house, and one of the chief points of attraction
to visitors is still to examine Lady Seamer's
Long Step, and to marvel how she got down
it. Some persons declare it to have been
impossible; but tradition stands fast amongst the
country people, who have added to it a feature
of the supernatural, that " an angel, all in white,
helped her."

MY LEARNED FRIENDS.

TOWARDS the gloomy shadows of four o'clock,
at which season the unemployed legal mind is
subject to fall into melancholy, and become a
prey to morbid fancies—feeling a longing to turn
the familiar blue-bag into a sack, and end its
sorrows after the fashionable Turkish manner—
at these moments, I sit on those hard, ungrateful
back benches, practising the law among my
learned friends.

My learned friends are sitting in what may be
called skirmishing parties, up and down, above
and below me, on all sides, practising their profession.
Let me convey my meaning of this phrase,
fully. One learned friend is busy with a
sharp-bladed penknife neatly carving a memorial of
himself—his initial letters, in fact—upon the
bark of some fair tree—the edge of his desk, in
fact—so that his charmer, coming that way at
even (a most improbable circumstance), shall
start at the well-known emblems, and be glad.
He has laid his face to the ledge for the better
purchase of his instrument, and warms briskly
to his work. Another learned friend is gleaning
items of daily intelligence from a Morning
Paper; but, in a surreptitious conspirator-like
fashion, having the print spread out below
his knees, and his head bowed down
painfully, as though crushed by some terrible blow.
When my learned friend has to turn over or
to unfold his double sheet, the neighbours are
alarmed by slow and sustained crackling sounds,
as of an unseen conflagration, and his guilty looks
and starts are sufficient to advise the world of
the mysterious, and it must be said ingenuous,
operation that is going forward. A third learned
friend is picking out with much nicety, various
lamina of ham-sandwich from a japanned tin
volume, labelled on the back " History of
England." ' A fourth learned friend is lecturing to
a small circle on the Patent Reservoir
Penholder, and is illustrating its extraordinary
powers, in a series of diagrams, projected over
the surface of the desk in an easy flowing hand.
And my last learned friend is apparently
staring, generally with an expression of
hopeless vacancy nearly allied to mental alienation,
with his hands before him; an inoffensive and
almost becoming attitude, and which is yet
unaccountably dwelt on in the language of
reproach. There is a deal of work got through in
the shape of trimming and nice finishing of
nails; very many pencils are cut to points
perhaps too fine for good practical uses, but
admirable as illustrations of amateur skill; and the
question as to the comparative densities of lead
and steel is set at rest for ever through the
medium of ink-bottles and many-bladed
penknife cutlery. These are the little idiosyncrasies
of my learned friends, and the ways in which
they grow learned.

True. I see yonder another learned friend—a
friend who is only learned since yesterday, and is
no friend, and whom I have never seen before—
taking notes busily, and for the bare life, in an
indelible book, and with an ever-pointed pencil.
By the snowy speckleness of his wig, the fresh
unrusted aspect of his gown, I know him to be a
novice, " called" last week, and overflowing with
a noble enthusiasm. Poor child! My learned
friends and I interchange pitying glances as we
see our virgin brother nervously diligent, and
taking down, with a painful accuracy as to the
page, that choice extract from the Fifth
Exchequer Reports, New Series, page five hundred,
in which M'Cud, Baron Dodo, has summed up,
in a masterly judgment, the entire law as to
contingent remainders. We, too, have been
brides in the law, and have sat blushing in our
nuptial wreath of snowy horsehair; we, too, have
purchased metallic-pointed pencils and clean
note-books, and have spent enthusiastic
honeymoons taking down Fifth Exchequer and Baron
Dodo.

I am a learned friend myself; and I bear upon
me the trappings and the suits of the profession.
I often catch myself looking down on the
unmeaning folds of the canonicals with a
melancholy repugnance. Once, when a legal virgin, I
regarded them with a fond pride. My snowy
horsehair, my shining bombazine, and my bands,
are to me as is the fillet, and the web tunic, and
the tight flesh-coloured hose to the street
tumbler. O miserable foolery!

People have asked for me occasionally—let
there be no mistake, I say distinctly on no
professional business—and have been told that I am
"robing," or engaged in "the robing-room."
What a magnificent ring in the words! and yet
the hollow mockery sickens me. The pots and
brushes and paraphernalia of the legal green-room
jar upon me at every turn. I protest against the
heartless mumming, the taking off coats, the
hanging up of hats symmetrically, the visiting of
that special pigeon-hole where is the marriage
garment segregated carefully and set apart, and
all the other preparations for the tumbling. The
tin epaulette box, which is, as it were, the long
home of my real head of horsehair—which, too,
is emblazoned in golden characters with my
style and titles, I have not the least veneration
for: no more than for the painted coffee-cans seen
in the shops, which it so resembles. But when
a ministering familiar tenders to me two cambric
clergyman's bands—it is to the material of that
fine fabric, not to the clerical, that I allude—
which I laboriously, and with infinite pains,
adjust under the shirt-collar, then I look on my
degradation as complete. And when a second
familiar comes flying with the horsehair decoration,
fresh from the coffee-bin, and fits it on with
a tug of nicety, carefully guarding from injury
the two unmeaning tails that hang behind, and