(plaintiff and defendant got the shells) or the
desiccated heart of a client. His blue bag was
of immense size. He knew what old port wine
was, and kept plenty of it in the cellars under
the clerks' office; nay, frequently, some was
to be found of the right sort, with a bag of
biscuits from Moxhay's, in one of the tin office
boxes, labelled B—and Co. He never
discounted bills, but lent money in the good old-
fashioned way, on bond. He thought the Lord
Chancellor the greatest of living beings, and
ranked next to him, perhaps, his lordship's
trainbearer.

Sometimes he was a country lawyer, and then
you may be sure that he lived in that
comfortable red-brick house—the best, next to the
rectory, in the village—with the flaming brass
plate, like a brazen capias, on the door. He
wore drab cords then, and gaiters, and was
generally admired as a hard rider cross country.
When he came to town, he stopped at the Gray's
Inn Coffee-house; and was fond of seeing The
Gamester, at Drury Lane. The little old lawyer,
in town as well as country, has almost
disappeared. If your fancy, however, leads you to
the cultivation of funerals, like poor crazy Lord
Portsmouth, who was so fond of "black jobs,"
you may sometimes see the little old lawyer's
frosted poll peering from the windows of a
mourning coach, when a great lord or a rich
dowager is going to the grave. Perhaps in
one out of a hundred lawsuits which chances
to be conducted with something like honour and
gentlemanly feeling on either side, you may find
the little old lawyer concerned for one or the
other party. But he is growing very rare. In
vain may you sweep the attorneys' table in the
law courts, in the hope of lighting on his trim
sable figure, his powdered head, and his gold-
rimmed spectacles, his shrewd spirit looking
through his clean withered face and many-
puckered wrinkles, "with eyes of helpful intelligence,
almost of benevolence." In his stead
what do you behold? Big fat lawyers with hoarse
voices, who evidently sit in no awe of the judge,
and patronise counsel in the most overbearing
manner. Flash attorneys, who drive dog-carts,
and bet, positively bet. Worse than all of these,
the dandy young attorneys, with hair parted
down the middle, pioneers' beards, eye-glasses,
turn-down collars, guard-chains with lockets and
trinkets attached, peg-top trousers, and shiny
boots. Woe for the day when the Avvocati del
Diavolo, when the protégés of St. Nicholay, take
to varnishing their boots and scenting their
pocket-handkerchiefs! I have seen some of these
degenerate youths—not articled clerks, mind,
but full-blown attorneys—walking down to
Westminster with a bundle of papers in one
hand, and a cigar in the other. The melancholy
change that has come over a once solemn and
demure profession, cannot be better summed up
than in remarking that nothing is more common
now, than to see lawyers at the Opera and in the
ranks of the Volunteers.

When I had chambers in Deadman's Inn, there
was a real little old lawyer, who had his offices
at Number Nine. He arrived every morning
punctually at ten, in a yellow fly—not a
brougham, be it understood—from Balham, the
locality of his country-house. It was my great
delight to watch for his arrival, and see him
alight from the yellow fly. It was all there:
hair powder, watch-fob and seals, knee-shorts
—no, as I live, pantaloons and hessians! big
blue bag, shirt frill, petrified brooch, large
diamond ring on his forefinger (presented to
him A.D. 1818, in the condemned cell, Newgate,
by Mr. Montmorency Fluke, the celebrated
forger, for whom he was concerned), and beaver
hat, turned up just at the slightest angle of
flection at the brim. "This is a man," I used to
say, with great respect, to myself, "who can
remember forty shilling arrests, thirty years' long
Chancery suits, and Monday hanging mornings,
with a dozen victims. The Fleet and the Rules
of the Bench, the seventy Commissioners in
Bankruptcy, and the Court of Pie Powder;
John Doe and Richard Roe, John a'Nokes and
John a'Styles, sticks and staves, and justification
of sham bail;—he has been familiar with all these
mysteries now gone into irrevocable limbo."
And as I looked upon the little old lawyer I
sighed; for, alas! he was very, very old, and came
down to the office more by habit and for
peaceful recreation than anything else. The
suing and selling-up is now done by his sons and
partners, one of whom is six feet high, and as
hirsute as Julia Pastrana, while the other is
poetical and plays the flute. I have chambers
in Drybones' Inn now, and have not as yet found
one little old lawyer.

There was much that was good about another
little old man—the schoolmaster. It is true
that, as an educational means, he thought a
birch the very best thing in the world, and next
to that a cane, and next to that a strap; but he
was not without some capacity for teaching,
and some faculty of understanding, his boys; he
struck, but he heard. Some modern preceptors
are so much in the habit of talking about
themselves, that it is with difficulty the scholar gets
a word in. There is a charming figure of the
little old schoolmaster, in as charming a picture
by Mr. Mulready, in the Sheepshanks' Collection
—a spare, pale, thoughtful pedagogue, severe
you may be sure, but just, and willing to hear
both sides. He has made his appearance at the
close of a fiercely contested bout at fisticuffs,
and is solemnly tweaking the boy who has been
denounced by his schoolfellows as bully and
aggressor in the fray, by the ear. That boy's
defence, if he can make any, will be listened to,
but I will wager that ere the sun goes down—
and it is declining—he will be led off to the
little old schoolmaster's study and scourged.
Now and then, in remote country places, you
may still come upon the little old schoolmaster,
in rusty black, and sometimes with a red nose,
who officiates as parish clerk, sings a capital
comic song, has written a satire upon the squire,
and indites love-letters for the village maidens.
But he is rapidly ceding to the influence of the
trained schoolmaster, with all kinds of