Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/514



CURRENT TOPICS. The Saratoga Exercises.— As usual the Ameri can Bar Association and the Conference on Uniform Legislation held meetings in Saratoga in August. The business of the writer hereof was chiefly in the latter. Since the last meeting of the Conference, at Milwaukee, a year ago, the States of Iowa, Kentucky, South Carolina and Virginia have been added to those represented. Considerable revisory work was done, and an important step was taken by the appoint ment of a committee to draft a proposed Uniform Act concerning negotiable instruments, founded on the English Act. At the meetings of the Bar Association we had time — and that implies a good deal — to listen to the reading of President Cooky's annual address. Mr. Moorfield Storey's address was a very notable production, devoted to the consideration of the indispu table proposition that the people of this country have lost faith in their legislatures, from Congress down to those of the States. It was not a pleasing nor a complimentary discourse, but it was sound and timely. Its words were faithful, like " the wounds of a friend," although they sank deep into the absurd and careless vanity of our people concerning our institu tions. The paper of Mr. Hampton L. Carson on "Great Dissenting Opinions," was interesting, but better adapted to reading in the closet than listen ing to in a great hall. We were told that his defense of some of his views, in the subsequent discussion, was even livelier and more cogent than his essay. The exercises of the section on Legal Educa tion, embracing papers by Judge Dillon, Mr. Henry Wade Rogers, Mr. John D. Lawson, and Mr. Austin Abbott, were very instructive and of rather novel in terest. Judge Dillon paid a glowing and appreciative tribute to the memory of David Dudley Field. The meeting on the whole must be called successful, as these meetings go, although the attendance, we believe, did not much exceed the customary one hundred. That hundred however embraced many influential and widely known lawyers, and if no very positive good or active reform comes of their assembling, yet even their worst enemies must admit that they did no mis chief! At all events they presented a refreshing

contrast to the disgusting crowd of nouveaux riches, horse racers, gamblers, and professional politicians who frequent the Springs in the summer.

Cleopatra. — If Mr. Ebers, the author of many stiff, stately and dull romances of history, ever comes to this country, we propose to have him indicted for false pretences. We were seduced into reading his last novel, "Cleopatra," by his declaration in the preface that he had essayed to rehabilitate her some what damaged reputation and to vindicate her against the long and common assaults of history. If any body could discover any thing good or new to be said of the various serpent of old Nile, we were curious to learn it, and so we patiently and conscientiously waded through the two volumes, but nothing in the nature of performance of the promise was exhibited. Ebers' Cleopatra is very much like everybody else's, except that he does make a faint effort to invest her with the domestic virtues, and dwells much on her devotion to her bastards by Caesar and Antony. In fact, he accounts for her sudden and discreditable dis appearance from the battle of Actium on the ground that she became "rattled " and yearned to run home and see the children. One can excuse a brilliant defense of a conceded historical rascal like Froude's of Henry VIII., but a dull, faint and timid one, like this, is unpardonable. Our copy is for sale cheap. Mr. Froude himself, in the Cosmopolitan Magazine for September, contributes an article on "Antony and Cleopatra," in which he endeavors to discredit the story that the queen had a son by Julius Caesar. The basis of his theory is that Caesar must have been too much pressed by the necessities of his Syrian cam paign to find time for dalliance, and that he would not have wished so to bring the queen into disgrace with her people. But Caesar was no busier than Napoleon in Italy and Poland, and the latter found time for such affairs. In these as in war, he " lived on the country," and so he smoothed the wrinkled front of war with an Italian prima donna and a Polish countess. The Egyptians did not mind a little thing like that, and thought none the worse of the queen's undoubted intrigue with Antony. As to the battle, 477