He was the son, you remember, of a writer to the signet, and practised for some time at the bar himself. Have you ever chanced to ask yourself what was his innermost opinion of the legal profession? Or, have you even endeavoured to generalize that expressed with so much greater violence by Dickens? The latter wrote with a definitely reforming purpose, seemingly; and, I have heard, had real effects on Chancery practice. But are the Judges of England—at present I suppose the highest types of intellectual and moral power that Christendom possesses—content to have reform forced on them by the teazing of a caricaturist, instead of the pleading of their own consciences? Even if so, is there no farther reform indicated as necessary, in a lower field, by the same teazing personage? The Court of Chancery and Mr. Vholes were not his only legal sketches. Dodson and Fogg; Sampson Brass; Serjeant Buzfuz; and, most of all, the examiner, for the Crown, of Mr. Swiveller in the trial of Kit, [64]—are these deserving of no repentant attention? You, good reader, probably have read the trial in Pickwick, and the trial of Kit, merely to amuse yourself; and perhaps Dickens himself meant little more than to amuse you. But did it never strike you as quite other than a matter of amusement, that in both cases, the force of the law of England is represented as employed zealously to prove a crime against a person known by the accusing counsel to be innocent; and, in both cases, as obtaining a conviction? You might perhaps think that these were only examples of the ludicrous, and sometimes tragic, accidents which must sometimes happen in the working of any complex system, however excellent. They are by no means so. Ludicrous, and tragic, mischance must indeed take place in all human affairs of importance, however honestly conducted. But here you have deliberate, artistic, energetic dishonesty; skilfullest and resolutest endeavour to prove a crime against an innocent person,—a crime of which, in the case of the boy, the reputed commission will cost him at least the prosperity and honour of his life,—more to him than life itself. And this you forgive, or admire, because it is not done in malice, but for money, and in pride of art. Because the assassin is paid,—makes his living in that line of business,—and delivers his thrust with a bravo’s artistic finesse you think him a respectable person; so much better in style than a passionate one who does his murder gratis, vulgarly, with a club,—Bill Sykes, for instance? It is all balanced fairly, as the system goes, you think. ‘It works round, and two and two make four. He accused an innocent person to-day:—to-morrow he will defend a rascal.’ And you truly hold this a business to which your youth should be bred—gentlemen of England?