Page:Guy Mannering Vol 3.djvu/364

354 "Macers? who are they?"

"Why, it is a kind of judicial Saturnalia. You must know, that one of the requisites to be a macer, or officer in attendance upon our supreme court, is, that they shall be men of no knowledge."

"Very well!"

"Now, our Scottish legislature, for the joke's sake, I suppose, have constituted those men of no knowledge into a peculiar court for trying questions of relationship and descent, such as this business of Bertram, which often involve the most nice and complicated questions of evidence."

"The devil they do? I should think that rather inconvenient."

"O, we have a practical remedy for the theoretical absurdity. One or two of the judges act upon such occasions as prompters and assessors to their own door-keepers. But you know what Cujacius says, 'Multa sunt in moribus dissentanea, multa sine ratione.' However, this Saturnalian