And with dark lanthorn searching round

Their mind's dim chamber, think they've found The clue-exclaiming, such their speed is, Eureka, like old Archimedes.

But little can of minds be known

By people searching in their own,

Since they will in this error fall,

That one is but the type of all.

Like grave phrenologists, who cull

Some heinous malefactor's skull,

Whose itch for killing and for thieving

Was known right well, and thence conceiving

The other faculties his brain has,

Are written on his skull as plain as

Those wicked organs, map and label
Th' exterior like an E. O. table;

And then proclaim themselves proficient
In things known but to the Omniscient,
Acquiring all this knowledge ample,
From one equivocal example.

Fantastic theorists!-we might

As well believe Descartes right,

C

When he conceived the pineal gland*

Was where the spirit took its stand;

Because he knew no other use

To which that organ could conduce,
And therefore clapped the soul upon it,

As Artistes do on blocks, a bonnet!

But to resume the broken thread:
To Nicksa, as before I said,

The learned Judge the law expounded;
Till he, bewildered and confounded,
Was dazzled by th' excessive light
Thrown on it by that sapient wight,
Whose heap of glosses on each text
The monarch's head but more perplexed,
Though never yet was any man decked
With deeper sense than this great Pandect.
However, 'tis to all well known,

Law has a language quite its own,

So dark, it cannot be translated

Except by the initiated;

* A small heartlike substance, about the size of a pea, situated at the basis of the brain. It was formerly supposed (and by Descartes among others) to be the seat of the soul.

And they, by phrases technical

Build round it such a massive wall,
That all who clamber o'er the stones

Get battered heads or broken bones,
Before they reach the darksome cell
Where Truth is hid in Law's deep well,
The bottom of whose depths profound
No mortal plummet e'er could sound!
Then marvel not that Nicksa's wit,
When Law's dark glamour came o'er it,
Like newly bottled beer became

Quite flat-I speak it to his shame

Until the lengthy exposition

Of Minos, such was his condition, Appeared to him, he gravely said, "A glooming light, much like a shade !"*

Oh Law thou Science of all Sciences! Great is thy strength, for "all appliances And means to boot," are used by thee,

Thou Rosicrusian mystery.

Thine is the true alchemic art,

That turns the baseness of man's heart

* Spencer.

To thy sole profit, and sets loose

Its passions for thy proper use,
Thus, as the Alchemists have told,
From baser metals making gold.

Oh Law! thou undigested mass

Of all that is, and all that was
Thou dark and puzzling palimsest,*

On which two meanings are expressed

The outward, easy to expound—

The inward, quite untrodden ground,
Except by legal folks, who thread

Its labyrinths with practised tread.
Like the philosophers of old,

* Palimsest. It was a common practice with the Greek and Latin copyists of the middle ages, to erase an ancient manuscript for the purpose of making room for another on the same parchment. Fortunately for the interests of learning, the erasure, either from the imperfection of the instrument, or the awkwardness of those using it, was seldom complete: and this circumstance, added to the indefatigable exertions of Signor Angelo Maio, Librarian to the Vatican; has been the means of recovering many of the most valuable productions of antiquity. A considerable portion of Cicero's celebrated treatise De Republica, was found concealed beneath St. Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms; and fragments of an old commentary on Virgil, had in like manner been removed, to make way for the Homilies of St. Gregory.

"The Codex Ephrem," one of the oldest and most valuable of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, is a palimsest or codex rescriptus.

Two separate rules of faith they hold ;*
Their public doctrines preach aloud

To satisfy the gaping crowd,
Reserving for a favored few

The secret tenets of the crew:
Esoteric doctrines framed with care
To cheat the mass, who only stare,
And marvel at the sleight of hand
They see, but cannot understand.
What's Law?-Alas! too many know

What Law is, from the debts they owe:
What's Law?-the strong and twining asp,
And he, the fool within its grasp,

Struggling, as Laocoon of old did,

The client in its gripe enfolded.†

*One, the exoteric, external, or public doctrine; the other, the esoteric, internal, or secret doctrine."

I have found that lawyers take from seventy-five to ninety per cent. on an average; sometimes as high as eight hundred per cent.; viz., their charges have been about £2,300, for what, when taxed, the legal charge was only £331. 7s. 6d.; and taken the greater part in advance too, stopping it out of money passing through their hands. In twenty years they have thus taken nearer £100,000 than £50,000 from me and mine; their regular law charges alone amounting to upwards of £2,500 a year, and under the name of what they call their cash payments-many of which were no payments at all-nearly as much more. In no other country in the world are there, or ever have there been, such abuses of this kind as in England."-Sir Egerton Brydges' Autobiography.

Thelluson having amassed £600,000, directed this enormous sum