present Lord Chancellor tripping it on the light fantastic round the hall, followed by barristers and students? But although the Lord of Misrule has ceased to be an official personage in the Temple, and draughts of Hippocras are as rare as draughts of Nectar, there is a strong spirit of conviviality still amongst us. It is the essence of a lawyer's education to be sociable; if not, to what purpose is "keeping terms" made a mere matter of drinking so many pints of wine, and eating so many loins of beef and mutton? The study of law, properly so called, is by no means the dry, uninteresting thing which people imagine. You have to learn a great many things, and most especially to be a good fellow, even before the faintest conception of the rule in Shelby's case reaches your mind. All the traditions of the place point to the correctness of this statement.

When

A "call party" at the Temple is perhaps only a faint echo of the boisterous revelry which prevailed there formerly, but, being quietly disposed, it is in most instances sufficiently strong for me. Brown was called, he gave a party which must ever remain a golden page in the records of Temple Life.

Some call parties, I am sorry to say, are terribly dull, and it is a curious fact in connexion with the philosophy of such things, that the character of the host is reflected through them in a most incomprehensible manner. If he be a real property man, beware! it is certain to be a most leaden reunion. You will have nothing but "shop" the whole night, and the question of contingent remainders discussed in its most minute bearings; but if he be a man devoted to what may be called the light literature of the profession, you need entertain no such apprehensions of being bored. When all guests assembled at Brown's, it was evident to the most superficial observer, that we were in for a jolly night. To speak the language of those gentlemen who draw such eloquent pictures of civic feasts and other feasts, the wine, of which there was an abundant supply, was of the choicest vintage; but, as for the guests, there was the writer of the last sensation novel, there was the celebrated comic author and actor, who was drawing three times a week such crowded houses, and splitting the sides of his audience, "with immense applause", and besides these, an endless variety, consisting of authors, barristers, doctors, artists, men on town, whose occupation was chiefly that of killing time, and who might be officers or young gentlemen from the country, with large incomes and unlimited capacity for spending the same. Of course there were speeches, but not many until late on in the night, when a highly promising amount of eloquence was displayed by those of the legal profession present. If there be any one thing most of all others of which I have a horror, it is after-dinner or after-supper oratory. Some time ago I dined with a friend who, I am sorry to say, is grievously afflicted by an afterdinner speech-making mania; we were exactly twelve, and we had exactly twenty seven speeches, all the grossest rubbish, as a matter of course, and very badly delivered. Now, how can human endurance

stand such an ordeal this? I bore it all very patiently then, but I conceived a silent resolve to be more prudent for the future.

But to return. Brown's health was proposed, and "without the remotest intention to flatter", as it was ingenuously declared by the speaker, he was pronounced to be the epitome of all that was good and great. A path of glory was then traced out, upon which he, Brown, was sure to tread, and a confident vaticination indulged in, rendered still more impressive by repeated blows on the table, that Brown would yet sit on the Bench, if not the Woolsack; "and", concluded the eloquent and learned gentleman, "I am certain that the ermine has never rested, and never will rest, on the shoulders of a man more likely to do honour to his profession and his country". A vehement burst of applause greeted this last effort, and Brown's health was drunk with the conventional enthusiasm of men who call you "a jolly good fellow", and drink your wine with a hip, hip, hurrah! Brown responded with his usual modesty, and then commenced the serious business of the night. There are certain things which, novelists say, can be better imagined than described. Probably, the events of this night may be numbered in such a category. Given a large preponderance of Irishmen, with Englishmen, and Frenchmen from the Mauritius, and a few dusky children of the East and West Indies, and wine ad libitum-all united for the purpose of celebrating the event indicated, and you can draw your own conclusions as to its character. There was a perfectly cosmopolitan spirit prevailing. Frenchmen danced the Irish jig, and Irishmen the can can, and the swarthy West Indian whirled his long limbs in the rounds of the Highland fling. I draw a discreet veil over the closing scenes of that night's revelry. It was discussed in the hall next day, and it was generally acknowledged that Brown's call party had far surpassed anything of the kind within legal memory—a span of time by no means inconsiderable.

At present the revels at the temple are confined to the junior members of the profession; formerly it was considered by no means infra dig. for the gravest and weightiest of the big wigs to join in them. It is recorded that the last "revel" in any of the inns was held in the Inner Temple when Talbot was raised to the Woolsack. It appears that on that occasion the benchers danced, and a play was performed by actors from the Haymarket, "who came in chairs ready dressed".

One is prone to play the part of laudator temporis acti when writing of such places and such times: for my part, I don't envy antiquity its honours, and am quite satisfied with things as they stand.

C. F. W.

A LEGEND OF NORSELAND.

[A maiden, charmed by the singing of the elf-king, is lured by him to the mountain, which opens to receive them, and closes again when they have entered. Her relative happening to be near the spot, hears her cry for help. If the church bell be rung beside the hill till sunset, the spell will be broken and the girl rescued. The bell is taken down from the steeple, and, with the assistance of all the village, brought to the mountain and set in motion. Already the sun is setting, when the rope breaks, and the maiden has disappeared for ever.]

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Followed it over the mountain,
Followed it over the glen,
Followed it by the hollow hill,
Where the echoes sang it again;

Followed it into the forest of pines,
Down to the ocean shore;
And sweeter thrilled the fairy song,
And seemed to fly before.

And ever the maiden followed,

Till she came to the elfin king,
Where he sate on the side of a barren hill,
In the midst of a fairy ring.

He sang till she came within the ring,
Then seized her by the hand,

And they sank together thro' the earth
Into the Fairy Land.

There came a man to the old Norse town,
"Up and awake", cried he;

"For a maiden is lured by the elfin king, To the mountain by the sea.

"If the bell of the village church be rung Till sunset by the hill,

The spells will fail, she may yet be saved

"T is an hour to sundown still".

Up rose the men of giant limb-
The Norsemen of the town,

They hurried along to the old gray tower,
And the mighty bell took down.

They bore it away over wold and glen,
To the mountain by the sea;

They set it up in a lofty pine,

And they tolled it loud and free.

The shadows of evening longer grew,
The sun was touching the sea,
And still the bell in the lofty pine
Was tolling loud and free.

Into the breast of the crimson wave
Slowly sank the sun,

And still the peal was ringing out—
The task was nearly done:

When, crashing away through the faithless tree,
Came down the ponderous bell;
And, as it was hushed, a solemn fear
On the stalwart Norsemen fell;

For they heard, as the sun was hidden,
Come floating o'er the strand,
The wail of the maiden lost for aye,
By a spell of fairy land.

ASPECTS OF FRENCH MILITARY LIFE.

"Do you know what glory is ?" asked a bronzed veteran of the imperial guard, of a young conscript who had lately left his quiet home in the country to become a soldier, and then proceeded to explain

"If you fall on the field of victory, you will be immortalized in perpetuity". To us, who have a strong infusion of Anglo-Saxon blood in our veins, think as we will about it, this illustration of glory must seem slightly exaggerated. Posthumous honour is no doubt an agreeable reflection to smooth our way into another life, but its actual enjoyment is beyond the reach of all living men-Frenchmen excepted. In the military economy of France every influence is present calculated to stimulate the growth of this sentiment, not like England, where a shilling a day pension, and possibly a sergeant's stripes, form the pinnacle of a soldier's ambition. And although we do not fully accept the ethnological view of the question, as regards the relative capacities of Englishmen and Frenchmen for military purposes, still there is a vast deal in favour of the theory that the Celtic race is superior in that respect. The men who fought under the banner of the Cæsars were Celts, as well as those who followed Marshal M'Mahon to victory at Magenta and Solferino, and to-day in that fearful American struggle, Celtic blood is lavishly shed, and Celtic valour nobly vindicated. But the influence which makes La Gloire ever present to a French soldier's mind, is the character of the training he receives. He has always before him the possibility of attaining the highest position in his profession, and even a marshal's baton is by no means an unrealisable hope for the humblest soldier in the ranks.

The Zouave is at present the type of the French soldier, and in treating of this subject we can do no better than give a brief account of the formation of that celebrated corps. The first Zouave force was formed in Algeria, in 1830, under Lamoriciere. They were the indigenes or natives of the country, and received their name from a confederation of tribes called in Arabic Zououa, amongst whom the Dey of Algiers was accustomed to recruit his infantry. There were also a great num