the experiment are of a different way of thinking, and count it the most arduous form of idleness. More swing-doors open into pigeon-holes where Judges of the First Appeal sit singly, and halls of audience where the Supreme Lords sit by three or four. Here you may see Scott's place within the bar, where he wrote many a page of Waverley Novels to the drone of judicial proceeding. You will hear a good deal of shrewdness, and, as their Lordships do not altogether disdain pleas antry, a fair proportion of dry fun. The broadest of broad Scotch is now banished from the bench; but the courts still retain a certain national flavor. We have a solemn enjoyable way of lingering on a case. We treat law as a fine art, and relish and digest a good distinction. There is no hurry : point after point must be rigidly examined and reduced to principle; judge after judge must utter forth his obiter dicta to delighted brethren. Besides the courts, there are installed un der the same roof no less than three libraries. ... As the Parliament House is built upon a
slope, although it presents only one story to the north, it measures half a dozen at least upon the south, and range after range of vaults extend below the libraries. You de scend one stone stair after another, and wan der, by the flicker of a match, in a labyrinth of stone cellars. Now you pass below the outer hall, and hear overhead, brisk but ghostly, the interminable pattering of legal feet. Now you come upon a strong door with a wicket; on the other side are the cells of the police-office, and the trap-stair that gives admittance to the dock in the justiciary court. Many a foot that has gone up there lightly enough has been dead heavy in the descent. Many a man's life has been argued away from him during long hours in the court above. ... A little farther and you strike upon a room, not empty like the rest, but crowded with productions from bygone criminal cases : a grim lumber : lethal weap ons; poisoned organs in a jar; a door with a shot-hole through the panel, behind which a man fell dead. I cannot fancy why they should preserve them, unless it were against the Judgment Day.
