The funeral being concluded, they return to town, Vivid agreeing with
his odd companion in leaving the canvass-spoilers to the _hanging
committee_.

Is it not to be hoped that a day may come when a thorough revision and
amelioration of our equity laws will be deemed a matter of as great
national importance as that chief occupier of the time of our grand
_rural Capulets_ and _Montagues_, the revision and amelioration
of the game laws.

[Illustration]

* * * * *


TRIAL BY BATTLE.

"Ay, leave lawyers to wrangle amongst each other--a practice which of
late years has become so much a legal fashion, that some of our
Westminster Hall heroes, forgetting their clients' quarrels in their
own, suddenly convert themselves into a new plaintiff and defendant, and
brawl forth such home coarse vituperations----"

"True;--formerly they used to brow-beat witnesses, now they brow-beat
one another, and so defyingly, that ere long, who knows but the
_four_ courts may resemble, as punsters would say, the _five_
courts?"

[Illustration]