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lice Buller was once asked by an unsophisticated sheriff on the Oxford Circuit whether he was bona ßde judge (pronouncingyfrfV as one syllable), as they had been " often put off with sergeants in those parts." After the topic of the weather had been dropped, he asked the judge whether at the last assize town he had gone to see the elephant. "Why, no, Mr. High Sheriff, I can't say I did," was the good-natured reply; " for a little difficulty occurred : we both came into the town in form, with the trumpet sounding before us, and there was a point of ceremony as to which should visit first." — jfamcs Payn, in the lndependent.

A REMARKABLE example of what Bentham calls "judge-made law" has been furnished by Mr. Justice Wright at the Yorkshire Assizes. In sum ming up the evidence in the trial of Frederick Claude Vernon Harcourt for killing a man in a quarrel arising out of a dispute regarding the rela tive merits of the rival candidates at the Sheffield election, the judge observed : " I shall tell the jury that if one man calls another a liar, I think that a slight blow in retaliation is justifiable." This, he added, " may be new law, but it is commonsense." The jury finally returned a verdict of "not guilty," and the accused man was dis charged. — Law Times.

ACCORDING to the last census there are thirtythree thousand one hundred and sixty-three law yers in the United States, who receive $35,000,000 every year in fees. That would give an average professional income of about $1,100 to every law yer; from which it would appear that the law is still one of the best paying professions, if it were not for the fact that the unequal division of the sum total gives to about two thirds of the whole number hardly enough to pay laundry bills for cleansing their consciences. — Chicago Legal Adviser. A VERY curious and interesting story of hypno tism comes from Santa Rosa, a Californian city, to the effect that a man called Edward Livernash being charged with having committed murder by causing an old man to swallow a glass of beer mixed with a strong dose of prussic acid, was hypnotized in court, and then led up by ingeni ously directed questions to the time immediately

preceding the crime. So treated, it is reported, he "rambled through his story like a half-drunken man, describing all his movements prior to the act of homicide of which he was accused. He nar rated all his actions, and stated that he had killed the old man because the latter had refused to be queath his property to him. A number of inter rogatories were pressed by the prosecution, and these Livernash answered readily. So he was con victed." Though it comes from America, this extraordinary statement may be true or partly true. In any case it gives room for reflection. If it became part of our criminal procedure to subject prisoners to hypnotic examination, few persons would dare to commit serious crimes. — Ex.

CONTENTS OF THE MARCH MAGAZINES.

The Arena. A Religion for all Time. Louis R. Ehrich; The Social Quagmire, and the Way out. I., Alfred Rüssel Wallace : Women Wage-earners, Helen Campbdl : In the Tribunal of Literary Criticism : A Defence of Shakespeare, Dr. F. J. Furnival; Does Bi-chloride of Gold cure Inebriety? Leslie Keeley, M.D.; The Money Question, John Franklin Clark; The Wo man's 1'art. Cora Maynard : Under the Arctic Circle. John Keatley. The Atlantic. Old Kaskaskia, III., Mary Hartwell Catherwood: Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent. A. T. Mahan : Mom Cely's Wonderful Luck, Elizabeth W. Bellamy; Per sian Poetry. Sir Edward Strachey: Of a DancingGirl, Lafcadio Hearn : Garden Ghosts, James B. Kenyon : Random Reminiscences of Emerson, Wil liam Henry Furness; On Growing Old. H. C. Merwin : My College Days, I., Edward E. Hale; Words, Agnes Repplier; An English Family in the Seven teenth Century, John Foster Kirk; The Ancestry of Genius. Havelock Ellis. The Century. The Violoncello of Jufrow Rozenboom (illustrated!, Anna Eichberg King; An Embassy to Provence. II. (illustrated). Thomas A.Janvier; Napoleon's Depor tation to Elba, by the Officer in Charge (illus trated), Thomas Ussher, R. N.; Jamaica (illus trated), Gilbert Gaul; Letters of Two Brothers : Passages from the Correspondence of General and Senator Sherman. Wm. Tecumseh Sherman, John Sherman; Westminster Abbey (illustrated). Henry