The circuit and oyer and terminer for Duke’s presented nothing novel in its bench, its bar, its jurors, and we might add its witnesses. The first was a cool-headed, dispassionate man, with a very respectable amount of legal learning and experience, and a perfectly fair character. No one suspected him of acting wrong from evil motives; and when he did err, it was ordinarily from the pressure of business; though, occasionally, he was mistaken, because the books could not foresee every possible phase of a case. The bar was composed of plain, hard-working men, materially above the level of Timms, except in connection with mother-wit; better educated, better mannered, and, as a whole, of materially higher origin; though, as a body, neither profoundly learned nor of very refined deportment. Nevertheless, these persons had a very fair portion of all the better qualities of the northern professional men. They were shrewd, quick in the application of their acquired knowledge, ready in their natural resources, and had that general aptitude for affairs that probably is the fruit of a practice that includes all the different branches of the profession. Here and there was a usurer and extortioner among them; a fellow who disgraced his calling by running up unnecessary bills of cost, by evading the penal statutes passed to prevent abuses of this nature, and by cunning attempts to obtain more for the use of his money than the law sanctioned. But such was not the general character of the Duke’s county bar, which was rather to be censured for winking at irregular proceedings out of doors, for brow-beating witnesses, and for regarding the end so intensely as not always to be particular in reference to the means, than for such gross and positively illegal and oppressive measures as those just mentioned. As for the jurors, they were just what that ancient institution might be supposed to be, in a country where so many of the body of the people are liable to be summoned. An unusually large proportion of these men, when all the circumstances are considered, were perhaps as fit to be thus employed as could be obtained from the body of the community of any country on earth; but a very serious number were altogether unsuited to perform the delicate duties of their station. Fortunately, the ignorant are very apt to be influenced by the more intelligent, in cases of this nature; and by this exercise of a very natural power, less injustice is committed than might otherwise occur. Here, however, is the opening for the “horse-shedding” and “pillowing,” of which Timms has spoken, and of which so much use is made around every country court-house in the state. This is the crying evil of the times; and, taken in connection with the enormous abuse which is rendering a competition in news a regular, money-getting occupation, one that threatens to set at defiance all laws, principles and facts.