"Immediately previous to the sort of intermittent equinoctial which has recently prevailed, the full bench of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, presided over by Chief Justice Shaw, were at session at Lenox, in the county of Berkshire. Among the cases that were brought up for adjudication, was an action of _trespass quare clausum fregit_, brought by a farmer against a number of individuals, who in common with many others, had, at a time last winter, when the public highway was rendered impassible by ice and snow, made a temporary road over the farmer's grounds without leave or license first had and obtained. Mr. Sumner, of Barrington, the leading counsel of the county, appeared for the defence, and in enforceing his views, took occasion to read from Macaulay's late History of England, several passages to illustrate the state of land communication in that county, at the time of which he writes. From that author it appears that upon one occasion, worthy Mr. Pepys, our friend of the 'naif' diary, while travelling somewhere (we think in Lincolnshire, but have not the book before us for reference), got his '_belle voiture_', as Cardinal Richelieu used to call his antediluvian vehicle, stuck in the mud so that it could not be extricated, and Mr. Sumner went on to argue, that by the common law, Mr. Pepys then was, and anybody now is, justified, in cases of necessity, in passing over private domains without becoming liable to the owner in damages. Mr. Porter, recently District Attorney, was for the plaintiff, and, in answering that part of his adversary's argument, to which we have above alluded, claimed the indulgence of the court to state, that a certain author had been quoted upon the other side, who had hardly as yet been recognized as authority in a court of justice, upon a mere law question, at least; that such being the case, he claimed the liberty to read from another writer, the late historiographer royal of Great Britain, a gentleman whose statements were certainly entitled to overrule the others in a question of that sort; and thereupon Mr. Porter commenced reading the first chapter of Mr. G. P. R. James's new novel of 'The Fate,' in which he so indignantly denounces the falsity of Macaulay's picture of the social condition of England two centuries ago. This created no little merriment, both on the bench and among the gentlemen of the robe, all admitting that it was the first time within their knowledge, that the black linen and the brown paper had usurped the place of the consecrated law calf, before an American tribunal at least." * * * * *