and solemn approaches, circumvallations, and
the tedious operations of a siege, has been now
miraculously transformed into a light and handy
chattel, which may be disposed of at an hour’s
notice, like a horse, or furniture, or other
portable property. It is no longer as that huge
unwieldy present of an elephant, which, we are
informed, Eastern sovereigns are in the habit of
bestowing on unlucky subjects whom they have
delighted to honour, and which must cleave to
them whether they will or no, until, by its suitable
maintenance in all dignity and magnificence,
it has ruined them.

But the old spirits have not yet been wholly
exorcised. The grim ogre of mortgage still
walks the earth in all his clumsy and
unwieldy terrors. All the ponderous apparatus
for charging of lands, cumbersome as the old
agricultural machinery, still lies in the legal
farmsteads, and has to be dragged forth creaking
and groaning according as occasion serves.
Furnished with the handiest of conveyances, you
may sell ere the familiar words “Jack Robinson”
have flown from the lips; but ere you can
happily and successfully mortgage, you may
drone, as did lately the ingenious mnemonic
gentleman, through all the books of Milton’s great
epic. For sellers, there is the Happy Despatch;
for borrowers, the slow lingering tortures of
equity draughting. To redress this inequality
has Judge Longfield, long one of the painstaking
commissioners of the Court of the Happy
Despatch, come forward with an ingenious
scheme, conceded to be scarcely novel in principle,
novel certainly in its details and application
to the present crisis. To appreciate its
full value, there must be focused in a very
small object-glass a diminished picture of the
labours of Hercules attendant on raising money
by mortgage.

Blackacre and Whiteacre are the two spectral
estates that Law, when she becomes playfully
didactic and would illustrate her meaning by
pleasant figures, is in the habit of using. There
are some spectral pawns and lay figures which she
takes out when giving a lesson to her children,
and calls John Styles, John Doe, and Richard
Roe. Supposing, then, that we, adopting this
imagery, become John Styles, much pressed for
money, and wishing to raise a loan by way of
mortgage on our ancestral estate, known in the
parish as Blackacre, the first step must be to
explore the country diligently for a familiar
spirit yet equitable, who asks no richer manna
than legitimate five or six per cent. This
being is not ready to hand; he is not quoted
in the market; he has to be sought for and
unearthed badgerwise; and, when found, to be
humoured gently, and soothed by the tender
offices of a friendly solicitor. In a surly grudging
way, then, he is content and will lend, and
we then fetch down out of tin cases bursting
with leases, charges, conveyances, judgments,
and settlements, the whole frayed and tawny
miscellany of unclean bundles which is happily
epitomised in the words “OUR TITLE,” and
we pack them off in a cab to friendly solicitor.
Friendly solicitor, by-and-by and at his leisure,
has a neat little abridgment or epitome of each
instrument made out—a sort of pretty tableau in
miniature of all the links in our “chain of title,”
now, by the way, sadly twisted and entangled—
which is sent with clean copies of the yellow-
frayed deeds to Wyndebagge, Q.C., a notorious
authority on these matters, for “advice and
opinion.” These costly steps are all at ours,
the borrower’s, John Styles’s, charges.

Wyndebagge, Q.C., in all human probability
reporting that our title is faulty, and that somewhere
towards the year seventeen hundred and
thirty-five, in the time of John Styles the elder,
there was a rusty link which parted, the old
yellow bundles, the neat little tableau, and the
clean copies in fine caligraphy (This
Indenture being in a rich and florid German text,
bounded by red lines), all come back, being
returned, with an ill-disguised contempt, in another
cab. Again the line is cast; and a new lender
rises. The yellow bundles and pretty little
abstract are taken out for an airing, and left with
Boggs, Q.C., 3, Fig-tree Court, who, I need
scarcely mention in this place, is the eminent
“opinion” of that name. The eminent “opinion”
sees that rusted fracture already noticed
by his brother Wyndebagge, but thinks
something might be done in the way of tinkering or
piecing; nay, will take that office on himself.
And so perhaps after a decent delay, the thing
may be at last accomplished; and we, John
Styles, the borrower, are in possession of the
money.

And yet it is hard that we John Styles, the
borrower, to obtain this little accommodation,
should have to be subject to one of the
humiliating incidents of vulgar pawning. Those
title-deeds on which Boggs, Q.C., the eminent
“opinion” has smiled a gracious approbation,
usually pass into the keeping of our creditor by
way of gage or pledge. He becomes proprietor,
good-naturedly allowing us a use and occupation.
The pawner often finds it a heavy inconvenience
to be deprived of his deeds and papers, thus
rigorously detained by his Pawnee chief. So
far it seems a weary troublesome business this
raising of money upon that best foundation
of all security—terra firma—land. The road
seems to have been purposely roughened and
broken up into pitfals, to facilitate the
accommodation of the borrower.

And should the lender desire to have his
moneys again before the time appointed, and offer
that property of which he is titular owner as
security for a loan to him, he then becomes a
distressed borrower in his turn, and has to
submit for fresh disembowelling at the hands of
an eminent opinion that recently disembowelled
title of which he has the custody. The old bird-
lime adherence goes with every change of real
property. For borrower and lender and
mortgagee, it becomes as a closely clinging shirt of
Nessus that sticks to the very flesh, only to be
drawn off very slowly and with protracted pains
and tortures. Further, this ultimate mortgage,
with all its intricate incidents—transfer,