Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope

The task of seeing an important trial at the Old Bailey is by no means a pleasant business, unless you be what the denizens of the Court would call "one of the swells," -- so as to enjoy the privilege of being a benchfellow with the judge on the seat of judgment. And even in that case the pleasure is not unalloyed. You have, indeed, the gratification of seeing the man whom all the world has been talking about for the last nine days, face to face; and of being seen in a position which causes you to be acknowledged as a man of mark; but the intolerable stenches of the Court and its horrid heat come up to you there, no doubt, as powerfully as they fall on those below.

And then the tedium of a prolonged trial, in which the points of interest are apt to be few and far between, grows upon you till you begin to feel that though the Prime Minister who is out should murder the Prime Minister who is in, and all the members of the two Cabinets were to be called in evidence, you would not attend the trial, though the seat of honour next to the judge were accorded to you. Those bewigged ones, who are the performers, are so insufferably long in their parts, so arrogant in their bearing -- so it strikes you, though doubtless the fashion of working has been found to be efficient for the purposes they have in hand -- and so uninteresting in their repetition, that you first admire, and then question, and at last execrate the imperturbable patience of the judge, who might, as you think, force the thing through in a quarter of the time without any injury to justice.