4. The reduction of all arguments to writing, procedure eminently productive of accuracy, brevity, and completeness; three qualities which, however desirable, are rarely found in the oral arguments of counsel. 5. The submission of all questions to a body of trained and practised judges, not so liable to be swayed by passion, interest, and prejudice as a jury, or unaided by the counsel and assistance of others, like a single judge, but bringing to the solution of every issue a multitude of counsellors, among whom, if anywhere on earth, is impartiality and wisdom. We commend these features of Roman jurisprudence to those whose interest and duty lead them to consider seriously the question of legal reform, remarking for ourselves that the rapid and accurate enforcement of legal rights and redress of legal wrongs is the highest mark of temporal civilization, and that no country can expect prosperity and renown unless the judicial ermine is kept free from stain, and unless all men, rich or poor, have both equal rights and equal means of protecting them before the law.--ED. CATH. WORLD. [36] We use this term in its common, not its legal acceptation. It technically refers only to those mutual allegations and denials of the parties which end in the issue, either of law or fact, upon which the courts are to decide. Here we employ it to denote the spoken arguments of counsel. AN OCTOBER REVERIE. This most golden of all the bright October days, why are we not, as we fain would be, on a brown hill-side, yielding care to whispered persuasions of the wind, or afloat on waters that reflected our sky, when--if it was not always without clouds--its clouds were tinged with glory, or lying upon a shore where we built sand castles in play--alas! for castles we built in earnest, to hold treasures of hope--and laughed to see them dissolve in the laughing waves. We have no wish to pluck the hill-side flowers; we shall never build castles again, never chase back the encroaching waves, which, while they seemed to recede, rose till they buried our castles and swept away our treasures. But it will be something to share the repose of nature; to lie on her lap lulled by the requiem of the past, chanted by the voice that sang the anthem of the future. For we--her deluded children--are weary, and only ask of her a foretaste of the rest we hope to find by and by in her bosom. How weary we are! Of strivings from which we have no power to cease! Of reachings, from which we cannot withhold our hands, toward objects that elude us or turn worthless in our grasp! Weary of our own and others' weakness and meanness! Of lying lives; of suspicions, envyings, and covetings! How tired of homely work; oppressed by narrow rooms, vexed by noises of neighbors separated from us only by the legal number of inches in brick and mortar--a loud-talking, stamping family on one side, and on the other the household of Widow Smith, who keeps boarders and a piano!