It drove men and women to madness, like poor Miss Flyte, or made them misanthropes, like Mr. Grindley, “the man from Shropshire.” It made wretched, half-ruined people hang about the courts day after day expecting a judgment, it caused houses to fall into ruin, and whole streets to become deserted because Chancery could not decide to whom they belonged. Listen to “the man from Shropshire’s” description of his own case: “Mr. Jarndyce, consider my case. As there is a heaven above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father (a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock to my mother for her life. After my mother’s death, all was to come to me, except a legacy of £300 that I was to pay to my brother.” The brother claimed the legacy, Grindley said he had had some of it, and the brother filed a bill in Chancery. “Seventeen persons were made defendants in this simple suit.” Two years elapsed and the Master in Chancery then found there ought to be another defendant, and all the proceedings were quashed. “The costs at that time--before the suit had begun, were three times the legacy.” The brother tried to back out, but the court would not let him. The whole property was sucked away in a suit which common-sense could have decided in a day. The demoralising effect of a court so dilatory and so capricious also revealed itself in its influence on character. Men and women spent their lives in waiting for a decision and found it impossible to settle to any regular calling. The court was, in fact, like a gigantic lottery. A favourable decision might make a man wealthy in a day, and with such a prospect it was impossible for him to settle down to the drudgery of a profession. In addition to this, so conflicting were the interests involved that families were divided hopelessly. How pathetically does Dickens sketch the character of Richard Carstone! He tries physic, the army, the law, and cannot stick to any as his vocation. He feels that at any time the Jarndyce case may make him a rich man. His only hope is to drive it to a conclusion. Under the influence of Mr. Vholes he learns to distrust his old friend Mr. John Jarndyce, and even, in part, his betrothed, the sweet Ada, because they too have interests in the suit. When the case comes to an end by all the money being absorbed in costs, he dies, despairing yet penitent. Let us now see how the bare facts, stripped of romance, appear.