“Mister Purvis,--if that's the name,--see, now, 't is n't boasting I am, for the condition we 're in would n't let any man boast,--but it's what I 'm saying, the English is a mighty stupid people. They have their London jokes, and, like London porter, mighty heavy they are, and bitter, besides; and they have two or three play-actors that makes them die laughing at the same comicalities every day of the year. They get used to them as they do the smoke and the noise and the Thames water; and nothing would persuade them that, because they 're rich, they 're not agreeable and social and witty. And may I never leave this, but you 'd find cuter notions of life, droller stories, and more fun, under a dry arch of the Aqueduct of Stoney Batter than if you had the run of Westminster Hall. Look at the shouts of laughter in the Law Coorts; look at the loud laughter in the House of Commons! Oh dear! oh dear! it makes me quite melancholy just to think of it I won't talk of the Parliament, because it's gone; but take an Irish Coort in Dublin or on the Assizes, at any trial,--murder, if you like,----and see the fun that goes on: the judge quizzing the jury, and the counsel quizzing the judge, and the prisoner quizzing all three. There was poor ould Nor-bury,--rest his soul!--I remember well how he could n't put on the black cap for laughing.” “And is ju-justice better administered for all that?” cried Purvis. “To be sure it is. Isn't the laws made to expose villany, and not let people be imposed upon? Sure it's not to hang Paddy Blake you want, but to keep others from following his example. And many 's the time in Ireland when, what between the blunderin' of the Crown lawyers, the flaws of the indictment, the conscientious scruples of the jury,--you know what that means,--and the hurry of the judge to be away to Harrogate or Tunbridge, a villain gets off. But, instead of going out with an elegant bran-new character, a bit of a joke--a droll word spoken during the trial--sticks to him all his life after, till it would be just as well for him to be hanged at once as be laughed at, from Pill-Lane to the Lakes of Killarney. Don't I remember well when one of the Regans--Tim, I think it was--was tried for murder at Tralee; there was a something or other they could n't convict upon. 'T was his grandfather's age was put down wrong, or the color of his stepmother's hair, or the nails in his shoes wasn't described right,----whatever it was, it was a flaw, as they called it; and a flaw in a brief, like one in a boiler, leaves everybody in hot water. “Not Guilty,” says the jury, 'for we can't agree.' “''Tis a droll verdict,' says O'Grady, for he was the judge. 'What d' ye mean?' “'Most of us is for hanging, my Lord; but more of us would let him off.'