t I cannot avoid taking into consideration the
mitigating circumstances that attend it. By the evidence of the witness
it clearly appears that _you_ were the only one of the party who showed
any mercy to the unfortunate deceased. You took him to a vacant seat,
and wiped him with a clean napkin, and you laid him down with the
gentleness one shows to a little child. In consideration of these
extenuating circumstances, which reflect some credit upon you, I shall
inflict upon you three weeks' imprisonment." So Denis Halligan got off
by the judge mistaking a vacancy for a vacant seat, and a _clehalpin_
for a clean napkin.

John Toler (Lord Norbury) was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in
Ireland. His humour was broad, and his absolute indifference to
propriety often saved the situation by converting a serious matter into
a wholly ludicrous one. His Court was in constant uproar, owing to his
noisy jesting, and like a noted old Scottish judge he would have his
joke when the life of a human being was hanging in the balance. Even on
his own deathbed he could not resist the impulse. On hearing that his
friend Lord Erne was also nearing his end at the same time, he called
for his valet: "James," said Lord Norbury, "run round to Lord Erne and
tell him with my compliments that it will be a _dead_-heat between us."

The best illustration of the almost daily condition of things when Lord
Norbury presided at Nisi Prius is given by himself in his reply to the
answer of a witness. "What is your business?" asked the judge. "I keep a
_racquet-court_, my lord."--"So do I, so do I," immediately exclaimed
the judge. Nor did he reserve his _bon mots_ for Court merriment.
Passing the Quay on his way to the Four Courts one morning, he noticed a
crowd and inquired of a bystander the cause of it. On being told that a
tailor had just been rescued from attempted suicide by drowning, his
lordship exclaimed, "What a fool to leave his _hot goose_ for a _cold
duck_." The boastful statement of a gentleman in his company that he had
shot seventy hares before breakfast drew from the Chief Justice the
sarcastic remark, "I suppose, sir, you fired at a wig."

A son of a peer having been accused of arson, of which offence he was
generally believed guilty, but acquitted on a point of insufficiency of
evidence to sustain the indictment, was tried before Lord Norbury. The
young gentleman met the judge next at the Lord-Lieutenant's levee in the
Castle. Instead