hardly fail to be a dash of bitterness in the lot of a waif and stray; and so the remainder of the walk was accomplished in silence. Philip, like many other persons who shine in society, was subject to occasional fits of depression when off the stage. One of these fits fell upon him now, and Hugh was quite startled to see how pale and haggard he looked. when he bade him good-night in the hall.

"Owes money, I expect," the Colonel thought, as he went upstairs; "I wonder what Margaret allows him."

And then this good-natured and foolish gentleman actually began calculating the amount that stood to his credit in the hands of Messrs.. Cox and Co. Hugh had felt the pinch of poverty so often himself that all his sympathies were stirred by a suspicion of embarrassed circumstances in others, and he had never in his life been able to refuse a loan when asked for one. It was to this unfortunate weakness that he owed the loss of more than one old friend.

A French Assize.

I.

THE entrance of two judges into an English assize town is, weather favouring, an impressive sight; or at least it can be made so. It is not often that a sheriff evinces his parsimony after the manner of a certain official of that rank, who went out to receive Lord Chief Justice Cockburn in a hansom cab, and was straightway fined 5007. for his impudence. Most sheriffs are anxious to acquit themselves creditably of the task which the law imposes upon them, and some would no doubt go to extremes in the matter of pageantry had not an etiquette arisen which informally regulates to what extent the ceremonial of receiving the judges shall go. The judges must have fine carriages with four horses, servants in livery, javelin men; a comfortable house to lodge in, and the sheriff, who houses and feeds them at his own expense, must attend them into court daily attired in uniform. If the calendar at the assizes be a heavy one, the sheriff's expenses in entertaining the judges for several days must often be considerable. In France, where the calendars are always heavy, the assize judges have not only to defray all their own expenses, but they are expected to give at least one dinner to the local officials. By way of indemnity they receive from the state a fee of 500 francs, or 20l. The regular salaries of these assize judges, who are councillors of the District Court of Appeal, specially commissioned, vary between 2407. and 360l.; but never exceed this last figure.

This is only another way of saying that French judges are as a rule men of private means who have accepted judicial office for the honour of the thing. The Republican party now in power have resolved to effect a radical reform in the judicature, and to bestow the highest offices on the Bench, as they are conferred in England, on successful barristers whom they will attract by the offer of salaries twice and three times larger than those now paid. Thus it is proposed to give councillors of Appeal Courts (whose numbers will be diminished) from 600l. to 1,000l. a year, and presidents of Appeal Courts from 1,200l. to 2,0007.; under the new system also, should it ever come into force, the judges of assize will have all their expenses paid for them and receive a fee of 47. a day into the bargain. These reforms must altogether change the organisation of the French judicature; but speaking of French judges as they are now, one must say of them that, if not always intellectually brilliant, they are without exception a highly dignified, honourable

and well-trained body of men.

Those of them who are commissioned to hold assizes have generally sat for many years on the Bench. They belong in most cases to the provincial noblesse and commenced their career in the Magistrature Assise, at the age of twenty-six or twentyseven, by being appointed assistant judges in the tribunals of Correctional Police; after which they became assessors in those tribunals, juges d'instruction (examining magistrates), and finally councillors of a Court of Appeal. There are twenty-one of these Appeal Courts, formerly called Royal or Imperial Courts, and the staff of each includes a president and an indefinite number of councillors. Some courts have but six or eight councillors, others more than twenty. A councillorship is the supreme dignity to which a judge can claim to rise by length of service, though by Government favour he may be promoted to the higher functions of president of a Court, or councillor of the Court of Cassation in Paris. The presidentships, however, are very often conferred on the most distinguished members of the Magistrature Debout, the Procurator General, or Chief Public Prosecutor of Appeal Courts; and it may be mentioned that councillors seldom care to accept these high posts unless they are quite rich men. The president of a Cour d'Appel gets 6001. a year, but he is required to keep up so much state and to give so many dinners and parties that he spends his salary two or three times over. The councillorships of the Court of Cassation, which involve a residence in Paris, are likewise sought only by the most affluent. As for the highest judicial office of all, that of President of the Court of Cassation or Supreme Court of Civil and Criminal Appeal, the salary is 1,2007. ; but the holder of this most venerated office has to pay for his dignity on a scale which only an income of several thousands of pounds will suffice to meet.

Assizes are held twice, or if needful three times a year, in the chief towns of each department, and three councillors of the district Cour d'Appel are commissioned to hold them. The senior councillor takes the temporary title of President of the Assizes, and on him devolve all the principal duties, ceremonial and other. The judges arrive in the town without any display, but as soon as they have alighted at the chief hotel in the place they must begin paying their official visits in a carriage and pair. They are bound to call first on the prefect, on the commander of the garrison if he be a general of division, and on the diocesan if he be an archbishop, and the visits in such cases must be paid in their scarlet robes. If, however, the garrison commander be a general of brigade, and the diocesan only a bishop, the Assize President and his assessors return to their hotel after calling on the prefect, for they rank higher for the nonce than all other officials, and are entitled to receive first visits from them. The prefect, accompanied by his secretary and the councillors of préfecture, all in full uniform, speedily arrives at the hotel to pay his return visit, and after him come, in what order they please, the general, the bishop, the mayor of the town, the president,

assessor, and public prosecutor of the local tribunal, the Central Commissioner of Police, and divers other functionaries. They make but a short stay, and as soon as they are gone the judges divest themselves of their robes, and set out to pay their return visits in evening-dress. The etiquette in all these points is strictly defined. It was originally regulated by Napoleon, and has been adhered to with but little variation. ever since. At times attempts have been made to condense the whole formality into a mere exchange of cards; but the French love ceremony, and of late the secret antagonism between aristocratic judges and the Republican government has induced Republican prefects to stickle most punctiliously for the observance of all official courtesies due towards them. Not long ago an assize president who was by birth a marquis called upon a prefect, and made him the stiffest of bows, saying, “Sir, I have come to pay you the visit which the law requires." The prefect was a good fellow, and returning the call an hour afterwards, said with the blandest of smiles, "Sir, I come to pay a visit which in some cases might be a mere duty, but which in this instance is a real pleasure." The interviews between judges and bishops are generally more genial than this.

While the judges have been getting through their visits, the AvocatGénéral appointed to act as Public Prosecutor at the assizes has also been exchanging civilities with the local authorities; but in his case card leaving is held to be sufficient. The Avocat-Général is one of the assistants of the Procureur Général or chief Public Prosecutor of the district over which the Appeal Court has jurisdiction. He sits in the assize court in red robes, and conducts the prosecution of all the prisoners : it is only in cases where private prosecutors want to get pecuniary damages out of a prisoner, besides seeing him punished according to law, that they are represented by counsel of their own. They are then said to constitute themselves civil parties to the suit. They may do this even when a prisoner is on his trial for murder, and indeed pecuniary damages are almost always claimed when a prisoner is supposed to be able to pay them. It has not unfrequently happened that a murderer, besides being sentenced to death, has been made to pay a heavy fine to the relations of his victim. These fines are inflicted, not by the jury, but by the Bench. A few years ago a gentleman named Armand, of Bordeaux, was put upon his trial for trying to murder his servant, Maurice Roux. The jury acquitted him, but the Bench, having their doubts about the matter, sentenced him to pay 20,000 francs damages to Roux, and the Court of Cassation upheld this curious decision. Prince Pierre Bonaparte, when acquitted of the murder of Victor Noir, the journalist, in 1870, was also made to pay 20,000 francs damages to his victim's mother; and only a few months since a country gentleman, who was convicted of having killed an antagonist in a duel, was sentenced to pay 4,000l. compensation to the deceased's widow, in addition to undergoing a year's imprisonment, and paying a fine of 40l. to the State with all the costs of the trial.

II.

French assizes are only held to try criminal causes. All civil suits are heard at the Courts of Appeal, which are stationary, and whose presidents never figure in assize commissions. When a calendar is unusually heavy, the judges arrive two or three days before the proceedings commence; but in any case they come one clear day beforehand, in order that they may have ample time to examine the dossiers of all the causes. This is always done with the utmost care. The dossier is a compilation which includes not only the indictment and the depositions of witnesses before the examining magistrate, but all the facts and rumours which the police have been able to collect concerning the antecedents of the accused. A copy of each dossier handed to the judges is laid before the Chambre des Mises en Accusation, which performs the same functions as an English grand jury. The members composing it are specially delegated judges or magistrates of a lower rank than councillors, and it rests with them to determine whether prisoners shall be put upon their trial. They are not limited, however, to the two alternatives of finding a true bill or ignoring the bill altogether. They may order a supplément d'instruction, that is, send back the case to the examining magistrate for further inquiry. It is the main principle of French procedure that a case should come up to a criminal court complete in all its details, and this throws upon examining magistrates an amount of labour and responsibility almost incredible.

Four categories of offences are tried at the assizes: firstly, crimes involving sentences of death or penal servitude; secondly, political offences; thirdly, by the Act of 1881, press offences; and fourthly, manslaughters caused by duelling. The offenders in the last three categories are generally, though not always, treated with courtesy. They have been at large on their own recognisances; they are not required to surrender themselves into actual custody, and they do not sit in the dock during trial. All other offenders, however, even when they have been admitted to bail, must surrender at the House of Detention on the day before the assizes open, and must be brought up in custody. It is the public prosecutor, and not the bench, who decides to what extent accused persons shall be enlarged before and during trial. He may if he pleases keep a political offender or a journalist or duellist as strictly confined before trial as an ordinary felon; and he may at his discretion stay the execution of a sentence, and allow the convicted man to walk freely out of court. Political offenders, journalists and duellists, who get sentenced to a few months' imprisonment only, are seldom detained immediately after their conviction. Except in very serious cases, or in cases where the government harbours a special animosity against the culprit, the latter leaves the court free, and does not surrender to undergo his punishment until he receives a summons to do so from the public prosecutor. And someVOL. XLV.-No. 270. 32.