. the chance, not the certainty; there will be no pretence for alleging careless misunderstanding or deception. If ever there were a member of the English bar who may be said to have been overwhelmed by the distracting importunities of clients to secure his services, at all hazards and at any cost, it was the late Sir William Follett; and how he contrived to satisfy the calls upon him, to the extent which he did, is truly wonderful. How can one head, and one tongue, do so much, so admirably? is a question which has a thousand times occurred to those of his brethren at the bar, who knew most of his movements, and were least likely to form an exaggerated estimate of his exertions. The litigant public seemed to feel that every moment of this accomplished and distinguished advocate's waking hours was their own, and they were restricting his sleeping hours within the very narrowest limits. Every one would have had Sir William every where, in every thing, at once! Whenever, during the last fifteen years of his life, there was a cause of magnitude and difficulty, there was Sir William Follett. What vast interests have been by turns perilled and protected, according as Sir William Follett acted upon the offensive or defensive! Misty and intricate claims to dormant peerages, before committees of privileges, in the House of Lords; appeals to the High Court of Parliament, from all the superior courts, both of law and equity, in the United Kingdom, involving questions of the greatest possible nicety and complexity--and that, too, in the law of Scotland, both mercantile and conveyancing, so dissimilar to that prevailing in other parts of the kingdom; appeals before the Privy Council, from the judicial decisions of courts in every quarter of the globe where British possessions exist, and administering varying systems of law, all different from that of