be kept valid. One sees in the Bedford and Westminster estates in London, streets spanned by gates which are closed against the public during the early morning and late

evening hours. Ducal beadles once stood at these gates and barred the way of any who would pass, but nowadays the gates are simply locked and bolted.

FROM LAW TO LITERATURE. BY GEORGE H. WESTLEY. MR. MELVILLE D. POST, in his post prandial address (see the GREEN BAG for December, 1899), felicitously meta phors the lawyer who dabbles in literature into " one who, having taken to his roof-tree a stately dame, turns aside on occasion to swagger through the streets with her uncon ventional sister." Those who observe the flirtation, he remarks, are apt to wag their l heads and predict an early appearance at the divorce court. Truly to this pass does it generally come, and the "stately dame" and her inconstant lover go forever their separate ways. If the reader is interested to see how numerous are such cases, let him glance over the following long and yet by no means exhaustive list of divorces. To begin the catalogue with an illustrious name, Sir Walter Scott read law in his father's office and was admitted to the bar. Macaulay was a lawyer, and he had not yet relinquished the profession when he wrote "The Battle of Troy" and his "Essay on Milton." Dickens and Disraeli both worked in solicitors' offices. Thackeray was a lawyer and so was DeQuincey. Bailey of " Festus" fame abandoned the bar for poetry. Hazlitt did the same, and so did Tupper. Charles Reade was a barrister before he took to writing plays and novels. Lockhart studied law in Edinburgh and became an advocate. He then travelled in Germany, returned home and settled clown to a career of letters. Tom Moore was a student at Middle Temple. George Henry Lewes, perhaps less famous

for his writings than for his association with "George Eliot," worked for a time in a law yer's office. He gave up the law for medi cine, and the latter in turn for literature. Samuel Warren, famous on account of his "Ten Thousand a Year," which is said by some to be among the best fifty books of the world, was a lawyer. But Warren, even after his great success as a novelist, did not lose touch with his first profession. He wrote and edited law books almost to the end of his career. " Barry Cornwall " practiced as a solicitor before entering literary life. The biographer of Malone tells us that frequent explorations of black-letter law led him, Malone, onward to the taste for its poetry and dramatic literature. " He forsook law, wealth, and probably station, for un profitable literature." David Hume was set to study law by his father, but while the lat ter believed his boy to be poring over Voet and Vinnius, he was devouring Virgil and Cicero. Chatterton threatened suicide in order to effect his release from law. Poor Chatterton, "sleepless soul," he starved in literature and ended a suicide after all. Henry Fielding of " Tom Jones " fame studied law, but mainly occupied himself in writing plays and managing theatres; so. that it was not until fifteen years after he began that he was admitted to the bar. Be ing thus half-hearted in his profession, he was not a success as a lawyer, and soon he turned his whole attention to authorship, turning out novel after novel with great rapidity. Covvper spent nine years in the Temple, but