cal defender, who had so wickedly and pertinaciously bereaved them of their charming bird, which, from all the accounts they could learn, instead of being murdered by any cat, had died of a broken heart, in the defender's dark wire receptacle, hanging up in his ill-ventilated bedroom, &c., &c.

The youngsters about the Court, and even old Mr. Alexander Calder, the weather-beaten Sheriffs'-officer, albeit not often addicted to the melting mood, heaved his grunt, or his sigh, at the unexpected death of the said Canary; but Michael Gilfillan was in ecstacy while the process came back from the Sheriff-Substitute, with this decisive interlocutor-"Refuses the reclaiming petition, and adheres to the interlocutor reclaimed against!" This astonishing interlocutor now bristled up the venom of Mr. Ure in a ten-fold degree, and even against the Sheriff himself, for levying on him the fine of seven shillings and sixpence; so he prepared and lodged another reclaiming petition; it was quite a common thing-such was the glorious uncertainty of the law in those days— to lodge first one and then a second or a third reclaiming petition. But Mr. Ure, recapitulating the fact that the bird had been slain, and the cat itself hanged for the foul deed, concluded his peroration by stating in writing, "Your Lordship, therefore, instead of adhering, may as well ordain your reclaiming petitioner to produce the dead body of Moses, in this process, as the bird in question!"

This bold statement, one would naturally have thought, would have opened the eyes of his lordship, the Sheriff, or attracted some part of his attention, and led to some alteration, at least, of his previous judgment; but, we opine, his Lordship had previously made up his mind

on the import of the proof; and, probably, without reading one word of the reclaiming petition, or the answer thereto, he tossed it aside, first writing on the back of it, in his own hand, these words, "Refuses the prayer of this petition, and adheres to the interlocutor reclaimed against."

This made Michael even gaze with some astonishment himself. "My sang," said his petrified, but now delighted opponent, "that judgment must and shall be altered." So he lodged another petition of appeal to the SheriffDepute in Edinburgh. After the lapse of some months, it came back to Glasgow, with another lot of processes, "ADHERING!"

We must here stop for a moment, to explain the singular practice of the Sheriff-Court in those days. When any litigant felt aggrieved by the decision of the SheriffSubstitute in Glasgow, and wished to appeal to the Sheriff-Depute in Edinburgh, he behoved to pay to the Sheriff-Clerk in Glasgow a fee of two shillings and sixpence, to cover, as was said, the carriage of the process to Edinburgh and back again. In that way, the SheriffClerk sometimes waited till he could make up a bag containing twenty or thirty processes, more or less. It so happened that, at that particular period, a brace or two of prime grouse, from the upper ward of Lanarkshire, were brought to Glasgow, addressed to the Sheriff in Edinburgh, and to go in the Sheriff's next parcel of processes, or legal game, if we may call it. The processes thus appealed, were all duly assorted at the bottom of the Sheriff's boxthe grouse snugly deposited on the top of them—the box itself carefully nailed down, and duly addressed to Modern Athens. After the lapse of some months, as we have said, the identical box came back, consigned to the

Sheriff-Clerk, almost exactly as it went away, with this difference, that the feathers of the grouse only represented the decayed bodies of them, while the legal processes themselves were all quietly at rest, as if they had never once been stirred up for revision, or review, at headquarters at all. The imperious mandate from the Depute was slipped underneath, the address to the Sheriff-Clerk, "ADHERE in all these cases." This extraordinary discovery, with other circumstances, led the practitioners of the law then in Glasgow to murmur and complain that justice was not done-that papers were never read--that many of them were slurred over without due attention, and that appeals, in many instances, were nothing but a "mockery, a delusion, and a snare.”

The Canary case helped mightily to fan that flame. For though the bird itself was dead beyond all question, it was now rising jubilant on its notes throughout the length and breadth of the city. It was ringing sometimes in laughter sometimes in indignation, amongst the circle of the juvenile scribes, and even amongst their "most potent, grave, and reverend seigniors."

"What could, or should be done with such a decision? Could the Sheriff, by his adhering judgment, bring the Canary alive? Would Michael Gilfillan dare to extract such a judgment? or should he attempt to put it in force, by imprisoning Mr. Alex. Ure's client in the Tolbooth of Glasgow, for not doing a thing which it was impossible for him in the world to do-would there not be other actions out of this, unprecedented in the law? Yes, bills of advocation-processes of reduction-suspensions and liberations, and other things of that sort, were in preparation to the Lords of Council and Session!" Ure swore at

Michael, and Michael swore at Ure. The latter got the words printed, and sent to Michael—

"Lay on Macduff,

And damn'd be him that first cries 'Hold, enough!'"

But in spite of those belligerents-so brimful of wrath towards each other-the memorable bird, even by its death, effected a most righteous and blessed revolution, not merely in the Sheriff-Court of Glasgow, but in all the other Courts of the Kingdom; because the Lords of Council and Session, in an act of adjournal or the Legislature itself, made it imperative that the Sheriffs and Sheriff-Substitutes should assign their ratio decidendigive special reasons for the grounds of their decision in all their cases, and point their pens to the particular pages of the proof on which they relied; and that the procurators, when subscribing their names to their pleadings should state by whom they were written or drawn, in order that the proper responsibility might be laid upon them; and Sir Robert Peel, who was then the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and Sir William Rae, we think, Lord-Advocate, insisted that, thereafter, the Sheriff-Depute for Lanarkshire should reside permanently in Glasgow. Hence the first appointment of Wm. Rose Robinson, Esq., in that capacity, many years ago, succeeded by Archibald Alison, Esq., now Sir Archibald Alison, Baronet; and, from being one mass of confusion, as it was fifty years ago-and with very little business, comparatively speaking (for the Borough Court of Mr. Reddie eclipsed it fairly)—the Sheriff-Court of the present day is towering with business, conducted with regularity and despatch; and, generally speaking, with sound law and excellent sense, displaying, at the same time, a suavity

and dignity of manner most creditable to all connected with it; while the "Small Debt Court," as it is called, has superseded, or swallowed up the legions of foolscap that were formerly written or employed on the most trifling of cases, at an enormous expense to the losing, as well as the gaining party; and no canary bird, or black-bird either, or mongrel or whelp, can set decent parties by the ear, or consume valuable time to no purpose. Many have been the reforms of the law in our day, and many still, we think, are to take place. The world, we hope, is improving in all directions. But although the present story which we have furnished may to many seem trifling and ludicrous, there can be no doubt at all of the fact that this Canary bird, whether it originally belonged to Tom, Dick, or Harry, achieved by its demise, or the fame of its name before the Sheriff in Glasgow, a vast deal of good in the jurisprudence of Scotland; and, therefore, that is the reason why we have bestowed upon it this notice.