k in which the defendant is placed; behind some
boards, over which only tall people can see, is the public; and on the
magistrate's right are the reporters--or, rather, the penny-a-liners--who
write on "flimsy," and leave "copy" on spec. at all the daily paper
offices. Let me say a word about these exceedingly seedy-looking
individuals connected with the fourth estate. That they are not better
dressed is, I take it, their own fault, and arises from that daring
defiance of conventionalism which is so great a characteristic of the
lower orders of gentlemen connected with the press. Let me say, _en
passant_, the public owe these men much. It is they who labour with a
perseverance worthy of a better cause, and that deserves to be
successful, to describe the cases heard in the police-courts in the most
racy and tempting terms. In their peculiar phraseology, every bachelor
who gets into a scrape is a gay Lothario, and every young woman that
appeals to justice is lady-like in manners and interesting in appearance.
The poor wretch that crawls along the street, all rouged and decked out
in finery not her own, is "a dashing Cyprian." Every Irishman is
described as "a native of the Green Isle;" every man in a red coat, "a
brave son of Mars;" every sailor, "a jolly tar;" and a man with a little
hair on his chin, or under it, is invariably "bearded like the pard;" and
if anything causing a smile occurs,--and sometimes on the gravest
occasions justice will even grin,--the court is--so they always put
it--convulsed with laughter. Knights of the pen, a police-case
loving-to-read public should be grateful to you! By the side of the
reporters often sit some three or four of those mischief-makers,
pettifogging attorneys; men who, in their own opinion, only require a
clear stage and no favour, and the mere formality of a call to the bar,
to rival, if not surpass, the fame of a Scarlett, or a Brougham, or a
Lyndhurst, or an Erskine, or even of a Coke himself; and truly if to
bully, to suppress what is true, and insinuate what is false--if to gloss
over the injustice done by a client, and to proclaim aloud that of the
opposite party--if to speak in an emphatic manner and at a most
unmerciful length--if to browbeat witnesses, mislead the court, and
astonish the weak nerves of their hearers, constitute a fitness for legal
greatness, these gentlemen have only to enter their names at any of the
Inns of Court, and eat the requisite number o