10 JUNE 1871, Page 3

The Lord Mayor gave a banquet on Wednesday to the

Judges, at -which the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir W. Bovill, who is conducting the great Tichborne trial, was present, and the interchange of after-dinner compliments led the Chief Justice into a clear imprudence of a very grave kind. The Lord Mayor, in proposing the toast, rather unwisely observed that the case in which Sir W. Bovill was engaged furnished an illustration of the 'remark that truth was stranger than fiction, to which Sir W. Bovill replied that "in the investigation to which allusion had 'been made the difficulty was to ascertain what was truth and =what fiction,"—a much too significant reply. Considering that the claimant has already been betrayed into an improper attack on 'the Bench, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas should have been unusually scrupulous how he hinted an impression on the case. Nor would it be possible to convince people in general that that answer did not hint an impression. Our judicial Bench being at present far away our most perfect institution, the minutest .shock to the profound respect in which it is held seems a .national calamity.