With what consummate skill, too, he can show that an indictment is invalid, when stabbing is inserted for cutting; and when the crown prosecutor has been deficient in his descriptive anatomy, what a glorious field for display is opened to him. 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 venture 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. People are insane enough to talk of absenteeism as one of the evils of Ireland, and regret that we have no resident aristocracy among us--rather let us rejoice that we have them not, so long as the lawyers prove their legitimate successors. How delightful in a land where civilization has still some little progress before it, and where the state of crime is not quite satisfactory--to know that we have those amongst us who know all things, feel all things, explain all things, and reconcile all things--who can throw such a Claude Lorraine light over right and wrong, that they are both mellowed into a sweet and hallowed softness, delightful to gaze on. How the secret of this universal acquirement is accomplished I know not--perhaps it is the wig.