For cross-examination that makes much ado about nothing degrades the art of it. The lawyer, young or old, must never risk the fate of a client by attempts at merely show ing off his art to bench, witness, jury, or audience. Yet how often such a spectacle is witnessed in courts! Success in the art of cross-examination comes oftenest from happy possessors of a genius for it. Great lawyers have failed in
the art, while mere " case lawyers and those of mediocre learning have succeeded in it, — quite as there is a difference between Thorwaldsen and the Italian constructor of plaster casts. Yet the art may be measur ably acquired by observation of the ways and means and methods of masters at the bar, and sometimes from the bench itself, in the art of cross-examination, — an alchemy for testing truth or falsehood.
THE GENESIS OF THE LONG VACATION. THE long vacation of the English Courts of Law has had a curious and instruc tive history, the early stages of which are admirably described by Spelman and Blackstone. " Throughout all Christendom," we ' are told, " the whole year was originally one continual term for hearing and deciding causes; for the Christian magistrates, to dis tinguish themselves from the heathen, who were extremely superstitious in the observa tion of the dies fasti et nefasfi, went into a contrary extreme, and. administered justice upon all days alike." At length the Church interposed to moderate the zeal of her chil dren, and during certain holy seasons — Christmas and Advent, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and harvest-tide — the striving of rights and wrongs, with noisy clatter of lawyers' tongues, was peremptorily hushed, and the peace of God was kept throughout all the Christian world. When our own legal constitution came to be settled, the judicial year was, says a writer in the " Standard," divided into terms, the commencement and duration of which were fixed with reference to the old canonical prohibitions. It was ordered, by the laws of King Edward the Confessor, that " from Advent to the octave of the Epiphany, from Septuagesima to the octave of Easter, and from three in the after noon of all Saturdays till Monday morning," no litigious business should be done; and so
extravagant was the regard that was paid to these holy times, that down to the reign of King Edward I. " no secular pleas could be held, nor any man sworn on the Evangelists, in the times of Advent, Lent, Pentecost, harvest and vintage, in the days of the great litanies, and in all solemn festivals." Gradu ally, however, both lawyers and laymen be came weary of these periodical interruptions to their profitable labors; the commercial and industrial development of England re fused to stand still at the bidding of Church or State; and Church and State accordingly united, with timely wisdom, to regulate the agitation which they could not suppress. The Bishops granted dispensations, enabling "assizes and juries to be taken in some of the holy seasons; " the Statute of Westmin ster the Second closed this exercise of episco pal dispensing power with legislative author ity; and the scope of the canonical prohibi tions was narrowed, till, in course of time, the Courts of Assize and Nisi Prius were generally held, and all proceedings in an ac tion out of court, which did not require the actual presence of the judges themselves, could be transacted during the intervals be tween the legal terms. To this rule the interval — allowed for hay time and harvest — between Midsummer and Michaelmas, which corresponds roughly with our modern Long Vacation, constituted an exception, and dur
