And now a word as to modern times. One or two names call for notice. A. S. Logan, Sheriff Logan, as he was popularly called, died early in 1862, and with him, it was said, disappeared the only man able in wit and laughter to rival the giants of an earlier epoch. He still remains the centre of a mass of anecdote, much of it apocryphal. His enemies sneered at him as a laboured wit, and averred a single joke cost him a solitary walk round the Queen’s Drive. Once when pleading for a widow he spoke eloquently of the cruelty of the relative whom she was suing. The judge suggested a compromise. “Feel the pulse of the other side, Mr. Logan,” said he, humorously. “Oh, my Lord,” was the answer, “there can be no pulse where there is no heart.” This seems to me an example of the best form of legal witticism, it is an argument conveyed as a jest. Of his contemporary Robert Thomson (1790-1857), Sheriff of Caithness, there are some droll memories. Here is one. He was a constant though a bad rider, and as a bad rider will, he fell from his horse. Even in falling practice makes perfect. The worthy sheriff did not fall on his head—very much the opposite, in fact. As he remained sitting on the ground, a witness of the scene asked if he had sustained any injury. “Injury!” was the answer; “no injury at all I assure you! Indeed, sir, quite the reverse, quite the reverse.” Inglis, like Blair, impressed his contemporaries as a great judge; how far the reputation will subsist one need not discuss, nor need we complain that the stories about him are rather tame. This may be given. Once he ridiculed with evident sincerity the argument of an opposite counsel, when that one retorted by producing an opinion which Inglis had written in that very case, and which the other had in fact paraphrased. Inglis looked at it. “I see, my lord, that this opinion is dated from Blair Athol, and anybody that chooses to follow me to Blair Athol for an opinion deserves what he gets.” The moral apparently is, don’t disturb a lawyer in his vacation, when he is away from his books and is “off the fang,” as the Scots phrase has it. But this is a confession of weakness, and is only passable as a way of escaping from a rather awkward position. In the same case counsel proceeded to read a letter, and probably had not the presence of mind to stop where he ought. It was from the country to the town agent, and discussed the merits of various pleaders with the utmost frankness, and then, “You may get old —— for half the money, but for God’s sake don’t take him at any price.” In a limited society like the Parliament House, such a letter has an effect like the bursting of a bombshell, and I note the incident, though the humour be accidental. This other has a truer tang of the place. No prisoner goes undefended at the High Court; young counsel perform the duty without fee or reward. The system has called forth the admiration of the greedier Southern, though an English judge