he box. Crowds were
round the doors of the court, of which every individual man would
have paid largely for standing-room to hear the trial; but when they
were wanted for use, men would not come forward to accept a seat,
with all that honour which belongs to a special juryman. And yet it
was supposed that at last there would be no question to submit to a
jury.

About noon the Solicitor began his statement. He was full of smiles
and nods and pleasant talk, gestures indicative of a man who had
a piece of work before him in which he could take delight. It is
always satisfactory to see the assurance of a cock crowing in his own
farm-yard, and to admire his easy familiarity with things that are
awful to a stranger bird. If you, O reader, or I were bound to stand
up in that court, dressed in wig and gown, and to tell a story that
would take six hours in the telling, the one or the other of us
knowing it to be his special duty so to tell it that judge, and
counsellors, and jury, should all catch clearly every point that was
to be made,--how ill would that story be told, how would those points
escape the memory of the teller, and never come near the intellect of
the hearers! And how would the knowledge that it would be so, confuse
your tongue or mine,--and make exquisitely miserable that moment of
rising before the audience! But our Solicitor-General rose to his
legs a happy man, with all that grace of motion, that easy slowness,
that unassumed confidence which belongs to the ordinary doings of
our familiar life. Surely he must have known that he looked well
in his wig and gown, as with low voice and bent neck, with only
half-suppressed laughter, he whispered into the ears of the gentleman
who sat next to him some pleasant joke that had just occurred to him.
He could do that, though the eyes of all the court were upon him; so
great was the man! And then he began with a sweet low voice, almost
modest in its tones. For a few moments it might have been thought
that some young woman was addressing the court, so gentle, so dulcet
were the tones.

"My lord, it is my intention on this occasion to do that which an
advocate can seldom do,--to make a clean breast of it, to tell the
court and the jury all that I know of this case, all that I think of
it, and all that I believe,--and in short to state a case as much in
the interest of my opponents as of my clients. The story with which I
must occupy the time of the court, I fear, for th