We come a little later down, and in Braxfield we are in a narrower field, more local, more restricted, purely legal. Such as survive of the Braxfield stories are excellent. The _locus classicus_ for the men of that time is Lord Cockburn’s _Memorials_. Cockburn, as we have yet to see, was himself a wit of the first water, and the anecdotes lost nothing by the telling. Braxfield was brutal and vernacular. One of “The Fifteen” had rambled on to little purpose, concluding,” Such is my opinion.” “_Your_ opeenion” was Braxfield’s _sotto voce_ bitter comment, better and briefer even than the hit of the English judge at his brother, “what he calls his mind.” Two noted advocates (Charles Hay, afterwards Lord Newton, was one of them) were pleading before him—they had tarried at the wine cup the previous night, and they showed it. Braxfield gave them but little rope. “Ye may just pack up your papers and gang hame; the tane o’ ye’s riftin’ punch and the ither belchin’ claret” (a quaint and subtle distinction!) “and there’ll be nae guid got out o’ ye the day.” As Lord Justice-Clerk, Braxfield was supreme criminal judge; his maxims were thoroughgoing. “Hang a thief when he is young, and he’ll no’ steal when he is auld.” He said of the political reformers: “They would a’ be muckle the better o’ being hangit,” which is probably the truer form of his alleged address to a prisoner: “Ye’re a vera clever chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the waur o’ a hanging.” “The mob would be the better for losing a little blood.” But his most famous remark, or rather aside, was at the trial of the reformer Gerrald. The prisoner had urged that the Author of Christianity himself was a reformer. “Muckle He made o’ that,” growled Braxfield, “He was hangit.” I suspect this was an after-dinner story, at any rate it is not in the report; but how could it be? It is really a philosophic argument in the form of a blasphemous jest. He had not always his own way with the reformers. He asked Margarot if he wished a counsel to defend him. “No, I only wish an interpreter to make me understand what your Lordship says.” The prisoner was convicted and, as Braxfield sentenced him to fourteen years’ transportation, he may have reflected, that he had secured the last and most emphatic word. Margarot had defended himself very badly, but as conviction was a practical certainty it made no difference. Of Braxfield’s private life there are various stories, which you can accept or not as you please, for such things you cannot prove or disprove. His butler gave him notice, he could not stand Mrs. Macqueen’s temper; it was almost playing up to his master. “Man, ye’ve little to complain o’; ye may be thankfu’ ye’re no married upon her.” As we all know, R. L. Stevenson professedly drew his Weir of Hermiston from this original. One of the stories he tells is how Mrs. Weir praised an incompetent cook for her Christian character, when her husband burst