The Law : What I have known, what I have
seen, what I have heardl
By Cyrus Jay. (Tinsloy.)—Mr. Jay gives us in this volume his recol- lections, gathered from hearsay or personal knowledge, of various legal persons, high and low, from Lord Chancellors to attorneys' clerks, and of various lay persons with whom they had to do. Very black sheep some of these seem to have been, and Mr. Jay relates his acquaintance with them with a very charming naiveté,—as, for instance, with an ingenious gentleman who forged his uncle's name to some bills and had the misfortune to drop them in the Strand. This was a legal "utter- ance," and subjected the forger to the penalty of death, which in those
days was always enforced. It was Mr. Jay's painful duty to advise his
client to leave the country; we suppose that it was also his duty to have a jolly dinner with him before he left and see the last of him. In the
oddest possible contrast with these are a few very white sheep, with whom the author became acquainted through his father, the celebrated Independent minister of Bath, and who are introduced to us in the most edifying way in the midst of very strange company. As for the collec- tion of stories, we may say of it what Martial said of his book of epi- grams ; but of the few that are really good, we seem to have seen the best before. We doubt whether this, for instance, is quite new, but it is very good. A certain barrister was accused by his circuit of "dis- gracing his profession" by taking silver for a fee. His answer was conclusive. "I took silver because I could not get gold, but I took every farthing the fellow had in the world, and I hope you don't call that dis- gracing the profession." On the whole, the book is amusing enough ; nor do we see in it any very serious fault, except a stupid personal attack upon two living judges.
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