the weary legal technicalities of another, the perspicuity of a third,
and the splendid forensic eloquence of a fourth, were criticised,
depreciated and admired. It seemed as though the chief lawyers of the
day were standing an examination, and were candidates for some high
honour, which each was striving to secure.

The Dublin papers were full of the trial; no other subject, could, at
the time, either interest or amuse. I doubt whether any affair of the
kind was ever, to use the phrase of the trade, so well and perfectly
reported. The speeches appeared word for word the same in the columns
of newspapers of different politics. For four-fifths of the contents of
the paper it would have been the same to you whether you were reading
the Evening Mail, or the Freeman. Every word that was uttered in the
Court was of importance to every one in Dublin; and half-an-hour's
delay in ascertaining, to the minutest shade, what had taken place in
Court during any period, was accounted a sad misfortune.

The press round the Four Courts [6], every morning before the doors
were open, was very great: and except by the favoured few who were able
to obtain seats, it was only with extreme difficulty and perseverance,
that an entrance into the body of the Court could be obtained.

[FOOTNOTE 6: The Four Courts was a landmark courthouse in Dublin
named for the four divisions of the Irish judicial
system: Common Pleas, Chancery, Exchequer, and King's
Bench.]

It was on the eleventh morning of the proceedings, on the day on which
the defence of the traversers was to be commenced, that two young men,
who had been standing for a couple of hours in front of the doors of