was on trial for blasphemy. Best warned him not to revile the Christian religion or attack persons not be fore the court. Davison started off by saying that no barrister would undertake to defend an honest cause like his. Best again warned. Davison replied, •' My lord, if you have your dungeon ready, I will give you the key." Best fined him,£20 for that. Davison then asserted that deists regarded the Scrip tures as derogatory to the honor of God, destructive of morality, and opposed to the best interests of so ciety. Fine of ^40 for that. Then Davison said : "The Bishops" — we don't believe he said it with a capital B — " are generally skeptics." Fine of,£40 for that. All the judges, including Best himself, gave opinions. Best said he had taken the fines off, upon the defendant's submission, and that seems to be the only sensible thing he did. This report is curious reading three-quarters of a century after the event. Of Brittain v. Kinnaird, vol. 21, p. 680, the editor says it "reminds one irresistibly of a couplet in Leycester Adolphus's eclogue 'The Circuiteers' (see L. Q. R., 1, 233):— "' Let this within thy pigeon-holes be packed, A choice conviction on the bum-boat act.' "But as this case was twenty years earlier than the poem (or at any rate its production at the Grand Court of the Northern Circuit), we can hardly suppose that it was present to the learned and ingenious writer's mind." Of Gladding v. Yapp, vol. 21, p. 278, he remarks: " The ungallant testator who said of his sister that she was . no scholar and only a wo man,' did not show any superior capacity in making his own intentions clear." We sympathize with Sir Frederick's prejudice against commas, as indicated in his preface to vol. 22, although it must be confessed that he is ex tremely ascetic in his use of them; and we agree with him that " such " as a demonstrative is an " ill word." In that preface he observes: "Among the more innocent vanities of the time we meet with a ' car riage called a Dennett (see at p. 507), which appears from the Oxford English Dictionary, 8 v., to have been some slight variation of a gig." This word is given in the Century Dictionary, and defined in the same way, by reference to a passage from Theodore Hook. In the preface of vol. 14, speaking of Dempster v. Clcghorn, p. 102, involving a servitude of playing golf, he quotes from Lord Eldon's opinion, that '•this game of golf was a useful exercise, and ap peared to be a very favourite pastime in North Britain," and adds: "South Britain has now been led captive in the matter of golf; even among the learned professions one may hear talk of niblicks and
mashies, and those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek!" In the preface to vol. 13 he very irreverently speaks of Lord Eldon's " declining into his senile manner of interminable doubt." One would suppose that at whist his lordship would have taken every trick. In the preface to vol. 11, he quotes from Best's arguments in the O. P. riot case, Clifford v. Bran don, p. 731 : " Bells and rattles may be new to the pit, but cat-calls, which are equally stunning, are as old as the English drama." Of Blewitt v. Marsden, vol. 10, p. 284, a case of a sham plea of a judgment pretendedly recovered in the Court of Piepoudre in Bartholomew Fair, he observes that " there is a kind of grotesque heroism in the junior bar amusing itself with putting sham pleas on the files of the court while England was standing almost alone against the victor of Austerlitz." In the preface to vol. 7 we are enlightened by the information that the phrase "make a decison " is "out of use with us," but "readers who may think it an Americanism " are referred to two instances of its use by Lord Eldon. That certainly is not in its favor. In the preface to vol. 6 he says : " Ex-parte Softly (p. 329) will be more likely to remind the student of ' Peter Simple ' than of anything he has seen in re cent law books. But the common law power of impressing men for the navy, though dormant, has never been abrogated." Some things die in England without proclamation. In the preface to vol. 4 he tells of an editor of a Biblical dictionary who, under the title of " Deluge," simply said, " See Flood," and when he came to "Flood," simply said, "See Deluge." This prac tice is not without following in the present day among legal digesters. Thus we have backed through Sir Frederick's pref aces. It only remains to add that he is continually finding necessity for explaining to some fault-finder why he has left out this, that or the other decision. If Sir Frederick will consent to receive a suggestion from a somewhat mature American editor, he will find it the easiest and the safest course, in the long run, never to explain and never to apologize, for the former does not elucidate and the latter does not satisfv.
"Leading in Law and Curious in Court." — Such is the curious title of a very curious law-book, of some fifteen hundred pages, compiled by Benjamin F. Burnham, and published by Banks & Brothers, of Albany, N. Y. It is evidently the result of a vast amount of reading and of systematic commonplacing for many years. Hardly anything striking, novel.
