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furished as actualy to understand penna and scribo, with The substantial veri rapit, and having an evanescent remembrance of que Greek vocable, fortified moreover, with a considerabit stock of abominably-sounding Scotch words, which he has earned from his siovenly, ill-bred mother, and with nab-e-dozer English words and phrases, which he has almost involuntary picked in in the progress of his precious academical curriculum., the thing proceeds to the chambers of his future master. On his way thither, he meditates on his past and present condition and blockhead as he is, he cannot antogether throw aside conjectures as to the probabilities of the future. The indenture of a fre-year's clerkship is prepared and engrossed by himself, and signed by the parties With all the due solemnities of law, and he takes his seat at the desk, which has just been left by some other junior manufacturer of legal writs, technically and elegantly denominated hornings, poindings, and captions, who has assumed, or is about to assume, the imposing title of a Writer to his Majesty's Signet.

It now becomes necessary for the nursling lawyer to call into exercise the whole of his abilities, and to apply his acquired knowledge to the business of real life. His master pays Ettie attention to him, and he is left to find his way among the intricacies and mysteries of his future profession, by the information and instruction which can be obtained by dint of observation and inquiry among his companions in the same chambers. Along with a smattering of business, which he learns from these wights, some of whom are probably old stagers on the road of profligacy, he acquires a pretty fair proportion of depraved ideas, at the mere conception of which a few months ago he would have started with horror. At the same time, he gradually attains to some proficiency in the language and practices of young bloods of the town, whose glory is in their shame, and whose greatest boast it is to riot in the orgies of unbridled obscenity, and boundless debauchery. To this state of perfection he does not arrive

without various misgivings and occasional annoyances from a wounded sensibility. But if his health and his purse do not fail him, he is almost certain to reach this grand climax some time before the expiry of his indenture.

In this manner he reaches his twenty-first or twenty-second year; and having sown his wild oats, and imbibed a little knowledge of business, and a thirst for more, with an unbounded craving for fingering large sums, composed of numerous items, few exceeding three shillings and fourpence, or six shillings and eightpence, he enters on his career with a brass plate on his door, indicating, by the large capitals W. S. annexed to his name, that he vends all sorts of legal writs at, but not one farthing below, the full sum fixed by the legal body of which he is now an initiated member. He now becomes a staid man of business, perhaps marries, and thus becomes somewhat civilized; but more probably, he remains for some years a bachelor, attends very punctually to business in the forenoon, but spends his evenings, now that he has acquired a little pelf, in a more methodical species of debauchery than that to which he accustomed himself during his clerkship. If he becomes the junior partner of some Don in the profession, he will come with great dignity among the now silent clerks in his chambers; he will speak big to them; and perhaps, with the insolence of upstart authority, he will scold the wretches, trembling lest he should carry his petulent caprice so far as to dismiss them entirely from his employment. He takes especial care, however, to please his own senior partner, and is a perfect image of gentleness and politeness, in so far as the inbred barbarism of his selfish and vulgar soul will permit him, to all the better order of the clients of the firm.

He now takes charge of law-processes, and is regularly seen prowling in the courts, followed by a fag clerk, who conveys to counsel the papers necessary in the debates at the Bar. The thing now looks grave, probably uses a considerable quantity of snuff, and is the last man on earth to advise

or to bring about a compromise of any disputed point of a case, although his poor victim of a client is certain to throw away hundreds of gold to secure the chance of obtaining from his adversary a mere particle of chaff. Converse with him upon any subject but such as embraces the miserable jargon of summonses, defences, condescendences, pleas in law, and the opinions and speeches of the Dean of Faculty, and this or t'other sage of the long robe, and you will find his head a mere thing of emptiness. However, he grows up amid this profound ignorance of all that is estimable in human existence, and all that is most deserving to be known in the social condition of man. He becomes rich; and if he does not, by a miracle, relax a little in his application to business, and learn something of what he ought to have known before he dared to enter on the threshold of a profession called liberal, he will soon degenerate into an inanimate sot, or a scarcely more vital jolterhead squire.

Meet the young pretender in company, and he bores you with law cases past all power of comprehension. Meet him in a stage-coach, and he will equally pester you with his horrible talk about his processes, and with long dissertations on the merit of this or the other judge. Any of the fifteen who may happen to have taken a view of a case different from that of this wise Writer to the Signet, is unsparingly set down as an irreclaimable idiot. This stage-coach conversation, however, has a chance of being diversified by scraps from the secret history of some of the estates through which you are passing. The prying dog knows to a farthing the sum lent on mortgage over any given property in all broad Scotland; and his eyes sparkle with delight, when he informs you that the gentleman who lives in yonder mansion executed a trust-deed in his favour a few weeks ago, and that he is just on his way to take sasine on the deed. He sees in long vista the fat produce of this transaction, and to him it is the summum bonum of human happiness to dole out a few pounds to the starving proprietor of an ample

estate, thus unhappily thrown within the grasp of his harpy talons.

XXVI.

THE YOUNG LAWYER'S SOLILOQUY.

"What I hear of their hardships, their tortures, and groans,
Is almost enough to draw pity from stones."

COWPER'S Pity for Poor Africans.

From the Edinburgh Literary Journal, No. 64, January 1830.

Disconsolate beside his briefless desk,
Young Wordsby sat, and mournfully he closed
His portly Erskine, while, with heavy heart,
Thus fee-lingly, without a fee, he spoke :-
"Farewell! a long farewell to all my law-books!
This land of unpaid wigs for me no more
Hath charms or welcome.-Lo! my empty purse,
More hideous than a bare-ribbed skeleton,
Beckons me far away. On Monday last
Six youths, led onward by the cheerful sound
Of coming fees, tinkling like distant music,
Their trials in the civil law did pass ;
Six more on Tuesday!-Hast thou, Jupiter!
No earthquake, no fell bolt, no pestilence?
Why not beneath the crowded Outer-House
Dig out a yawning gulf to swallow Skene,*

Andrew Skene, Esquire, Advocate. This eminent lawyer, and excellent man was born in 1784. He was a son of Dr. Skene, (descended from a younger branch of the family of Skene of Skene), Professor of Medicine in the Marischal College, Aberdeen. His mother was a daughter of Gordon of Abergeldie.

Mr. Skene was educated at Marischal College, and after having been some time in the chambers of a writer to the signet in Edinburgh, passed advocate. He gradually obtained business, and for many years before his death, was in as great practice as any member of the bar. He was perhaps the most energetic pleader of the time, and although his voice was anything but musical, the force of his arguments, and the ingenuity of his pleadings, caused this defect to be soon overlooked. He was Solicitor-General prior to the formation of the Peel Administration,

Cockburn and Jeffrey, Cranstoun and Moncrieff?
Or, if thy mercy interposes, why

Wilt thou not send us a reviving shower

Of rich litigious clients from the moon?

And must I rend you from my heart, ye dreams
Of white cravats, and sweeping treble gowns?
No longer must I pant for the keen war,
Where foes are floor'd by words of giant size,
Or cut in pieces by a Latin saw?

My sweet Louisa, too!-must all our hopes
Vanish as quickly as a city feast?

Must we not marry, love, as once we plann'd,
Purchase a house in Queen Street or the Crescent,
And keep a carriage! -Eheu! well-a-day!

Hold forth a fan to ward a thunderbolt,

when he was succeeded by Duncan Macneil, Esquire. Had it not been for his unexpected and much lamented demise in March 1835, he undoubtedly would have been re-appointed to that office upon the return of the Whigs to power. Mr. Skene's application was remarkable, all his cases were prepared at night, and he was in the habit every morning of rising during winter at six, and five in summer, when he sat down, not to his professional, but to his literary studies; for, unlike many of his brethren, who think there is no pleasant reading but in Erskine's Institutes, and no useful research but in Morrison's Dictionary,-he was passionately devoted to literature. To the beauties of the old Dramatists, he was sensibly alive; and often, in the few moments he had to spare in the Parliament House, he would expatiate on their merits, and repeat such passages as had been impressed on his memory. Amongst his most favourite Dramas were Webster's White Devil and his Duchess of Malfi; these, he used to say, were entitled to a higher station in dramatic literature than is usually assigned to them. Nor was his taste exclusively limited to poetry, he was very partial to historical researches; but although fond of antiquities, he was not one of those who dwell with rapture on a rusty helmet, or pour out their soul over a Roman altar. On the contrary, he held antiquaries somewhat cheap, and thought it no sin to impose upon their credulity. On one occasion, he mistified them, by fabricating a charter of a very strange description, which gave the learned men, both of Modern Athens and Aberdeen, an opportunity of displaying their research in its elucidation.

This was a document purporting to be a Crown grant by Robert the Bruce, "Hebræo Judæico" of the lands of "Happerstaines." The reddendo was very peculiar, being "tria preputia aurata." The deed was slipped into a parcel of genuine writings, and found by a gentleman who was engaged in a topographical work relative to Aberdeen. The delight with which this credulous

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