burn) of Queen's Bench Reports, chiefly filled with my judgments while I presided in the Queen's Bench. But from the portentous multiplicity of law reports now published, there seems almost a certainty of all the judgments of every judge, however eminent, being speedily smothered. The whole world is now insufficient to contain all the law reports which are published. I remember the time when one good-sized book-case would hold all the books worth consulting. What is the remedy? Perhaps a decennial auto-da-fe" Lord Campbell would to-day probably recom mend an annual auto-da-fe. Certainly one-half the cases now reported might much more fittingly be consigned to the flames than preserved in type. Lord Chief-Justice Eri.e was prone to inter rupt counsel when it was found that the judges had already made up their minds against him. On one occasion Mr. Bovill, Q. C, soon after wards made a judge, was stopped with : " Here we stand, we four men, and we have all firmly (emphasizing the adverb) made up our minds that there must be a new trial; but if you think it worth your while going on after that (playfully), why of course we'll keep on hearing you." Whereupon the Q. C. laughingly sat down. On another occasion he again interrupted with "I beg to inform the counsel ' there is a time in the mind of every man at which he lets down the flood-gates of his understanding, and allows not one more drop to enter '; and that time in my mind has fully arrived." A tablet once placed in a New York court,room to the memory of John Sloss Hobart, a supreme judge of New York, contained a sarcasm on the age disqualification of the Constitution, in, after reciting his retirement on that account, recording that for seven years following he served, and to his death, as Federal district judge. "I know of no such thing as genius," said Hogarth; " genius is nothing but labor and diligence."
LITERARY NOTICES. Mr. Murat Halsted has an article in McClure's Magazine for February, giving the secret history of the nomination and administration
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of President Garfield and embodying important con versations with Garfield never before published, one of them held only a few hours before his assassina tion. A series of portraits of Garfield accompanies the article. The Venezuelan Commission, as it meets for its business sessions in Washington, is a dignified and prepossessing body of men. A photograph of the group has been made for the frontispiece of the February Review of Reviews. Each of the five portraits is a speaking likeness.
An interesting reminder that the Behring Sea question should not be lost sight of in the discussion of the Venezuelan boundary is furnished in a paper, by Henry Loomis Nelson, on " The Passing of the Fur-Seal, " in the February Harper's. This article is a history of the indiscriminate killing of American seals by Canadian hunters, and the neglect of the British Government to abide by the decision of the Paris Tribunal.
The installment of Mr. David A. Wells's " Prin ciples of Taxation," in Appleton's Popular Science Monthly for February, contains descriptions of the tax systems of China and Japan, and shows that, although taxation has prompted many of the most dramatic incidents and important movements of history, only two or three works have been devoted to this subject, and hardly any use has been made of it in literature. The contributions in the February Atlantic which will attract perhaps the widest attention is an able paper entitled "The Presidency and Mr. Reed."' It is a thoughtful presentation of the requirements of the presidential office and a discussion of Mr. Reed's fitness for it. It is the first of a promised series upon the issues and some of the personalities of the forthcoming campaign.
The tenth installment of President Andrews' history in Scrhjner's Magazine for February, is called "The Neo-Republican Ascendency," which describes the close of Cleveland's first administration, the campaign of 1888 and Harrison's victory. Other topics are the Billion Dollar Congress, the McKinley Bill, the Johnstown Flood and the lynching of Italians in New Orleans. The illustrations are made from contemporary photographs and are very realistic.
