ensic critic, my delight in
attending the courts would still be great; but less than it is in my
irresponsibility. In the courts I find satisfied in me just those
senses which in the theatre, nearly always, are starved. Nay, I find
them satisfied more fully than they ever could be, at best, in any
theatre. I do not merely fall back on the courts, in disgust of the
theatre as it is. I love the courts better than the theatre as it
ideally might be. And, I say again, I marvel that you leave me so much
elbow-room there.

No artificial light is needed, no scraping of fiddles, to excite or
charm me as I pass from the echoing corridor, through the swing-doors,
into the well of this or that court. It matters not much to me what
case I shall hear, so it be of the human kind, with a jury and with
witnesses. I care little for Chancery cases. There is a certain
intellectual pleasure in hearing a mass of facts subtly wrangled over.
The mind derives therefrom something of the satisfaction that the eye
has in watching acrobats in a music-hall. One wonders at the ingenuity,
the agility, the perfect training. Like acrobats, these Chancery
lawyers are a relief from the average troupe of actors and actresses,
by reason of their exquisite alertness, their thorough mastery
(seemingly exquisite and thorough, at any rate, to the dazzled layman).
And they have a further advantage in their material. The facts they
deal with are usually dull, but seldom so dull as facts become through
the fancies of the average playwright. It is seldom that an evening in
a theatre can be so pleasantly and profitably spent as a day in a
Chancery court. But it is ever into one or another of the courts of
King's Bench that I betake myself, for choice. Criminal trials, of
which I have seen a few, I now eschew absolutely. I cannot stomach
them. I know that it is necessary for the good of the community that
such persons as infringe that community's laws should be punished. But,
even were the mode of punishment less barbarous than it is, I should
still prefer not to be brought in sight of a prisoner in the dock.
Perhaps because I have not a strongly developed imagination, I have
little or no public spirit. I cannot see the commonweal. On the other
hand, I have plenty of personal feeling. And I have enough knowledge of
men and women to know that very often the best people are guilty of the
worst things. Is the prisoner in the dock guilty or not guilty of the
offence wi