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https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/New_Series_No._3_Doctors_Commons/1836-10-11-The_Morning_Chronicle_New_Series_No3_Doctors_Commons.pdf
c4d5fcd6f804115944721feb556db2e8
Dublin Core
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Title
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Short Fiction
Identifier
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short-stories
Contributor
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Lydia Craig
Scripto
Transcription
A written representation of a document.
<p><strong>This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections.</strong></p>
<p>Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in <em>The Monthly Magazine,</em> and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as <em>The Evening Chronicle</em>, <em>Bell’s Life in London, </em>and <em>Bentley's Miscellany</em> with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes.</p>
<p>Global fame arrived with the serial publication of <em>The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club</em> (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in <em>Sketches by Boz</em>, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on <em>Sketches by Boz</em>’ (44). <em>Sketches of Young Gentlemen</em> (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort <em>Sketches of Young Ladies</em> (1838), and <em>Sketches of Couples</em> (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’.</p>
<p>After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals <em>Household Words</em> and <em>All the Year Round</em>, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as <em>The Haunted House</em> (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as <em>The Perils of Certain English Prisoners</em> (1857) and <em>No Thoroughfare</em> (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as <em>The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, </em>and <em>Our Young Folks</em>.</p>
<p>Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the <em>Sketches </em>are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition.</p>
<p>Other anthologies, for instance <em>Selected Short Fiction</em> (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire <em>oeuvre </em>in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including <em>Dickens and the Short Story</em>. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and <em>Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author</em> (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by<em> The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz</em> (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include <em>Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836</em> (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and <em>Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers</em> (1994), edited by Michael Slater.</p>
<p>Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this <em>Dickens Search</em> collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results.<br /><br />While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as <em>British Newspaper Archive (BNA),</em> digital archives, and such open-access sites as<em> Hathi Trust, Internet Archive,</em> and <em>Google Books</em>; all items are linked to their original location on the internet.</p>
<p>Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked.</p>
1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in <em>Sketches by Boz.’</em> In <em>Some Keywords in Dickens</em>. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the <em>Morning Chronicle</em>”. <em>Dickens Quarterly </em>4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before <em>Sketches by Boz</em>: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. <em>Dickensian</em> (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's <em>Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual</em> 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. <em>Dickens Studies Annual</em> 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; <em>Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, </em>No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. <em>SEL: Studies in English Literature </em>48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of <em>Sketches by Boz’</em>. <em>Dickens Quarterly</em> 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. <em>Dickens Studies Annual</em> 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. <em>Dickens Studies Annual</em> 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. <em>The Dickensian</em> 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in <em>Sketches by Boz</em>.' <em>ELH</em> 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49.
Short Story
Publication Type
E.g. newspaper/serial
Newspaper
Publication
The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable)
<em>The Morning Chronicle</em>
Pseudonym
The name under which the item was published
BOZ
Ngram Date
Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101.
18361011
Ngram Text
Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML.
Walking, without any definite object, through St. Paul’s Church-yard, a little while ago, we happened to turn down a street entitled "Paul’s-chain," and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards, found ourself, as a natural consequence, in Doctors’ Commons. Now, Doctors’ Commons being familiar by name to everybody as the place where they grant marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and divorces to unfaithful ones; register the wills of people who have any property to leave, and punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by unpleasant names; we no sooner discovered that we were really within its precincts, than we felt a laudable desire to become better acquainted therewith; and as the first object of our curiosity was the Court whose decrees can even unloose the bonds of matrimony, we procured a direction to it, and bent our steps thither without delay. Crossing a quiet and shady court-yard, paved with stone, and frowned upon by old red-brick houses, on the doors of which were painted the names of sundry learned civilians, we paused before a small, green-baized, brass-headed-nailed door, which, yielding to our gentle push, at once admitted us into an old quaint-looking apartment, with sunken windows, and black carved wainscoting, at the upper end of which, seated on a raised platform, of semicircular shape, were about a dozen solemn-looking gentlemen, in crimson gowns and wigs. At a more elevated desk, in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below, something like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were a number of very self-important-looking personages, in stiff neckcloths and black gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set down as proctors. At the lower end of the billiard-table was an individual in an arm-chair, and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered to be the registrar; and seated behind a little desk, near the door, were a respectable-looking man in black, of about twenty stone weight or thereabouts, and a fat-faced, smirking, civil-looking body, in a black gown, black kid gloves, knee shorts, and silks, with a shirt-frill in his bosom, curls on his head, and a silver staff in his hand, whom we had no difficulty in recognising as the officers of the Court. The latter, indeed, speedily set our mind at rest upon this point, for advancing to our elbow, and opening a conversation forthwith, he had communicated to us in less than five minutes that he was the apparitor, and the other the court-keeper; that this was the Arches Court, and therefore the counsel wore red gowns, and the proctors fur collars; and that when the other Courts sat there, they didn’t wear red gowns or fur collars either; with many other scraps of intelligence equally interesting. Besides these two officers, there was a little thin old man, with long grizzly hair, crouched in a remote corner, whose duty our communicative friend informed us was to ring a large hand-bell when the Court opened in the morning, and who, for aught his appearance betokened to the contrary, might have been similarly employed for the last two centuries at least. The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles had got all the talk to himself just then, and very well he was doing it, too, only he spoke very fast, but that was habit; and rather thick, but that was good-living. So we had plenty of time to look about us. There was one individual amused us mightily. This was one of the bewigged gentlemen in the red robes, who was straddling before the fire in the centre of the Court, in the attitude of the brazen colossus, to the complete exclusion of everybody else. He had gathered up his robe behind, in much the same manner as a slovenly woman would her petticoats on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full warmth of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with the tail straggling about his neck, his scanty gray trowsers and short black gaiters, made in the worst possible style, imported an additional inelegant appearance to his uncouth person; and his limp, badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman’s countenance, we had come to the conclusion that it bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when our friend with the silver staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a doctor of law, an ecclesiastical dignitary in the cinque ports, a not very distant relation to a commissioner of lunacy, and heaven knows what besides. So of course we were mistaken, and he must be a very talented man. He conceals it so well though—perhaps with the merciful view of not astonishing ordinary people too much—that you would suppose him to be one of the stupidest dogs alive. The gentleman in the spectacles having concluded his judgment, and a few minutes having been allowed to elapse, to afford time for the buzz of the court to subside, the registrar called on the next cause, which was "the office of the Judge promoted by Bumple against Sludberry." A general movement was visible in the court at this announcement, and the obliging functionary with silver staff whispered us that "there would be some fun now, for this was a brawling case." We were not rendered much the wiser by this piece of information till we found by the opening speech of the counsel for their promoter that, under a half-obsolete statute of one of the Edwards, the court was empowered to visit with the penalty of excommunication any person who should be proved guilty of the crime of "brawling" or "smiting" in any church, or vestry adjoining thereto; and it appeared, by some eight-and-twenty affidavits, which were duly referred to, that on a certain night, at a certain vestry, meeting in a certain parish particularly set forth, Thomas Sludberry, the party appeared against in that suit, had made use of and applied to Michael Bumple, the reporter, the words "You be blowed;" and that on the said Michael Bumple and others remonstrating with the said Thomas Sludberry on the impropriety of his conduct, the said Thomas Sludberry repeated the aforesaid expression, "You be blowed;" and furthermore desired and requested to know, whether the said Michael Bumple "wanted anything for himself;" adding, ‘that if the said Michael Bumple did want anything for himself, he the said Thomas Sludberry "was the man to give it him;" at the same time making use of other heinous and sinful expressions, all of which, Bumple submitted, came within the intent and meaning of the Act; and therefore he, for the soul’s health and chastening of Sludberry, prayed for sentence of excommunication against him accordingly. Upon these facts a long argument was entered into on both sides, to the great edification of a number of persons interested in the parochial squabbles, who crowded the court; and when some very long and grave speeches had been made pro and con, the red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles took a review of the case, which occupied half an hour more, and then pronounced upon Sludberry the awful sentence of excommunication for a fortnight, and payment of the costs of the suit. Upon this, Sludberry, who was a little, red-faced, sly-looking, ginger-beer seller, addressed the Court, and said, if they’d be good enough to take off the costs, and excommunicate him for the term of his natural life instead, it would be much more convenient to him; for he never went to church at all. To this appeal the gentleman in the spectacles made no other reply than a look of virtuous propriety; and Sludberry and his friends retired. As the man with the silver staff informed us that the Court was on the point of rising, we retired too—pondering, as we walked away, upon the beautiful spirit of these ancient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighbourly feelings they are calculated to awaken, and the strong attachment to religious institutions which they cannot fail to engender. We were so lost in these meditations, that we had turned into the street and run up against a door-post, before we recollected where we were walking. On looking upwards to see what house we had stumbled upon, the words "Prerogative-office," written in large characters, met our eye; and as we were in a sight-seeing humour, and the place was a public one, we walked in, without more ado. The room into which we walked, was a long, busy-looking place, partitioned off, on either side, into a variety of little boxes, in which a few clerks were engaged in copying or examining deeds. Down the centre of the room were several desks, nearly breast high, at each of which three or four people were standing, poring over large volumes. As we knew that they were searching for wills, they attracted our attention at once. It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of the attorneys’ clerks, who were making a search for some legal purpose, with the air of earnestness and interest which distinguished the strangers to the place, who were looking up the will of some deceased relative; the former pausing every now and then with an impatient yawn, or raising their heads to look at the people who passed up and down the room; the latter stooping over the book, and running down column after column of names in the deepest abstraction. There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron, who after a whole morning’s search, extending some fifty years back, had just found the will to which he wished to refer, which one of the officials was reading to him in a low hurried voice from a thick vellum book with large clasps. It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read, the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the reader’s face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the little man began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole string of complicated trusts, and he was regularly at sea. As the reader proceeded, it was quite apparent that it was a hopeless case, and the little man, with his mouth open and his eyes fixed upon his face, looked on with an expression of bewilderment and perplexity irresistibly ludicrous. A little further on, a hard-featured old man with a deeply-wrinkled face, was intently perusing a lengthy will with the aid of a pair of horn spectacles, occasionally pausing from his task, and slily noting down some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it. Every wrinkle about his toothless mouth, and sharp keen eyes, told of avarice and cunning. As he leisurely closed the register, put up his spectacles, and folded his scraps of paper in a large leathern pocket-book, we thought what a nice hard bargain he was driving with some poverty-stricken legatee, who, tired of waiting year after year, until some life-interest should fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation—a very safe one. The old man stowed away his pocket-book in the breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of anticipation. That will had made him ten years younger at least. Having commenced our observations, we should certainly have extended them to another dozen of people at least, had not a sudden shutting up, and putting away of the worm-eaten old books, warned us that the time for closing the office had arrived, and thus deprived us of a pleasure, and spared our readers an infliction. We naturally fell into a train of reflection as we walked homewards upon the curious old records of likings and dislikings; of jealousies and revenges; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred pursued beyond the grave, which these depositories contain; silent but striking tokens, some of them, of excellence of heart, and nobleness of soul; melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human nature. In short, the subject obtained such complete possession of us, that if we fail to write a whole paper about it one of these days we shall be rather surprised.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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<em>'New Series</em>, No. 3, Doctors' Commons'
Description
An account of the resource
Published in <em>The Morning Chronicle</em> (11 October 1836), p.3.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dickens, Charles
Publisher
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<em>The British Newspaper Archive,</em> <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000082/18361011/005/0003">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000082/18361011/005/0003</a>.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1836-10-11
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Short Story
Identifier
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1836-10-11-The_Morning_Chronicle_New_Series_No3_Doctors_Commons
Bibliographic Citation
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Dickens, Charles. '<em>New Series</em>, No. III, Doctors' Commons' (11 October 1836). <em>Dickens Search.</em> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="1836-10-11-The_Morning_Chronicle_New_Series_No3_Doctors_Commons">1836-10-11-The_Morning_Chronicle_New_Series_No3_Doctors_Commons</a>.
Rights
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<em>The British Newspaper Archive.</em> Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Scripto
Transcription
A written representation of a document.
<p>Walking, without any definite object, through St. Paul’s Church-yard, a little while ago, we happened to turn down a street entitled "Paul’s-chain," and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards, found ourself, as a natural consequence, in Doctors’ Commons. Now, Doctors’ Commons being familiar by name to everybody as the place where they grant marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and divorces to unfaithful ones; register the wills of people who have any property to leave, and punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by unpleasant names; we no sooner discovered that we were really within its precincts, than we felt a laudable desire to become better acquainted therewith; and as the first object of our curiosity was the Court whose decrees can even unloose the bonds of matrimony, we procured a direction to it, and bent our steps thither without delay. <br /><br />Crossing a quiet and shady court-yard, paved with stone, and frowned upon by old red-brick houses, on the doors of which were painted the names of sundry learned civilians, we paused before a small, green-baized, brass-headed-nailed door, which, yielding to our gentle push, at once admitted us into an old quaint-looking apartment, with sunken windows, and black carved wainscoting, at the upper end of which, seated on a raised platform, of semicircular shape, were about a dozen solemn-looking gentlemen, in crimson gowns and wigs. At a more elevated desk, in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below, something like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were a number of very self-important-looking personages, in stiff neckcloths and black gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set down as proctors. At the lower end of the billiard-table was an individual in an arm-chair, and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered to be the registrar; and seated behind a little desk, near the door, were a respectable-looking man in black, of about twenty stone weight or thereabouts, and a fat-faced, smirking, civil-looking body, in a black gown, black kid gloves, knee shorts, and silks, with a shirt-frill in his bosom, curls on his head, and a silver staff in his hand, whom we had no difficulty in recognising as the officers of the Court. The latter, indeed, speedily set our mind at rest upon this point, for advancing to our elbow, and opening a conversation forthwith, he had communicated to us in less than five minutes that he was the apparitor, and the other the court-keeper; that this was the Arches Court, and therefore the counsel wore red gowns, and the proctors fur collars; and that when the other Courts sat there, they didn’t wear red gowns or fur collars either; with many other scraps of intelligence equally interesting. Besides these two officers, there was a little thin old man, with long grizzly hair, crouched in a remote corner, whose duty our communicative friend informed us was to ring a large hand-bell when the Court opened in the morning, and who, for aught his appearance betokened to the contrary, might have been similarly employed for the last two centuries at least. <br /><br />The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles had got all the talk to himself just then, and very well he was doing it, too, only he spoke very fast, but that was habit; and rather thick, but that was good-living. So we had plenty of time to look about us. There was one individual amused us mightily. This was one of the bewigged gentlemen in the red robes, who was straddling before the fire in the centre of the Court, in the attitude of the brazen colossus, to the complete exclusion of everybody else. He had gathered up his robe behind, in much the same manner as a slovenly woman would her petticoats on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full warmth of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with the tail straggling about his neck, his scanty gray trowsers and short black gaiters, made in the worst possible style, imported an additional inelegant appearance to his uncouth person; and his limp, badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman’s countenance, we had come to the conclusion that it bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when our friend with the silver staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a doctor of law, an ecclesiastical dignitary in the cinque ports, a not very distant relation to a commissioner of lunacy, and heaven knows what besides. So of course we were mistaken, and he must be a very talented man. He conceals it so well though<span>—</span>perhaps with the merciful view of not astonishing ordinary people too much<span>—</span>that you would suppose him to be one of the stupidest dogs alive. <br /><br />The gentleman in the spectacles having concluded his judgment, and a few minutes having been allowed to elapse, to afford time for the buzz of the court to subside, the registrar called on the next cause, which was "the office of the Judge promoted by Bumple against Sludberry." A general movement was visible in the court at this announcement, and the obliging functionary with silver staff whispered us that "there would be some fun now, for this was a brawling case." We were not rendered much the wiser by this piece of information till we found by the opening speech of the counsel for their promoter that, under a half-obsolete statute of one of the Edwards, the court was empowered to visit with the penalty of excommunication any person who should be proved guilty of the crime of "brawling" or "smiting" in any church, or vestry adjoining thereto; and it appeared, by some eight-and-twenty affidavits, which were duly referred to, that on a certain night, at a certain vestry, meeting in a certain parish particularly set forth, Thomas Sludberry, the party appeared against in that suit, had made use of and applied to Michael Bumple, the reporter, the words "You be blowed;" and that on the said Michael Bumple and others remonstrating with the said Thomas Sludberry on the impropriety of his conduct, the said Thomas Sludberry repeated the aforesaid expression, "You be blowed;" and furthermore desired and requested to know, whether the said Michael Bumple "wanted anything for himself;" adding, ‘that if the said Michael Bumple did want anything for himself, he the said Thomas Sludberry "was the man to give it him;" at the same time making use of other heinous and sinful expressions, all of which, Bumple submitted, came within the intent and meaning of the Act; and therefore he, for the soul’s health and chastening of Sludberry, prayed for sentence of excommunication against him accordingly. Upon these facts a long argument was entered into on both sides, to the great edification of a number of persons interested in the parochial squabbles, who crowded the court; and when some very long and grave speeches had been made <em>pro</em> and <em>con</em>, the red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles took a review of the case, which occupied half an hour more, and then pronounced upon Sludberry the awful sentence of excommunication for a fortnight, and payment of the costs of the suit. Upon this, Sludberry, who was a little, red-faced, sly-looking, ginger-beer seller, addressed the Court, and said, if they’d be good enough to take off the costs, and excommunicate him for the term of his natural life instead, it would be much more convenient to him; for he never went to church at all. To this appeal the gentleman in the spectacles made no other reply than a look of virtuous propriety; and Sludberry and his friends retired. As the man with the silver staff informed us that the Court was on the point of rising, we retired too<span>—</span>pondering, as we walked away, upon the beautiful spirit of these ancient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighbourly feelings they are calculated to awaken, and the strong attachment to religious institutions which they cannot fail to engender. <br /><br />We were so lost in these meditations, that we had turned into the street and run up against a door-post, before we recollected where we were walking. On looking upwards to see what house we had stumbled upon, the words "Prerogative-office," written in large characters, met our eye; and as we were in a sight-seeing humour, and the place was a public one, we walked in, without more ado. <br /><br />The room into which we walked, was a long, busy-looking place, partitioned off, on either side, into a variety of little boxes, in which a few clerks were engaged in copying or examining deeds. Down the centre of the room were several desks, nearly breast high, at each of which three or four people were standing, poring over large volumes. As we knew that they were searching for wills, they attracted our attention at once. <br /><br />It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of the attorneys’ clerks, who were making a search for some legal purpose, with the air of earnestness and interest which distinguished the strangers to the place, who were looking up the will of some deceased relative; the former pausing every now and then with an impatient yawn, or raising their heads to look at the people who passed up and down the room; the latter stooping over the book, and running down column after column of names in the deepest abstraction. There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron, who after a whole morning’s search, extending some fifty years back, had just found the will to which he wished to refer, which one of the officials was reading to him in a low hurried voice from a thick vellum book with large clasps. It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read, the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the reader’s face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the little man began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole string of complicated trusts, and he was regularly at sea. As the reader proceeded, it was quite apparent that it was a hopeless case, and the little man, with his mouth open and his eyes fixed upon his face, looked on with an expression of bewilderment and perplexity irresistibly ludicrous. A little further on, a hard-featured old man with a deeply-wrinkled face, was intently perusing a lengthy will with the aid of a pair of horn spectacles, occasionally pausing from his task, and slily noting down some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it. Every wrinkle about his toothless mouth, and sharp keen eyes, told of avarice and cunning. As he leisurely closed the register, put up his spectacles, and folded his scraps of paper in a large leathern pocket-book, we thought what a nice hard bargain he was driving with some poverty-stricken legatee, who, tired of waiting year after year, until some life-interest should fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation<span>—</span>a very safe one. The old man stowed away his pocket-book in the breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of anticipation. That will had made him ten years younger at least. <br /><br />Having commenced our observations, we should certainly have extended them to another dozen of people at least, had not a sudden shutting up, and putting away of the worm-eaten old books, warned us that the time for closing the office had arrived, and thus deprived us of a pleasure, and spared our readers an infliction. We naturally fell into a train of reflection as we walked homewards upon the curious old records of likings and dislikings; of jealousies and revenges; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred pursued beyond the grave, which these depositories contain; silent but striking tokens, some of them, of excellence of heart, and nobleness of soul; melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human nature. In short, the subject obtained such complete possession of us, that if we fail to write a whole paper about it one of these days we shall be rather surprised.</p>