Clerk, in passing a hosier's shop, 'This is a sort of wedding day, Willie. I think I must go in and buy me a new nightcap.'" Scott's first fee of any consequence was expended on a silver taper stand for his mother, and in after years the old lady would point to it with great satisfaction as it stood on her chimneypiece. He really made an effort to succeed at the bar. His father did his best to interest his neighbour in George Square, the notorious Lord Braxfield, in the fledgling, and the grim old judge replied "in a very pleasant manner." One may be sure that the father would send all the fees he could to his son. The latter, like all juniors, took his share of circuit work. He made his first appearance as counsel in a criminal case at Jedburgh, when he had the satisfaction of helping a veteran poacher and sheep-stealer to escape through some of the meshes of the law. "You're a lucky scoundrel," Scott whispered to his client after the latter had been acquitted. "I'm just o' your mind," said the rascal, "and I'll send ye a maukin (hare) the morn, man." On another occasion Scott argued a case about a cow before that tiresome old judge, Lord Eskgrove (you remember what Lord Cockburn said about him), but lost the plea. Scott stoutly maintained the healthiness of the cow, which, as he said, had merely a cough. "Stop there," said the old judge. "I have had plenty of healthy kye in my time, but I never heard of one of them coughing. A coughin' cow!-that will never do sustain the Sheriff's judgment, and decern." Business, however, was slow to come Scott's way, and what did come was of poor quality and was not well paid. In these days of written pleadings and antiquated forms of procedure a junior's work was often unutterably dull. Scott, although of a bright and valiant disposition, must at times have lost heart. He would see others, with greater aptitude for the work, or greater influence, pushing ahead and himself left in the backwaters of the law. A glance at his "fee-book is interesting. It shows that he made by his first year's practice £24 38.; by the second, £57 15s.; by the third, £84 48.; by the fourth, £90; by the fifth, £144 10s., of which £50 were fees from his father's chambers; by the sixth, £79 17s.; by the seventh, £135 9s.; by the eighth, £129 13s.; by the ninth, £170; by the tenth, £202 12s.; and by the eleventh, £228 18s. Eleven years of the dullest drudgery, and only £1347 as a return! His name appears in only one "reported" case. And now he had reached the parting of the ways. It had become abundantly clear to him that he could never hope to succeed at the bar. He had married in 1797, and his responsi bilities were increasing. Lockhart candidly admits that Scott had never been fond of his profession. We are given to understand that he did not possess "a brisk and ready talent for debate and declamation." Then, again, there was (and still is) a prejudice against employing, in any important case, an advocate supposed to be strongly imbued with the love of literature. Scott himself considered that this had a great deal to do with his lack of success, and Lockhart thinks that if one really great and interesting case had been submitted to Scott's sole care and management he would have risen to the occasion and so made a name for himself. But that was not to be. In the first week of January, 1805, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was published, and Scott became famous in the fields of literature, where an abundant harvest awaited him. His share in the profits of the "Lay" amounted to £769 6s. Needless to say, he gave up his practice at the bar although he retained his Sheriffship of Selkirkshire. He became a Clerk of Court in 1806. It is quite unnecessary to shed any tears on this subject. Rather should we rejoice. Scotland would have been much poorer to-day had Scott been a successful advocate, all engrossed in his profession. It was "the perpetual spur of pecuniary demands" which caused him to forsake that profession and try his hand at literature, which, after all, was his true vocation. And he was courageous enough to attempt the change and not brood over his failure. To use a favourite quotation of his, he would have said, "Advance banners then in the name of God and Saint Andrew." Scott by his pen has made Scotland famous. He has painted the beauty and glory of her scenery in language that cannot die, he has thrown a halo of romance over her chequered history, and he has depicted Scotsmen and Scotswomen as no other author has depicted them either before or since his time. His father had determined that he should become a lawyer. lawyer. The Fates reversed the decision of "the Court below" and made him a heroic figure in literature, one of the bravest of Scotsmen, one of the manliest of men. Literature. R. A. B. By James A HANDY BOOK OF THE LAW OF BANKER AND CUSTOMER. London : Effingham Dr. Smith is the author of several of Mr. Effingham Wilson's highly successful legal handy books. The present work has proved its usefulness by running into its twenty-third thousand. Thoroughly revised and brought up to the present date, it will prove a useful and safe guide and reliable instructor to the layman in dealing with his banker, while to the law student it should also prove useful, as it contains a sufficient number of references to decided cases and to the statutes for his purposes. There is a good index, incorporating under the heading of "Statutes what is equivalent to the usual table of statutes. The method of reference in the index is by chapter and section, a method highly conducive to speed. Though there are in the work several statements of the rules of Scots law where these differ from those of the law of England, the Scottish reader will require to bear in mind that he is reading a work by an English lawyer and intended mainly for English readers, and that, for example, statements referring to the Statute of Limitations are not correct so far as Scotland is concerned, though the text contains no caveat to that effect. THE PRINCIPLES OF GERMAN CIVIL LAW. By Ernest J. Shuster, LL.D. (Munich), of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-law. Oxford: Delegates of the Clarendon Press. (12s. 6d. net.) Beginning with a preface explaining the reasons of its existence, viz., (1) for the benefit of the student of comparative law; (2) to give an insight into the "latest and most perfect attempt to systematise the whole of the private law of a country"; and (3). to assist practitioners of the law in England in ascertaining the law of Germany (mainly, as is suggested in the body of the book, by providing them with a vocabulary which their German correspondents will understand), this volume, after providing a table of contents of some 20 pages in length, followed by a table of German codes and statutes referred to, a detailed list of references to the Civil Code (Burgerliches Gezetbuch), Commercial Code (Handel Gezetbuch), and other codes dealt with at length by the author, and a table of English cases and statutes referred to, proceeds, after an historical sketch of the law before 1st January, 1900 (when the Civil Code and, in addition, large body of revised or new law came into force), to deal with its subject in detail. Dr. Shuster points out that a translation of the codes and principal statutes without notes would have been unintelligible, and with notes unwieldy, as he shows by reference to the fact that the French translation presently being prepared with Government assistance by Professor Saleilles and other eminent authorities, already runs to 1500 very large pages, although only about half the Civil Code has been dealt with. Hence the form which his treatise has taken. The work is a systematic treatise, not following the lines of arrangement of the codes or quoting from them very extensively. The author's method is, after stating the German law under each head, to compare the German with the English law, keeping in view in doing so not only the requirements of the student, but also of the practical lawyer. Considerations of space have prevented a the author dealing fully with the international law, but in view of the practical requirements of many of his readers he has stated the rules as to conflict of laws in connection with family law and other subjects, in connection with which such questions most frequently occur. To the Scotch lawyer, whose system still remains in spirit alien to the English law, the work is not quite such easy reading as it will be to his English brother. The author does not touch much on Scots law, though one or two references, such as that on page 632, to "an alimentary life interest under Scotch law," show, as one would expect in the case of so learned an author, some acquaintanceship with our legal system. Probably other parallels (such as the absence of any distinction between libel and slander common to our law and to that of Germany) would have been mentioned had space permitted. In addition to a full general index, the work is provided with an index of German technical terms, the latter of which would prove of great use if, as the writer of the present review has long thought would be desirable, the English solicitor (while acquainted with German) wrote in English and the German lawyer (while acquainted with English) replied in German. Dr. Shuster has all the qualifications desirable in the author of such a work as that under review, and we can confidently recommend it both to the eager student and to the busy practitioner as not likely to disappoint either of them. Obituary. At Stirling, on 24th March, Mr. Alexander Gardner, Sheriffclerk depute, Falkirk. The deceased received his training in the town-clerk's office, Stirling, and before his transference to Falkirk, upwards of twenty-five years ago, he acted as town-clerk depute and clerk to the Burgh Police Court. He took a strong and active interest in the Volunteer movement, and, after serving as lieutenant and captain in one of the Stirling corps, he retired with the rank of major. deceased, who was about sixty years of age, was unmarried. The At Edinburgh, on 27th March, Mr. Duncan Antonio, clerk of the Bill Chamber, one of the best known and most respected of the Court of Session officials. Forty years ago Mr. Antonio came to Parliament House as a clerk, and since then he has been intimately connected with the Courts. A native of Crieff, he was trained to the law, and upon entering Parliament House he soon obtained considerable employment as clerk to members of the bar. He at one time or other looked after the interests of, among others, Lord Guthrie, the present Lord Advocate, the late Sheriff Guthrie Smith, Sheriff-Substitute Campbell Smith, Mr. A. J. Young, and the late Mr. John Rhind. Appointed about twenty years ago an assistant Clerk of Session, he served in that capacity for some time until he was promoted to the office of Depute-clerk of Session. On the death of Mr. Shaw in 1897 the deceased was appointed to the position which he held until his death of Clerk of the Bill Chamber. A man of great energy and of wide experience in legal matters, he made a most efficient chief of the Bill Chamber, and his knowledge naturally was greatly relied upon and appreciated by the junior judges when they were first of all called upon to undertake the work of dealing with interdicts and other matters necessitating summary procedure. Recently he issued a work on Bill Chamber forms and procedure, which is of great benefit to agents. Always obliging and courteous, he was highly respected both by the bench and the bar. He was a frequent and valued contributor to our own pages. He was a keen politician, and in his younger days rendered excellent service to the Conservative party. He had only been confined to bed for about a week, and succumbed to a complication of internal troubles. He was about sixty-five years of age. He was predeceased by his wife, but is survived by two sons and six daughters. Notes from Edinburab. PARLIAMENT HOUSE, 30th March, 1907. THE session which has just closed has not been a remarkably busy one, so far as the Outer House is concerned, although there has been a fair distribution of business among those who look for a steady amount of weekly work. It has been otherwise with what I may term the "intermittents," that is, the juniors, whose business comes to them with a rush at times, while at others it dribbles in. There have been a good many proofs, although the issues at stake in most of them have not been large. About the most interesting trials we had were the actions against the Glasgow Citizen and Evening Times for reproducing a bogus telegram, handed in, as to the apprehension of the Whiteinch murderer, and the verdict of the jury, which assoilzied the defenders, being accompanied with a strong finding as to the authorship of the telegram, may yield ulterior consequences to the pursuers of a not very agreeable description. Since then certain arrests have been made of some of the parties suspected of having conspired to perpetrate the fraud, so the matter will come up again in the High Court or at the circuit. There is much talk in the west, as also in Sheriff Court quarters here, as to the new Sheriff Courts Bill which has been introduced by the Lord Advocate. The text will be awaited with some interest, but, judging from the indication given by the Lord Advocate of its scope, it will remove some anomalies that at present exist in Sheriff Court procedure and extend the operation of a useful judicial system. The increase of the Small Debt Court jurisdiction from £12 to £20 will be welcomed |