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It must be a pleasant thing to listen for many days to the learned arguments of the ablest minds at the bar, noting down here and there an added thought of your own which is to find a place in the ultimate judgment which some days hence you will write at leisure in your study surrounded by the reports and text books necessary to give weight to your written word. A poor Judge of the County Court can have no such refinement of pleasure. Does Bill’s cat trespass in Thomas’s pigeon loft, at Lambeth or Salford?—the twenty-five shilling claim is argued in unison, certainly without harmony, until a skilful adjudication is planted right between the disputants in a breathless pause in their contest, and they are whirled out of Court speechless and astonished at the result to revive the wordy argument in the street or to join their voices in maledictions of the law and all her servants. How far otherwise in the High Court? Should some millionaire’s malkin, some prize Angora of Park Lane, slay the champion homer of a pigeon-flying Marquis—what a summoning to the fray of Astburys and Carsons. How thoughtfully through the long days of the hearing would learned counsel “watch” on behalf of the London County Council. What ancient law concerning pigeons and cats would be disentombed by hard-working juniors and submissively quoted to the Bench by their leaders as matter “which I am sure your Lordship remembers.” And then how interesting to write down the final just word of the Law of England on cats and pigeons, and to read it amid a reverent hush of learned approval, and finally to bring down the curtain on the comedy, justifying the hours and treasure that had been expended to obtain the judgment you had written, with some such tag of learning as: