could possibly eat, and was in admirable condition." They
refused to allow any doctor but one employed by themselves to see
him. They procured from him a certificate that the noble
busybody and his physician had made a mistake, and that all the
functions of life in the infant appeared to be in perfect order.
Then came the gentleman, and the inquiry, and his report, and a
letter from the Poor-Law Board, and further discussions and more
letters, until the bewildered public gnashed its teeth at the
Minister, the Guardians, and the law, and wished them all at
Land's End or beyond it.


V.-An Ungodly Jungle.

The case of the Guardians of St. Bartimeus against the Guardians
of St. Simon Magus was at length reached. The argument lasted
for two days. There is a grim work, the short title whereof is
"Burns's Justice," in five fat volumes, from which the legal
Dryasdust turns aghast. In one of these portentous books, title
"Poor," pp. 1200, the inquisitive may find a code unrivalled by
the most malignant ingenuity of former or contemporary nations: a
code wherein, by gradual accretion, has been framed a system of
relief to poverty and distress so impolitic, so unprincipled,
that none but the driest, mustiest, most petrified parish
official could be expected to lift up his voice to defend it; so
complicated that no man under heaven knows its length or breadth
or height or depth; yet it stands to this hour a monument of
English stolidity--a marvel of lazy or ignorant statesmanship.
Imagine, if you please, a Lord Chief Justice and three Puisnes,
all keen, practical men, alive to public policy and the common