show the bearing of a statute in a criminal case, and only succeeds in exposing his turtle-fed ignorance to the merriment of the knowing ones.

Look there now. A youth well-dressed and cleanly-looking is brought into the dock and placed for trial on a charge of forgery on his employer, for the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds. The young fellow has a weak, pallid face, and seems rather dazed at all the preparation and mysterious jabber on his account. A dozen of the counsel, in black stuff gowns and with white wigs of horse-hair look around for a minute at the dock, where the prisoner stands, merely out of curiosity, as if he were a sheep or a calf brought in for slaughter. Their curiosity satisfied, they turn away from him and dismiss his pale face from their thoughts almost instantaneously. The judge on the bench-who is flanked by a fat alderman on each side, in red robes—sits, looking at some documents, with a far-away, abstracted look, as if the prisoner at the bar was a thousand miles distant, and a free man.

And meanwhile the case progresses, the counsel for the Crown opening indignantly on the side of virtue and the law, and witness after witness is called up and kisses the book, and there is much making of affidavit and counter-affidavit, and through all this maze of swearing and mist of statement, it appears that the young lad at the bar has been wild and reckless, and has signed his master's name, beyond all doubt, to a check, which he had cashed, the proceeds of which were spent in the haunts of vice and shame. The case goes to the jury, who pronounce him guilty without leaving their seats, and the sun streams through the windows on the despairing face of the youth, and I am awakened from a sort of a trance into which I have fallen, to hear the voice of the Recorder of the good city of London, drone out at the prisoner:

"In this case I can find no extenuating circumstances. You are of age to know better, and the sentence of the Court is, therefore, that you suffer penal servitude, with hard labor, for the space of twelve years."

Good God! twelve years! He is not yet eighteen, and the

THE JUDGES' DINNER.

569.

twelve best years of his life are erased from his span of existence, by the breath of the man in blue cloth gown and the fur tippet, and now the latter goes up stairs to eat his dinner, the jury are dismissed, and a young girl falls fainting in the Court as the prisoner is led out-however it is only his sister. There is a little stir among the horse-hair-wigged counsel and a buzz in the audience, and in three minutes another case comes on to excite new interest, and make us forget the convict and his sobbing, fair-haired sister.

Upon the front of the dock is placed a sprig of rue, which dissipates any infection that may proceed from the clothes of the prisoner, should he be suffering from illness. The. origination of this custom is worthy of note.

In 1750, when the jail fever raged in Newgate, the effluvia entering the Court, caused the death of Baron Clarke, Sir Thomas Abney, the judge of the Common Pleas; and Pen-' nant's "respected kinsman," Sir Samuel Pennant, Lord Mayor; besides members of the bar and of the jury, and other perThis disease was also fatal to several persons in 1772. Since that time a sprig of rue has always been kept in the dock to drive away contagion.

sons.

Above the old Court is a stately dining-room, wherein, during the Old Bailey sittings, the dinners are given by the sheriffs to the judges and aldermen, the Recorder, Common Sergeant, city pleaders, and a few visitors. Marrow-puddings and rump-steaks are always provided. Two dinners, exact duplicates, are served each day, at 3 and 5 o'clock; and the judges relieve each other, but aldermen have eaten both dinners; and a chaplain, who invariably presided at the lower end of the table, thus ate two dinners a day for ten years. Theodore Hook admirably describes a Judges' Dinner in his Gilbert Gurney. In 1807-8, the dinners for three sessions, nineteen days, cost Sheriff Phillips £35 per day-£665; 145 dozen of wine, consumed at the above dinners, £450: total £1,115. The amount is now considerably greater, as the sessions are held monthly.

Outside in the lobbies and hall rooms, passages and corridors

adjacent to and connected with the Old Bailey Court there is always a crowd of lawyers, policemen, hangers-on, countrymen, cadgers, and persons anxious to become spectators, females of the poorer class, members of the aristocratic swell mob, sneak thieves and pickpockets, all curious to know how matters are going on inside with their friends or associates in crime or misfortune, and among them all, rushing hither and thither, chatting and joking, conferring with his clients, and nodding

familiarly to the police and the officers of the Court, may be seen the sharpest legal bird in the world. I mean the regular Old Bailey practitioner, who could take a penny from a dead man's eyes, rob an altar, or cheat the widow and orphan, and still prove to his own satisfaction that it was done for a good and laudable purpose.

A not uncommon sight in the vicinity of police offices and petty Courts, in London, is the noisy, brawling discharge of

prisoners, who are turned out on the streets in the morning, after having been locked up all night for trifling offences, or disorderly conduct and intoxication.

Their unlucky companions, who have received sentences of imprisonment, are taken from the Courts to the places of confinement in which they are to pay the penalty of their indiscretion or crime. Every morning there is a dreadful row and confusion at the Bow street police office, when the prisoners are brought out to be placed in the prison wagon or "van," in which they are transported to Holloway, Milbank or Newgate prisons. A large crowd assembles daily to witness the embarkation of these poor wretches for their new residences. Fighting women, squalling children, patient policemen, and drunken blackguards are among the details of these assemblages. There is a strong able bodied virago, with her dress hanging to her form in shreds, who has just tossed her soiled bonnet madly among the crowd, with a series of shrieks, and three policemen are hardly sufficient to restrain her, while she is being helped into the "Van." At last she is locked up with other unruly personages inside of the iron door, in a dark box, where she may swear away to her heart's content for a ride of five to ten miles.

And now let us take a look at the Justice Room of the Mansion House, which is only a few rods distant from the Old Bailey.

Be it known to all my readers that the Mansion House, or Guildhall, is to London what the City Hall is to New Yorkthe Hotel de Ville to Paris or Brussels-and the Stadt Haus to Amsterdam. It is here that the Lord Mayor of London lives and here he deals out justice to his constituents. The Guildhall or Mansion House of London is one of the finest public buildings in the city, and has a noble gallery, dining hall, and a service of municipal gold and silver plate, which is used by the Lord Mayor on state occasions, besides a splendid collection of paintings.

But it is of the Justice Court, a small room in the Mansion House, that we have to speak on this occasion, and not of the plate, or of the Lord Mayor's annual show.

The Mansion House is just opposite the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange, in the very heart of moneyed London, Lombard street being but a very short distance around the corner, with its horde of money changers, bill discounters brokers, and bankers.

This Court is not opened before noonday, as the Lord Mayor of London is too mighty a magnate to be hurried in his daily duties for any command or Court of Justice. Accordingly at noon, I find myself below the steps leading

DETECTIVE IRVING.

to the Mansion House, and presently I begin to ascend the broad staircase of stone, with a small crowd of policemen, officers of the Court, witnesses, and lawyers. I am questioned as to my business by an officer at the door, but being in company with detective Irving, of New York City (who is about to appear before the Lord Mayor, in the case of Clement Harwood, the celebrated forger, whom the former had captured at New York on board of an English steamer, before she had touched her dock, and had him brought back to Lon

don for trial), I am admitted, and after one or two turnings, find myself in a well-lighted room of moderate size, with a high ceiling and two windows looking out on the Poultry and Threadneedle street.

Between those two windows is a throne or dais, gorgeous enough for a monarch, and behind the throne are emblazoned the municipal mace and sword, and the motto of the City of London, "Domine Dirige Nos," surmounted by the lion and