was many a " celebrated cause." Neighbors gathered to watch its course and nudge each other at every home thrust of witness or counsel. Everybody knew everybody. For a quarter of a century Tom Bartlett was the star actor in these familiar and exciting dramas. In one of them the defendant was a poor widow, and the plaintiff a rich man with a reputation for hard-fistedness. The plaintiff seemed to have the law on his side, but it looked like persecution. Bartlett assisted for the defense. When he reached the climax of his appeal to the jury he turned suddenly upon his colleague. "I am here at the solicitation of my young brother, serving without scrip and without price. I told him I would make no charge. I reconsider. I will charge, and he must now promise to repay. When my shattered form shall be lying in the grave and my wife shall be set upon by legal robbers, and he is standing by with warm heart and large experience, let him come to her defense as I have struggled to defend his client here to-day. Dale, will you do it?" "I will," the young man answered, as he grasped the outstretched hand amid the breathless
silence of the astonished court-room. It was the finishing touch. The jury melted, and so did the plaintiffs case. How unlike our own must have been the atmosphere of courts where such a scene was possible. If the advocate should return could he repeat his former triumphs? Hardly. At least not with the same train ing and equipment. I suppose it is not to be regretted that the day of such successes has gone by, that business now is done like business, that law and fact are coming to weigh more and more, and rhetoric and pathos less and less. And yet it will be long before those who loved to witness such thrilling episodes under the old regime will cease to sigh over the prosy trials of to-day. For still the old men who gather in the court rooms of these counties measure each new advocate against the shadow of this man's passing fame, and when, as still may sometimes happen, a little breeze of elo quence blows through the drowsy precincts of the court, they turn to one another and remark, " That's not so bad, neighbor, after all," and, " No. That sounds a little mite like Thomas Bartlett."
LEGAL REMINISCENCES. By L. E. Chittenden. XII. APURE judiciary is the mainstay and sheet anchor of the Republic. In trenched in the Constitution midway between the executive and the legislature, it compels a return to its appointed course when either goes astray. As the central sun of our ma terial universe holds every planet to its ap pointed orbit, so the judiciary should keep the machinery of government in order and compel its movement as a harmonious whole. Every citizen is interested in the preservation of its purity and its independence. "To every man upon this earth death
cometh soon or late." To every official term of years, or a life-time, there is an end. When the vacancy occurs in the judiciary, is it wiser that it be filled by the appointment of the President or a governor, or by a popu lar election? Whether a judicial polity is suited to a community dependsupon the character of its people. In Great Britain, where an in competent judge is a rara avis, and a va cancy is always filled by the best equipped man of the party in power, any abbreviation of the life-tenure would be undesirable. And
