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"Ow much?' here roars out the ruffian in the dock, who (being apparently of the negro's opinion that, 'if you floggee, floggee, and if you preachee, preachee, but no preachee and floggee both') is not disposed to listen to any more of the learned Baron's remarks.

'Ten years! take him away!' responds the unmoved Bounderby (making no attempt to resume his lecture), and the ruffian in the dock speedily disappears.

Another case is instantly called on. But what is this? Baron Bounderby, you hear, is sternly rebuking that young counsel, who is on his legs, for putting what the learned Baron describes as 'a most improper question' to the witness who is under examination. Ah! Rusticus, the learned gentleman who is being so sternly rebuked by Baron Bounderby, is but an inexpert practitioner of the famous Old Bailey rule, 'No case, so abuse the other side.' He has, I gather from the learned Baron's remarks, dared to ask the witness under examination-without his having, be it understood any instructions in his brief to authorise him to put such an insulting question—whether he (the witness) had not been at some remote period of his life convicted of some offence? That style of question, I may tell you, Rusticus, is often put on pure

speculation by certain disreputable Old Bailey bar-. risters.

'What an abominable shame!' Rusticus responded, and so speaking, he began angrily to elbow out of the Old Bailey.

When we had passed into the street, I observed that the countenance of my honest friend was flushed with anger.

'What's the matter with you, Rusticus?' I enquired.

'What's the matter!' angrily rejoined Rusticus, 'I'll soon tell you what's the matter, only I suppose I shall vex you if I do?'

'Pray say whatever you wish,' I politely replied. 'Well then,' answered Rusticus, since you are so monstrous civil, I will tell you what I wished to say to you. And it is this: I think your learned friends of the Old Bailey Bar,'—

'In the first place, Rusticus,' I interrupted, 'let me tell you that the gentlemen in question are not my friends, and in the second place--'

'Yes they are your friends,' Rusticus rudely broke in, 'you are a member of the same noble profession as they are' (Rusticus quite sneered as he pronounced the word noble, which plainly showed me how unreasonably angry he was) and so they are your learned friends, and you would call them

so in court, you know you would! And what I wish to tell you is,

'Don't speak so loudly, Rusticus!' I interposed 'I'm not deaf, and you are shouting so that everybody in the street is looking at you.'

'What do I care if they are looking at me!' Rusticus roared out. 'What I want to tell you,' he went on in a stentorian voice, 'is that, I think your learned friends of the Old Bailey Bar, are -upon the whole-rather greater ruffians than the prisoners in the dock whom they defend!'

'My dear Rusticus,' I replied, as I wrung his honest hands, 'I scarcely know which to admire most the lucidity of your judgment, or the force with which you have expressed it. Come, let us take a cab to the Temple.'

Papers.

'OUR LEADING COLUMNS.

EVERY MAN, we are told, imagines himself competent to drive a gig, stir a fire, and write a leading article. Of the two former accomplishments I cannot say much. As I have never pretended to possess them myself, I shall not attempt to impart them to others; but the third is an accomplishment 'which is so mysterious in the eyes of the uninitiated, and at the same time appears to the presumptuous to be of such easy acquirement, that 'a leader-writer' can hardly fail to interest somebody if he attempts a faithful exposition of the sublime mysteries of his craft.

The 'leader,' as it now appears in the full glories of long primer in our morning and evening journals, is, it need hardly be said, an essentially modern creation. The man who takes up a volume of the 'Times' or the 'Morning Chronicle' for one of the

early years of the present century, will be sadly disappointed if he expects to find in either anything resembling the articles which are now provided for him every day. A few bald lines of summary, and a stilted and ungrammatical sentence feebly echoing the gossip of the town, are all that he will find in the columns which are now filled with essays often of remarkable literary ability, and almost always written with force, clearness, and elegance. But it has been by long years of slow and weary progress that the editorial 'we' has attained its present position; and even now there are but few persons— beyond the limited number behind the sceneswho have any adequate idea of the combination of industry and talent which has daily to be put in force in order to produce the leading columns of a London morning newspaper.

The great blunder of the newspaper reader is in supposing that there is such a being as an actual owner of the 'we,' who is alone allowed to use it, and who is the author of all the articles in which it makes its appearance in any particular newspaper. The truth is, that the 'we' is a literal fact, and not, as most people suppose, a mere figment invented for the purpose of giving dignity and emphasis to an individual expression of opinion. With hardly an exception, the leading articles of

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