Notings, selections, Anecdote and joke: Our recollections; With gravities for graver folk. * * * * * THE BAR--THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS. It must be admitted (talking of the late _Vice_) that he really was enough to annoy any sober staid master, by his frolics and gambols since he has been made a judge. I remember him a quiet good sort of man enough: with a bed-room and kitchen in the area of No. 11, New-square; and his dining-room above, serving also for consultations: and his going, now and then, only to have a game of whist and glass of negus at Serle's;--but, now, he is a perfect _Monsieur Tonson_ to all continental travellers. Never can you take up the police-book at the hotels, on the road to Italy, without _Sir John Leach_ staring you in the face. The other day at the _Cloche_ at Dijon (I will never go there again, and beg Sir John to do me the favour to withdraw his patronage also,--the _Parc_ is worth twenty of it), yawning over my bottle of _Cote d'Or_, I inquired of the waiter who of my "land's language" had lately been there. "Vy, Sare, ve have de Milor Leash." "Lord Leash?"--"Oui, Monsieur;--mais, Fanchette, apportez le livre ici pour Monsieur--le voila."--"Ah, ha! Sir John Leach; I see."--"Ah qu'il est bon enfant! qu'il est gai!" exclaimed the _garcon_. "Ah! qu'il est aimable!" sighed Fanchette--Enter De Molin the banker's little bureau at Lausanne--(by the way, it is the favourite chamber of Gibbon the historian, and if you pay the house a visit from motives of curiosity respecting its former occupant, you will be happy to be allowed to remain and converse with the actual owner, for a more honourable, liberal, and better-informed man, does not exist)--there, I say, in the glass over the mantlepiece, will you see the card of _Sir John Leach_. Milan--Florence--the same. At Torlogna's the same. Then at Naples: go to San Carlos'; and if you get behind the scenes, ask for Braccini, the _poetá_ of the theatre, who has been long in England; "Cospetto di Bacco!" he will exclaim: "il degn uomo, quel Vice Cancelliere: il Cavaliere _Licci!_--Gran Dio! quale talento per la musica!-Cappari! egli ha guadagnato i cuori di tutte le donne Napolitane."[3] I certainly expect to hear him some day astonish the bar, by unwittingly striking up "O Pescator delle onde," or "Sul margine del Rio," in the Rolls Court; and, as in ancient Greece ('tis said) pleadings were chanted, let us yet hope to hear an argument preferred to the tune of "They are a' noddin, noddin, noddin;" an answer stated _andante_; a reply given in a _bravura_, and judgment pronounced _presto_. With all his faults (if they be such, which I do not admit), the present Master of the Rolls is a good judge, and an able man;--"un peu vif, peut-etre," as Fanchette might say; and it is more agreeable than otherwise, to see one who has devoted his life to the study of the law, enjoying himself in lighter pursuits, after having attained rank