The inquiry by the Royal Commission resulted in the recommendation of some very important changes in the constitution of the little Inns of Court and the administration of the several properties; but these, we learn, have been modified so much in their adoption as to have been of very little value. The societies have long outlived the purposes for which they were instituted, though their principals and officials seem to attach considerable importance to their continued existence. It is probable, however, that their _raison d'étre_ being gone, they will all sooner or later go the way of Lyon's Inn, and become things of the past. Obiter. BY GEORGE NEILSON. The claims of the legal profession to culture were cleverly belittled by Burns, when he made the New Brig of Ayr wax sarcastic over the town councillors of the burgh:-- "Men wha grew wise priggin owre hops an' raisins, Or gathered lib'ral views in Bonds and Seisins." Bonds and seisins are certainly not the happiest intellectual feeding ground. "I assure you," said John Riddell, a great peerage antiquary, "that to spend one's time in seeking for a name or a date in a bit of crabbed old writing does not improve the reasoning powers." Riddell was a keen critic of Cosmo Innes, who subsequently had the happiness of passing the comment upon Riddell's observation that "perhaps it is not in _reasoning_ that Mr. Riddell excels." Yet the annals of the law shew many splendid examples of the union of close textual study of manuscript, with an enlarged outlook on first principles and with keen critical insight. Perhaps Madox was a more permanently serviceable scholar than Selden. One can see from Coke's margins, his infinite superiority to Bacon in exact knowledge at first hand of older English law. But when all is said, we could have done much better without Coke and Madox than without Bacon or Selden. It is delightful to be able to appeal to Chaucer for perhaps the most emphatic compliment to law, in respect to its capacity for literature, that it has ever received. Amongst all the Canterbury pilgrims, there was no weightier personage than the Man of Law:-- "Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas, And yet he semed bisier than he was. In termes hadde he caas and domes alle That from the tyme of King William were falle, Therto he coude endyte and make a thing Ther could no wight pinche at his wryting, And every statut coude he pleyn by rote." Yet it was this learned and successful counsel, alone of the party, who knew the poet's works through and through, and had the list of them at his finger-ends. Good Master Chaucer for this touch we offer hearty thanks! Was it in Herrick's mind when he penned his fine tribute to Selden? "I, who have favoured many, come to be Graced, now at last, or glorified by thee." * * * * *