Booth is, not for the first time in his life, in a sponging-house.

Dr. Harrison, the good clergyman who stands by the Booths in all their trouble, has discovered the forgery by means of the confession of one of her accomplices, Robinson, to whose repentant sick-bed the Doctor had been called in.

Robinson had repaired to the sponging-house to repeat his confession to Booth.

He is followed by Dr. Harrison, accompanied by a justice of the peace and his clerk, a constable with his prisoner Attorney Murphythe actual forger of the false will—and others. "The first person who ascended the stairs was the Doctor, who no sooner saw Booth than he ran to him and embraced him, crying: 'My child, I wish you joy with all my heart. Your sufferings are all at an end, and Providence hath done you the justice at last which it will one day or other render to all men. You will hear all presently; but I can now only tell you that your sister is discovered, and the estate is your own.'" Booth was in such confusion that he scarce made any answer; and now appeared the justice and his clerk, and immediately after the constable with his prisoner; the bailiff, and as many more as could possibly crowd upstairs. The Doctor now addressed himself to the sick man, and desired him to repeat the same information before the justice which he had made already, to which Robinson readily consented.

While the clerk was taking down the information, the attorney expressed a very impatient desire to send instantly for his clerk, and expressed so much uneasiness at the confusion in which he had left his papers at home, that a thought suggested itself to the Doctor that if his house was searched some lights and evidence relating to this affair would certainly be found. He, therefore, desired the justice to grant a search-warrant immediately to search his house.

The justice answered that he had no such power; that, if there was any suspicion of stolen goods, he could grant a warrant to search for them.

"How, sir," said the Doctor, " can you grant a warrant to search a man's house for a silver teaspoon, and not in a case like this when a man is robbed of his whole estate?"

"Hold, sir," says the sick man, "I believe I can answer that point; for I can swear he hath several title deeds of the estate now in his possession; which I am sure were stolen from the right owner."

The justice still hesitated. He said, "Title deeds savoured of reality, and it was not a felony to steal them. If, indeed, they were taken in a box, then it would be a felony to steal the box."

...

"Savour of the reality! savour of the " said the Doctor, expressing his scorn of this legal subtlety with the same energy with which the great Protector declared his contempt for Magna Charta. "I never heard such incomprehensible nonsense. This is impudent as well as childish trifling with the lives and properties of men."

I think all will agree with the good Doctor. Let us now pass on to the numerous class of those novelists who illustrate the proposition which Tommy Trounsem enounced in "Felix Holt "-that "you'd better not be meddlin' wi' things belonging to the law, else you'll be catched up in a big wheel and fly to bits."

The earliest of these offenders with whom I am acquainted—he is also the most famous-bears the illustrious name of Smollett. Of a verity this great author in his "Peregrine Pickle" went a tremendous legal cropper. Mr. and Mrs. Pickle have three children-Peregrine, the hero, their eldest son; another son, Gamaliel; and a daughter, Julia. The mother conceives an unnatural hatred for her firstborn, and forces her weak husband to concur in the measures which she takes against Peregrine. At length the father dies without a will-it is insinuated that he feared that the making of one in favour of his wife and younger son would speedily be followed by his own demiseand then we are told: "His papers being examined, in the presence of many persons of honour and integrity, invited for that purpose, no will was found, or any other deed in favour of the second son, though it appeared by the marriage settlement that the widow was entitled to a jointure of £500 a year. The rest of his papers consisted of East India bonds, South Sea annuities, mortgages, notes, and assignments, to the amount of four-score thousand seven hundred and sixty pounds, exclusive of the house, plate and furniture, horses, equipage, and cattle, with the garden and park adjacent to a very considerable extent."

To the whole of this personal property, amounting to upwards of £80,000, as well as to the real property, Peregrine is represented as succeeding, to the entire exclusion of his mother, brother, and sister. Shortly after his father's death we find him addressing the fair Emilia Gauntlet, his future wife, thus: "Meanwhile, I have £80,000 which shall be laid immediately in your lap."

But according to English law the intestate's widow would have taken one-third of the personal property, and the other two-thirds would have been divided equally amongst his three children, so that Peregrine's £80,000 would have been cut down to less than £20,000.

Smollett cannot plead in extenuation of his mistake that he was

a Scotchman, for Scottish law does not exclude younger children from sharing in their father's personal property. As a doctor of medicine, however, he may shelter himself under the authority of Blackstone, but then he must be content to forego any share in the graceful compliment which Blackstone pays the doctor's profession.

The Vinerian professor, in that passage of the introduction to his celebrated Commentaries in which he is exhorting all the educated classes of society to the study of the law, thus deals with the medical profession. "For the gentlemen of the faculty of physic I must frankly own that I see no special reason why they in particular should apply themselves to the study of the law, unless in common with other gentlemen, and to complete the character of general and extensive knowledge-a character which their profession, beyond others, has remarkably deserved.”

So much for Smollett.

Many of my readers will have recently read with much interest the weird story of the "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” "where more is meant than meets the ear." Early in the tale we find Mr. Utterson, Dr. Jekyll's friend and lawyer, pondering over the singular document which the doctor has committed to the lawyer's keeping.

"The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it. It provided not only that in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., &c., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his 'friend and benefactor Edward Hyde;' but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months the said Edward Hyde should step in the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor's household." The author seems to have had some misgiving as to the character of this instrument, for later on we read: "On the desk among the neat array of papers a large envelope was uppermost, and bore in the doctor's hand the name of Mr. Utterson. The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of death, and as a deed of gift in case of disappearance."

I must own that I should feel considerable difficulty in framing an instrument which should operate at once as a will, and as a deed of gift in case of the testator's disappearance.

Proof of Dr. Jekyll's death would, I think, have been necessary before the instrument could have been acted on.

If a similar case of a person being able to change himself into two shapes should arise, I would venture to advise such a bi-formal individual to dispose of his property by two separate instruments, one a will and the other a deed of gift.

I now approach the list of female novelists of my second class, not without some trepidation lest I should incur the charge of a want of gallantry. But I console myself by reflecting that ladies cannot be expected to acquaint themselves with a subject so dry and repulsive as that of the law must be to them in all its branches, except of course that now luxuriant one which is laden with the rights of women. I pluck up heart of grace, and begin by respectfully demurring to Mrs. Thackeray-Ritchie's law in her charming tale of "Old Kensington." The legal part of the story is briefly this: Lady Sarah Francis has a niece, Dorothea, the heroine of the tale, and a nephew, George. The nephew has been somewhat wild, and has enlisted in the Army as a private soldier during the Crimean war; he is also in love with Rhoda Parnell, who is not as nice as she might be. Then Lady Sarah comes to die, and her lawyer reads out her will to the assembled family.

"And so in the silence, by Mr. Tapeall's voice, Sarah Francis spoke for the last time in a strange jargon that in her lifetime she had never used. Her house at Kensington, &c., &c., she left to her nephew, George Francis Vanborough. If he should die without issue or a will it was to revert to Dorothea Jane Vanborough."

Then come the tidings that George has died the day after his aunt, of wounds received in battle, whilst being carried into camp from the field. It is also discovered that he had made a will, and left all to Rhoda, not knowing of, or indeed expecting, his aunt's bounty. Now Rhoda is not to be allowed to carry off all this spoil from Dorothea, and accordingly one of the soldiers, who brought George's body into camp is made to confess that in fact George had been killed the day before his aunt's death, but that they having been promised a reward if they found him alive, had pretended that he only died on his way into camp. Of course, if he died before his aunt he could not inherit from her. Thereupon, our heroine enters into possession of her aunt's fortune. Truth, however, compels me to express my grave doubt whether the time of poor George's death, although it made all the difference to Rhoda, made any to Dorothea, as regards the effect of Lady Sarah's will. In the first place Dorothea was to take if her brother died without issue or a will.

Now he did die without issue, therefore it would not matter whether he died with or without a will. Unless, indeed, a suit should be brought either by Rhoda or by Lady Sarah's heir (according as George should have died before or after his aunt), and it should be decided that "or" was to be read "and.” I sincerely hope this contention would not have prevailed, because in that case, as the gift over to Dorothea partly depended on her brother dying without a will, and as English law holds a gift over on the death of a prior legatee without a will utterly void, I greatly fear that our poor dear Dorothea would have been left out in the cold, whether her brother survived Lady Sarah or not. The accomplished authoress may, however, rest assured that the legal point in question is one of those which lie "inter apices juris."

Next comes before us another distinguished name, that of Mrs. Norton, a lady supremely observant of the duty which, as Sydney Smith said, Providence had laid on the daughters of the family of Sheridan, of being both beautiful and witty.

In "Stuart of Dunleath," when Sir Stephen Penrhyn brings home his lovely bride, Eleanor, daughter of Sir John Raymond, the lodge gate is opened by a beautiful young woman followed by a handsome robust child of three or four years old. "The woman hastily unlocked the gate, swung it open, and then throwing her apron over her face, began to sob aloud."

The situation requires no explanation.

Later on we are told: "Eleanor, as she was walking out, on her return after the second season she passed in London, saw Bridget Owen with a baby in her arms."

Time rolls on, Eleanor loses her two only children, is separated from her husband, and dies. "Bridget Owen is now Lady Penrhyn; and her son is legitimated under the Scotch law, and is heir to the Welsh property, and the Scotch property, and the little churchyard at Carrick, which holds the grave of Frederick and Clephane."

Two dangerous pitfalls lurk in this short sentence: one the authoress has escaped, into the other she has, alas! fallen. It will be noted that the eldest son only of Bridget is said to have been legitimated by the subsequent marriage of his parents. This is in strict accordance with Scottish law, according to which only those illegitimate children can be so made legitimate at whose birth the did not exist any "cause or just impediment why" their parents "should not be joined together in holy matrimony." Accordingly Bridget's second child, born after Sir Stephen Penrhyn's marriage with Eleanor Raymond, would not become legitimate.