Lawyers as Biographers. Roger stayed a week, and observed " the Duke's princely style of living," — above any other, except crowned heads. The Duke had about two hundred persons in his family, all provided for; and in his chief house, nine original tables, covered every day. He him self sat where the whole lay in his view, and had power to do what was proper for keeping order among than, and it was his charge to see it done. The women had their diningroom, and were distributed in like manner. As to the Duchess, every day in her life in the morning she took her tour, and visited every office about the house, and so was her own superintendent. At half-past eleven the bell rang for prayers. And so at six in the even ing, while the Duke and Duchess were so placed that they could see if all the family were there. If any one chose a glass of wine, he could either go down into the vaults, which were very large and sumptuous, or at a sign given, servants attended with salvers, etc., but no sitting at a table with tobacco and healths. " A princely style of living," indeed, both in its bounty and its rigor. During the week of his stay the entertainment ex hibited incomparable variety. The whole picture is a highly pleasing one of luxury in living joined with the closest attention to domestic business affairs, though the Duke was Lord Lieutenant of four or five counties and Lord President of Wales. The life of a great nobleman was then no sinecure. The days of gilded youth and pampered age had not yet arrived. As the travellers went along, their curi osity was insatiable. They visited cathe drals, country-seats, and collieries with a deep and intelligent interest, while Roger in his usual way described them in wellchosen and pellucid words. At Newcastle they saw the first railways in existence, laid from the collieries to the river Tyne. The owner of the colliery would purchase a,: way leave" over the land between the coal-pit and the river, and would be required to pay twenty pounds per annum for the mere right of way over a rood of ground. The practice
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then was " to lay rails of timber from the colliery down to the river, exactly straight and parallel; and bulky carts are made with four rowlets [wheels] fitting these rails, whereby the carriage is so easy that one horse will draw down four or five chaldron of coals." Here is the germ of the iron or steel railway, the general device being the same, with a change of material. But the border country between England and Scotland beyond all else was of absorb ing interest. The principal avocation there before the union of the two countries had been the stealing of cattle. The thief had only to cross the border and he was safe. Extradition was unknown. After the union, the old habit continued. To check it, the Crown created a mixed commission of oyer and terminer called the Border Commission, half English and half Scotch, which made short work of the thieves, hanging eighteen at a single session of the court. When the Norths were there, violent suspicion was practically sufficient for conviction. When the Chief-Justice hesitated in one case to convict for want of evidence, a Scotchman who was a Border Commissioner leaned forward and said to him in his broad Scotch : "My laird, send him to Huzz [us], and yees ne'er see him mair." From Newcastle the judges' route lay to Carlisle. The Northumberland sheriff gave them at one and the same time a dagger, a knife and fork, and a penknife, having one eye for a fight and the other for dinner. But we in our time have clearly advanced beyond the Northumbrians; for while their sheriff left the travellers to their own defence, our marshal stands behind the judge at dinner, and at the moment of supreme danger himself takes a hand in it, while the nation looks on and applauds. The brothers passed through several manors. The ten ants were bound to guard the judges through their respective manorial precincts. "Out of their precinct they would not go, no, not an inch, to save the souls of them. They were a comical sort of people, riding upon
