A Young Man's Year by Antonio Hope

The Majesty of the Law -- nay, in theory at least, the Majesty of England -- sat enthroned at Raylesbury. In the big chair in the centre the Honourable Sir Christopher Lance, in his newly powdered wig and his scarlet robes -- the "Red Judge" whose splendour solaces (so it is said) even the prisoners with a sense of their own importance. On his right the High Sheriff, splendid also in Deputy-Lieutenant's uniform, but bored, sleepy after a good lunch, and half-stifled by sitting indoors all day in bad air, instead of agreeably killing something under the open vault of Heaven. Beyond him the Chaplain, smooth-faced, ruddy, rather severe, in gown and cassock of silk so fine and stiff as to seem capable of standing up straight on its own account, even if His Reverence chanced not to be inside. At the end, the Under-Sheriff, unobtrusively ready to come to his Chief's assistance. On his Lordship's left -- a sad falling off in impressiveness -- Arthur in mufti, and on his other side Mr. Williams, the Judge's clerk, a fat man of constant but noiseless activity, ever coming in and going out, fetching nothing from nowhere and taking it back again (at any rate so far as the casual spectator could perceive). Behind, such county magistrates as were attracted by curiosity or by a laudable desire to take a lesson in doing justice. In front, to right and left, and down below, divided from this august company (for even on Marshal and Clerk fell rays of reflected dignity) the world of struggle -- the Bar, the solicitors, jury, witnesses, prisoners, spectators, with great policemen planted at intervals like forest-trees amongst the scrub. For mainspring of the whole machine, the Clerk of Assize, a charming and courtly old gentleman, telling everybody what to do and when to do it, polite, though mostly unintelligible, to the prisoners, confidential and consolatory to the jury, profoundly anxious that nothing should ruffle so much as a hair of his lordship's wig.

In the morning they had tried a yokel for stealing a pig. The defence -- a guinea's worth -- eloquently advanced and ardently pressed -- was that the prosecutor had presented the prisoner with the pig in a moment of conviviality. The prosecutor met the suggestion with amazement, the jury with smiles: one might get drunk, but no man was ever so drunk as to give his pig away! Verdict -- Guilty. His Lordship passed a light sentence, faintly smiling over the ways of a world which, after nearly fifty years in the law and eighteen on the Bench, still remained to him rather remote and incomprehensible. This case of the pig was a merry case. It lent itself to jokes, and young Bertie Rackstraw's caricature (he solaced briefless days with art) of counsel for the defence arm-in-arm with a gowned and bewigged pig was circulated and much admired. _Pignus amoris_, another wag wrote under it.