AFTER passing through one or two dark and dungeon-like lobbies or anti-chambers, or by whatever more appropriate name they may be designated, one enters by a low pair of folding-doors into what is called the Outer House, wherein all civil cases are tried, in the first instance, by individual Judges, or Lord Ordinaries, before being submitted to the ultimate decision either of the whole Bench, or of one of its great Divisions. On being admitted, one sees a hall of very spacious dimensions, which, although not elegant in its finishing or decorations, has nevertheless an air of antique grandeur about it, that is altogether abundantly striking. The roof is very fine, being all of black oak, with the various arches of which it is composed resting one upon another, exactly as in Christ-Church Hall.

The area of this Hall is completely filled with law-practitioners, consisting of Solicitors and Advocates, who move in two different streams, along the respective places which immemorial custom has allotted to them on the floor. The crowd which is nearest the door, and in which I first found myself involved, is that of the Solicitors, Agents, Writers, or Men of Business, (for by all these names are they called). Here is a perfect whirl of eagerness and activity—every face alert, and sharpened into the acutest angles. Some I could see were darting about among the different Bars, where pleadings were going forward, like midshipmen in an engagement, furnishing powder to the combatants. They brought their great guns, the advocates, to bear sometimes upon one Judge and sometimes upon another; while each Judge might be discovered sitting calmly, like a fine piece of stone-work amidst the hiss of bombs and the roar of forty-pounders.

In the meantime, the “men of business,” who were not immediately occupied in this way, paced rapidly along—each borne on his particular wave of this great tide of the affairs of men, but all having their faces well turned up above the crowd, and keeping a sharp look-out. This was, I think, their general attitude.