The Lawyers Easy Chair. top of the later twelfth-century writing, as could clearly be seen by the help of a microscope; (л) that the Greek was tar from correct: and (3) that the coincidence between the most recent vie4vs of Lepsius and other Berlin Egypt ologists and the new-found treatise was a little too strik ing. After this, Uranius was very little heard of; but Simonides continued to be in evidence, for he was put on his trial at Leipzig, to answer two distinct charges, — that he had stolen the MS. from the Turkish Royal Library, and that he had forged it himself. To the first he tri umphantly replied that if it was stolen, it was at least not a forgery; that they were bound to show in what library and in what catalogue it was marked as missing; and finally, that the Turks had no libraries, and did not know what they were. To the second plea he replied by a threat, which must have carried conviction to the dullest of his judges, to the effect that if they would prove it was a forgery, he would forthwith print, under his own name, the other works of Uranius which he possessed, and achieve fame as the cleverest of authors by exhibiting a knowledge of details which reached far beyond existing evidence! In the end he was banished from Saxony, — a kingdom which he was probably, on other grounds, not unwilling to quit."
After this rebuff he was heard of only once more, when in 1861 he declared that he himself wrote the whole of the famous Codex Sinaiticus, acquired by Tischendorf in 1856 from the monks of St. Catherine on .Mount Sinai, and now owned by the Czar. He asserted that he had placed certain private signs on particular leaves. On inspection of the manuscript at St. Petersburg every leaf so designated by him was found imperfect at the point where the mark was to have been found! His friends said this was the result of mutilation by an enemy; but it is generally supposed that he had acquired information through friends of these imperfections, and had established his marks at the missing parts. The other trial was that of Vrain-Lucas, of which Mr. Madan gives the following account . — "The most celebrated trial in connection with literary forgeries was perhaps that of Vrain-Lucas in 1870, far the most unblushing manufacture of autograph letters. The chief interest attached to the dupe and not the forger; for M. Chasles, besides being a collector of autographs, was a celebrated geometrician and a member of the French Academy. It is hardly credible that Vrain-Lucas between 1861 and 1869 supplied M. Chasles with no less than 27,000 autographs, for which he received 140,000 francs. These included letters of Julius Caesar. Cicero, Socrates, and Shakspeare, and six were from Alexander the Great to Aristotle. After this we can receive with calm ness the information that one was from Pontius Pilate to Tiberius, and one from Judas Iscariot to St. Man' Mag dalene! The cream of it was that nearly every letter was in modern French and on paper, and that the water-mark of the paper was in many cases a ßcur-de-lys. However, M. Chasles was prepared to receive any number in addi tion, when a circumstance induced him to submit some of his collections to wiser men than himself. He was
431
engaged in writing a book to prove that the discovery of the principle of gravitation was not due to Sir Isaac New ton, but to Pascal. Vrain-Lucas, knowing this, supplied him with a correspondence between Pascal and the Hon. Robert Boyle, and finally between Pascal and Newton himself, on the deepest questions of geometry, although the latter was at the supposed date just eleven years old. This was too interesting to be concealed, and was accord ingly exhibited with pride to the Academy. But M. Prosper Tangère and Sir David Urewster, who was a foreign correspondent of the Academy, denounced the letters at once on general grounds as a forgery, and after a short investigation the whole editice collapsed. To illustrate a scientific principle, a cup of coffee was intro duced in a letter, some years before coffee was known in Paris. French letters of Galileo were produced, though Galileo was never able to write that language; and in the end Vrain-Lucas was brought to trial and condemned to imprisonment. The only redeeming feature about the affair was that, with the exception of a very few letters, the whole of the forgeries had been purchased by M. Chasles, and none escaped to disseminate the deception."
Mr. Madan also gives interesting accounts of the forged letters of Phalaris. out of which sprang the famous dispute between Boyle and Bentley, about 1695, and of the Chatterton and the Ireland-Shakspeare forgeries. Speaking of Court Rolls. Mr. Madan says : — "Human nature is recognizable as much in the matter ol Essonia (excuses) for not coining to take part in the Court, as in any other part of these records. For there were five recognized excuses — t. Ultra mare, 'I have gone abroad; ' 2. DC Terra Saneta, ' I am on my way to the Holy Land; ' 3. De malo vrviendi, ' I can't manage to come; ' this was called the ' common excuse; ' 4. De malo lecti, ' I am confined to my bed; ' and 5. De servitio Kegis, ' the king requires my services. *"
The common excuse in respect to jury duty in these days should be De prospiùendi Albam L'rbem. The little book is of unique interest. It is furnished in this country by Messrs. Scribner.
NOTES OF CASES A HOT SPRINGS CASE. — It would be more agree able in this warm weather to read of icy sidewalk cases, and to "think upon the frosty Caucasus;" but we have to take such current cases as we can find, and we find this : I n Gaines v. Bard (Arkansas), 22 S. W. Rep. 570, plaintiff, while taking a hot vapor bath at defendant's bath-house, was burned because defendant's servant failed to remove him from the bath at the proper time. Held, that defendant was liable for such injury, although plaintiff permitted the servant to absent himself, where such consent was
