With these exceptions, as we have said, the
law will not, under ordinary circumstances,
interfere with John Blank until he has attained his
majority. It will not condescend, in fact, to
look upon him during this period in any other
light than as an infant. It will not permit him
to make a will, or to be a party to any
conveyance, or in general to enter into any contract
(unless, indeed, he be foolish enough to contract
matrimony, which he can satisfactorily accomplish
at the age of fourteen, and of which more
hereafter). The Court of Chancery itself, not
usually so difficult of access, will only, with a
dreadful facetiousness, allow him to appear
before it by his next friend !

Should he succeed in persuading any credulous
tradesman to give him credit during this infantile
period of his life, the law will exonerate him
from payment for any goods not necessary to his
social status. As to what these necessaries may
be, the courts have been from time to time at
wonderful pains to determine. As some
contribution towards the legal knowledge of our
readers, we may mention that it has been
decided that nineteen coats (exclusive of
regimentals), forty-five waistcoats, thirty-eight pairs
of trousers, a black velvet dressing-gown, and a
racing jacket, all furnished to a young officer in
the Guards between October in one year and
July in the next, have not been considered to
be absolute necessaries.

"There is a racing-jacket charged for," said
Baron Alderson, before whom the question was
tried, "that cannot be suitable to any degree
except that of a jockey; and if that were to be
considered a necessary for a young gentleman,
it will next be said that gambling is necessary
for him."

"Eleven guineas for a waistcoat!" proceeds
the horrified baron. "Can that be considered
necessary in any station of life? If a person of
full age orders these extravagant things, he must
pay for them. If a person of full age be
extravagant enough and absurd enough to order a
coat to be made of gold, and it was made and
delivered to him, beyond all question he must
pay for it; but with minors the law is otherwise."

Horses and gigs, too, have been decreed not
to be necessities of undergraduate life; nor can
a tradesman, says my Lord Abinger, recover
for dinners, soda-water, lozenges, oranges, and
jellies supplied to a young gentleman of the
universities.

On the other hand, however, a horse has been
considered by Lord Denman a necessary for a
chemist's apprentice, who had been
recommended to take horse exercise. And the other day
(as a balance in favour of cap and gown) we were
gratified to find that portraits of Dr. Donaldson
and the Dean of Ely were admitted to be
necessaries of an undergraduate, son of a
distinguished member of the Evangelical Alliance.

There is also extant, a decision of Lord
Ellenborough's very applicable to the present day (and
highly satisfactory, no doubt, to the tailors of
this age), in which he held that regimentals
furnished to an infant who was a member of a
volunteer corps were to be considered
necessaries. For the rest, this doctrine of necessaries
applies only to goods supplied to the infant
himself. Should he be a husband and a father,
lie will be liable for necessaries supplied to his
wife and family.

As we have given a general legal incapacity
whilst under twenty-one years of age to our
illustrative man, we must state that there are a
few exceptions to this rule. He may, while in
his legal infancy, for instance, act as agent for
another, without being affected by any legal
disabilities; may present to a living, should he
be the patron; and, though incapable of acting
as a juror, may be sworn as a witness.

Upon the whole, then, we find that the law
exercises a very wholesome authority over her adopted
children. As a means of proving their identity
and actual age in after life, she provides them
with the machinery of registration; in consideration
for their health, and through them for
the health of the community, she protects them
from the attack of that once dreadful scourge
small-pox; she shields them from the seductions
of designing tradesmen by not permitting
these tradesmen to recover for unnecessary
articles; she will not allow any laches to
affect them on attaining their legal manhood;
and in all the perils of their impetuous youth
she provides them (when parental supervision is
inexpedient or impossible) with a suitable guide
and counsellor.

Let us see what will be her treatment of our
friend when, having arrived at man's estate, he
appears as a respectable citizen and British
householder: deferring our investigation of the
matter to another chapter.

STREET DOGS OE CONSTANTINOPLE.

IT is my private, and, therefore, my unshakable
opinion, whatever Eothen, or Mr. Brunswick,
Senex, or anybody else says, that the
street dogs of Constantinople, in spite of the
natural benevolence and chronic almsgiving of
the true Mussulman character, do not fare
sumptuously every day.

I have many invincible reasons for this
opinion. One of them I may as well bring
forward and throw down as an outside card
of not much consequence, except as saving
the half-dozen red and yellow kings and
queens that form my argumentative hand. This
is, that once when, just by Sultan Achmed's
mosque—that one in the Hippodrome, with the
gigantic marble pillars—I saw four street dogs
making a simple, hearty dinner on the remains
of an old beaver hat.

I do not mean to say that the street dogs
of Constantinople live on nothing but old
hats. On the contrary, I have intimate
reasons for knowing that they live on dead cats,
dead pashas, dead horses, dead asses, melon rinds,
water-skins, old saddles, shreds of ribbons, and
nut-shells. Have I not sat down and watched