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rudeness. In the Colin-Campbell divorce suit, when the liability of certain written proofs to inspection during the cross-exam ination of a witness was in question, he would not rest satisfied with the ruling of Mr. Justice Butt, who presided at the trial, but persisted in pressing his own view. Pos sibly Sir Charles Russell would justify such conduct by a reference to Lord Brougham's questionable doctrine as to the duty of a counsel to his client. But a simpler expla nation is at hand. A warm-hearted and im pulsive Irishman cannot but display a certain degree of tenacity and heat. Students of the evidence taken by the Parnell Commission ers, and of the second Crawford vs. Crawford & Dilke trial will remember several amusing fracases between Sir Charles Russell and Sir James Hannen. In 1889 Russell accepted a brief for the defence of Mrs. Maybrick, who was tried at Liverpool, before Mr. Justice Fitz-James Stephen, for the murder of her husband by arsenical poisoning. His great effort on behalf of Mr. Parnell and his fol lowers had told upon his strength, and it is said that he undertook the prisoner's case with reluctance. A somewhat unusual inci dent occurred in the course of the trial. Sir Charles Russell had directed his cross-ex amination so as to impugn the expert evi dence brought by the Crown for the purpose of showing that Mr. Maybrick had been poi soned by arsenic. At the close of the case a written statement by the prisoner was read, in which she admitted having admin istered a white powder to her husband, but

said that she had done so in ignorance of its character, and at the urgent request of the deceased. It was obvious that this curious statement bore out in some measure the very theory that Sir Charles Russell had labored to destroy; and the jury returned a verdict of " guilty." It speaks volumes for the skill with which the defence had been conducted, that the prisoner's suicidal admissions influ enced the public mind less strongly than the conflict of expert testimony that Sir Charles Russell had succeeded in establishing. * The Home Secretary, Mr. Henry Matthews, him self a great lawyer, revised the whole evi dence in the case, and did practical, though not logical, justice to the prisoner by sen tencing her to penal servitude for life. The Queen vs. Maybrick may profitably be com pared with The Queen vs. Jessie MacLachlan, in which Mr. Rutherfurd Clark, an eminent Scotch counsel, now a judge in the Second Division of the Inner House of the Court of Session, had to deal, and dealt success fully, with a " statement " as embarrassing as Mrs. Maybrick's. A Roman Catholic by religious persuasion, Sir Charles Russell is still debarred by law from the Chancellorship. But this disquali fication may erelong be removed, — a bill with this object (popularly known as the "Russell Relief Bill "!) having been intro duced into Parliament last session. The ex-Attorney-General is a whist-player after the keen and precise methods of Mrs. Battle. Lex.