one, and you are left to eat your dry sandwich without room
for your elbows, a feeling of unsatisfied ambition will pervade you.
It is all very well to be the friend of an under-sheriff, but if you
could but have known the judge, or have been a cousin of the real
sheriff, how different it might have been with you!

But you may be altogether independent, and, as a matter of right,
walk into an open English court of law as one of the British public.
You will have to stand of course,--and to commence standing very
early in the morning if you intend to succeed in witnessing any
portion of the performance. And when you have made once good your
entrance as one of the British public, you are apt to be a good deal
knocked about, not only by your public brethren, but also by those
who have to keep the avenues free for witnesses, and who will
regard you from first to last as a disagreeable excrescence on the
officialities of the work on hand. Upon the whole it may be better
for you, perhaps, to stay at home and read the record of the affair
as given in the next day's _Times_. Impartial reporters, judicious
readers, and able editors between them will preserve for you all the
kernel, and will save you from the necessity of having to deal with
the shell.

At this trial there were among the crowd who succeeded in entering
the Court three persons of our acquaintance who had resolved to
overcome the various difficulties. Mr. Monk, who had formerly been a
Cabinet Minister, was seated on the bench,--subject, indeed, to the
heat and stenches, but priviledged to eat the lunch. Mr. Quintus
Slide, of _The People's Banner_,--who knew the Court well, for in
former days he had worked many an hour in it as a reporter,--had
obtained the good graces of the under-sheriff. And Mr. Bunce, with
all the energy of the British public, had forced his way in among the
crowd, and had managed to wedge himself near to the dock, so that he
might be able by a hoist of the neck to see his lodger as he stood
at the bar. Of these three men, Bunce was assured that the prisoner
was innocent,--led to such assurance partly by belief in the man,
and partly by an innate spirit of opposition to all exercise of
restrictive power. Mr. Quintus Slide was certain of the prisoner's
guilt, and gave himself considerable credit for having assisted in
running down the criminal. It seemed to be natural to Mr. Quintus
Slide that a man who had openly quarrelled with the Editor of