tranquillity reigned in the city and county, and little trouble or vexation was made by untrue and foreign suits; and now, so it is, that in the said city and county there be fourscore attornies, or more, the more part having nothing to live upon but only his gain by the practice of attorneyship, and also the more part of them not being of sufficient knowledge to be an attorney, &c. &c., whereby proceed many suits more of evil will and malice than of the truth of the thing, to the manifold vexations, and no little damage of the inhabitants of the said city and county.” Wherefore it was enacted, that there should be but six attorneys in the county, and two in the city, for the future. When this admirable statute was repealed, we know not, but conceive it must have been long, long ago, for so many brass-plate signs to have sprung up in evidence of a numerous progeny taking place of the solitary two. Whether the repeal was a _reform_ calculated to benefit the city, experience best can prove; but if the character of the “common folk” in these parts is faithfully given by the author of “English Worthies,” we may presume them to have been considerably inconvenienced by the scarcity of tools with which to play their favourite game. He says, “that the common folks of Norfolk are possessed of such skill in the law, that they are said to study the law at the plough’s tail, and some would persuade us that they will enter an action for their neighbour’s horse only looking over the fence.” In later times, evidences of the law mania exist in manifold forms; and the fact of individuals consulting a lawyer before calling in a doctor, in physical ailments, is by no means an uncommon occurrence among a certain class. Some men think and judge with their lawyer’s heads, who, in return, of course, in justice live upon their purses. Some few amusing facts connected with the boasted English privilege of “Trial by Jury,” may serve to illustrate the growth of “purity” in our courts of law. The jurisdiction exercised over jurors by the “Star-chamber” is a notorious matter of history; but the curious and graphic description of the nature and constitution of a jury in the thirteenth century, as given by Sir Francis Palgrave, in his “Tale of the Merchant and Friar,” may not be quite so familiar, and is far too good to be omitted.