buildings on Gray's Inn Road is known by that lordly appellation; for Gray's Inn build ings (so well pictured and described in the February number of " Green Bag ") are prin cipally surrendered for occupancy to solicitors and briefless barristers. The counsel to be sought will be found in either Lincoln's Inn or in the Middle or Inner Temples, where do congregate the busy barristers and popu lar. Q. C.'s. If the client reaches Middle Temple from Essex Street, he will pass by the fountain whereat Tom Pinch, of Peck sniff fame, and his sister Ruth were accus tomed to sit (the tree is there yet, and known widely as the Pinch tree, so realis tically are Dickens's sketches taken). Arrived at the Q. C.'s chambers, a barrier of artificiality is immediately encountered. The clerk — and every barrister, even if briefless, must have a clerk, who is to his employer what a grand-vizier is to a sultan — looks surprised, and informs him that " clients never see the barrister, except through the intermediary of a solicitor, and that the ap plicant must retain one." The clerk gives him the card of his pet solicitor (for the clerk is not above taking commissions); but the applicant being an American, and sus picious of off-hand recommendations, departs to hunt up a solicitor for himself. Inquiry satisfies him of a reliable one. He finds a colony of solicitors hard by in Essex Street, the western boundary of the Temple; or in Chancery Lane, that opens from the gate way near Temple Church. Upon Chancery Lane, adjoining the great law-bookstore of London, he finds the " Institute of So licitors," where its governing committee have offices, and where there are a library and reading and writing rooms. Here he finds a directory of solicitors, — some three thousand in all. He discovers that each one of these has been articled for several years to a solicitor (really an apprenticeship); has undergone three several examinations, with written questions requiring written answers under oral inspections; and then, having passed each examination, has been
licensed as solicitor to originate but not to conduct in court legal procedures, or to orally plead except before a local judge or magistrate, — some barrister for court ap pearance having to be employed by the solicitor. Consequently it is the solicitor who builds up the barrister, and not public reputation, as in America. This fact gave point to the song in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury," where in some autobio graphical rhymes a barristerial character sings, — "And I married a solicitor's daughter."
Our supposititious litigant, having selected and visited his solicitor and stated his case, is immediately met with more artificiality. "This is a case for counsel's advice. We must take an opinion. I will immediately prepare a statement, and in a few days send you word." "But what is your own opinion?" "Really, this is a most important mat ter; and I would not dare assume the responsibility." The litigant has not yet become aware that " statement-case for counsel," or " pe rusing opinion," or " copying opinion for client," are phrases known to bills of cost, or that fees for counsel-opinion are often divisible and apportioned. Here it is to be observed that, as things legally go in London, solicitors, in order to make money, must do something; and the more the doings, the greater the fees. Solicitors, for instance, are royal good letterwriters. Litigants are ignorant that every time that they are writing a letter or send ing a reminder or making a visit, they are being docketed by the London solicitor with a six-and-eightpence for " perusing letter," or half a guinea for " conference," etc. The London solicitor is therefore al ways on the qui vive to do something, or have something instigated to be done, even if immaterial. A retainer of a lump sum is something he knows little of. I had supposed that " Mark Meddle " —
