w him in the hall to-day yawning as though
he would burst." And then Mr. Furnival strolled off to look for
the attorney among the various purlieus frequented by the learned
strangers.

"Furnival," said another barrister, accosting him,--an elderly man,
small, with sharp eyes and bushy eyebrows, dirty in his attire and
poor in his general appearance, "have you seen Judge Staveley?" This
was Mr. Chaffanbrass, great at the Old Bailey, a man well able to
hold his own in spite of the meanness of his appearance. At such a
meeting as this the English bar generally could have had no better
representative than Mr. Chaffanbrass.

"No; is he here?"

"He must be here. He is the only man they could find who knows enough
Italian to understand what that fat fellow from Florence will say
to-morrow."

"We're to have the Italian to-morrow, are we?"

"Yes; and Staveley afterwards. It's as good as a play; only, like
all plays, it's three times too long. I wonder whether anybody here
believes in it?"

"Yes, Felix Graham does."

"He believes everything--unless it is the Bible. He is one of
those young men who look for an instant millennium, and who regard
themselves not only as the prophets who foretell it, but as the
preachers who will produce it. For myself, I am too old for a new
gospel, with Felix Graham as an apostle."

"They say that Boanerges thinks a great deal of him."

"That can't be true, for Boanerges never thought much of any one but
himself. Well, I'm off to bed, for I find a day here ten times more
fatiguing than the Old Bailey in July."

On the whole the meeting was rather dull, as such meetings usually
are. It must not be supposed that any lawyer could get up at will, as
the spirit moved him, and utter his own ideas; or that all members of
the congress could speak if only they could catch the speaker's eye.
Had this been so, a man might have been supported by the hope of
having some finger in the pie, sooner or later. But in such case the
congress would have lasted for ever. As it was, the names of those
who were invited to address the meeting were arranged, and of course
men from each country were selected who were best known in their own
special walks of their profession. But then these best-known men
took an unfair advantage of their position, and were ruthless in the
lengthy cruelty of their addresses. Von Bauhr at Berlin was no doubt
a great lawyer, but he should not have felt so confident that the
legal