sure sign of something wrong, and an amusing piece of evidence, both as to the fear, and, consequently, need, of publicity, has cropped up in my own case.

I wished to look at the accounts for 1602, to ascertain to whom the payment for the production of Twelfth Night was made, and applied to the Treasurer for leave to personally inspect them-a request usually freely granted to a Member of twenty years standing, F.S.A., and historical student in a small way.

After much beating about the bush, I was informed that I must give definite information as to the subject-matter of my investigation. To do this would have made my secret, such as it was, public property, and I declined to do it. It is the more annoying as the records are said. to have been indexed, and hence could have been put before me with as little trouble as at the Record Office, where a man walks in out of the street, and has the choicest MS. placed on the desk at once.

But how nervous must the Benchers be as to the present accounts, when they so carefully bar the door on those three centuries old!

We know there are some good things still left! Lords Truro and Romilly, both holders of very "jammy" places, are but just dead!

So with our Inn accounts. Can there still be corn in Egypt? True, the old system of free

WANTED, LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

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benchal chambers, under which Mr. Anderson, Q.C., pocketed some 50 per cent. on his outlay for forty years, is said to be defunct; although many old Benchers must still be enjoying a good return for their money. But can some

substitute for it still exist?

What becomes of the chamber rents, and fees from Students, Benchers, and Readers ? How are they applied? and what becomes of the surplus? for surplus there must be sometimes, or the concern would have gone bankrupt long since.

There are plenty of Gladstonian Parliament men whose one burning desire is that every village with more than two hundred inhabitants should manage the village finances, and tax others to pay for them. Here is a constituency of thousands, to which they themselves belong! Why is it to know nothing of its affairs?

To name only those who are Benchers, will not Lord Coleridge, Messrs. Hopwood, Shiress Will, and Warmington give the same "local control" to their educated equals that they are now forcing upon farm-labourers? If they do not, then certainly injustice will be done to a class which stands up for the rights of its clients, but has not pluck enough to demand its own.

TEMPORA MUTANTUR. The Spirit of Change

is in the air; not only the fringe, such as the wig and gown, but the whole process of qualification for the law is being passed in review. It may well be that the old form of close corporation, which has now so long existed in the Inns of Court, may be replaced by some looser formation, that in appearance, at all events, will better serve the end; but it is hard to conceive that, even should Commons perish, and the bodily presence thereat of candidates for the study of jurisprudence be replaced by some such alteration as the signing a book on certain days at a certain hour, the esprit de corps of the British Bar will utterly perish.

Should such a calamity occur, my time will not have been lost if I have placed on record some memories of a harmony and a sociality which may, perhaps, have been equalled, but which never can be excelled; all the more worthy of note because peculiar to one of the Inns alone, and that as an outcome of an occurrence nearly six centuries back in the agesthe suppression of the Knights Templars.