Those who obtained no business found it particularly hateful to keep up the foolish appearance of having it by means of a post-chaise. You might not ride in a public vehicle, or dine at a public table, or put up at an inn for fear of falling in with attorneys and obtaining briefs from them surreptitiously. The Home Circuit was very strict in these respects, but it was the cheapest circuit to travel in the kingdom, so that its members were numerous and, I need not say, various in mind, manner, and position. But it was a circuit of brilliant men in my young days. Many of them rose to eminence both in law and in Parliament. It was a time, indeed, when, if judges made law, law made judges. I should like to say a word or two about those times and the necessary studies to be undergone by those who aspired to eminence. In the days of my earliest acquaintance with the law, an ancient order of men, now almost, if not quite, extinct, called Special Pleaders, existed, who, after having kept the usual number of terms--that is to say, eaten the prescribed number of dinners in the Inn of Court to which they belonged--became qualified, on payment of a fee of £12, to take out a Crown licence to plead under the Bar. This enabled them to do all things which a barrister could do that did not require to be transacted in court. They drew pleadings, advised and took pupils. Some of them practised in this way all their lives and were never called. Others grew tired of the drudgery, and were called to the Bar, where they remained _junior_ barristers as long as they lived, old age having no effect upon their status. Some were promoted to the ancient order of Serjeants-at-Law, or were appointed her Majesty's Counsel, while some of the Serjeants received from the Crown patents of precedence with priority over all Queen's Counsel appointed after them, and with the privilege of wearing a silk gown and a Queen's Counsel wig. There was, however, this difference between a Queen's Counsel and the holder of a Patent of Precedence: that the former, having been appointed one of her Majesty's Counsel, could not thenceforth appear without special licence under the sign-manual of the Queen to defend a prisoner upon a criminal charge. The Serjeant-at-Law is as rare now as a bustard. I mention these old-fashioned times and studies, not because of their interest at the present day, but because they produced such men as Littledale, Bayley, Parke (afterwards Lord Wensleydale), Alderson, Tindal, Patteson, Wightman, Crompton, Vaughan Williams, James, Willes, and, later, Blackburn.