That the first great need of a man is— to feed ....
   after the fashion of beasts!
That man's business is, chiefly, to live; the rest being
   God's, who contrives
(So fancied Duke Christian, at least) uses enough
   for men's lives.
But, since even the beasts must work, Duke Christian
   thought (I suspect)
If Apostles are made to work also, Apostles must
   not object.

AN UNEXAMINED WITNESS IN THE
GREAT MARRIAGE CASE.

I AM a subject of that mysterious satrap, that
gilded proconsul, who sits enthroned in his
Castle of Indolence— Dublin Castle— and gives
laws to Hibernia. I look down over the quay
wall into the muddy Dublin Tiber— Flavus Tiberis
— and am overshadowed by the ponderous
structure where defunct John Doe and his brother
Richard used to fight their battles— the
Palace of Justice. I am at this moment hopelessly
absorbed and engulphed in the Great
Marriage Case. The primeval outside-car of
the country has whirled its fare down to the
Irish Palace of Justice, has shot him off with an
elastic spring, has flung him into one of the
noisy streams pouring in at its entrances.
Fast as it has travelled down with its own
special din and clatter, another more overpowering
din and clatter has kept pace with it
— the hurly-burly of the Great Marriage Case.
At the street corner, on the bridge, at the crossing,
it stares at me from obtrusive placards. The
cries of newsboys— perfect newspaper imps—
strident, ear-piercing, vociferated with importunity
from infantine throats, proclaim that they alone
are licensed channels for information respecting
the Great Marriage Case. They seem to have been
born and multiplied with an appalling fecundity,
expressly for the Great Marriage Case. Storming
parties contend with hostility, at entrances to
dingy tabernacles where daily prints are incubated,
for third editions with latest particulars
of the Great Marriage Case. Reuter's telegrams
are now only of a feeble interest. Men, and
women especially, all seem to eat, drink, inhale,
the Great Marriage Case. It has been on, for
days, will be on for days, and I am going with
the rest of the inebriated, to the Irish Palace of
Justice.

I have fought my way in. From a sort of
barristerial amphitheatre, a perfect horsehair
prairie and thick tangled undergrowth of white
furs, I look out, still suffering from intensest
lateral pressure. The barristerial stalks with
the whitish pods nodding, fluctuating, bending,
are matted together in a rank luxuriance.
General lay humanity has all the rest of the place to
itself, having burst in, in a flood. Bench, galleries,
seats, partitions, the popular constituents
of a court, are here overlaid with a thick rind
of humanity. The galleries do not contain, but
are themselves contained, in humanity. There
are whole slopes of living vegetation slanting
with a gentle descent to that pit or well, where
the fighting counsel sit, and do their battle.
Loose humanity has actually lifted itself on to
shelves— to impossible sharp edges, where for
sitting, there is need of angelic organisation and
miraculous adhesion; humanity is seen clinging
to gas-pipes and rails, mid air; nay, is actually
seen outside, high near the roof, peering down
through the windows.

Rhadamanthus-in-Chief sits in his green
judicial pavilion, partially in shadow, noting
diligently. A broad well-cut face, with swart
craggy eyebrows, well marked over with broad
tracks of honest sense and sure judgment.
Humanity has swarmed over upon him too, in a
perfect gush of noble persons. Little green
curtains are lifted cautiously now and again, and
betray bonnets and ribbons lurking in ambuscade.
The bolder fair sit in a long line, in a
sort of sacred preserve, and ply their scent-
bottles. I am given to understand later, that
the ladies are a source of terrible embarrassment
to the constituted authorities; intimidation and
even violence being brought to bear on the
bewildered officials. A great question affecting
the sex is at stake, and it would seem to be their
duty to rally round their sister.

Down in the legal well, I can make out a
row of mercurial horse-hair pods, which I take
to be a row of lively piano dampers, moving up
and down spasmodically, but which are indeed
the fighting captains in this great case. They
enjoy a sort of retired privacy, within a sort of
holy pale known as the inner bar. Eyes follow
the motions of these consecrated chiefs and
glorified elders. This more protracted pod
and brisker damper, which is eternally springing
up and down boisterously, is well known:
Brightside, the tempestuous, the thunderer,
feared in parliaments— who comes trampling
down upon his war-horse into the thick of
debate. He is for Madame Innocence. With
him, the minor serjeant, a little captain, hot,
fierce, and sudden of quarrel, overcharged
with soda, wired down, but exploding his corks
every second. We admire the " pluck" of the
shorter serjeant, and see his horsehair casque
always tossing in the thick of the fight. Crossing
to the other camp, there is to be seen, in
the pay of wicked Major Mephistopheles, some
terrible captains whom we regard sourly; for
they are, as it were, legal Roundheads, old
Ironsides and Covenanters; the others, with whom
are our sympathies, are Cavaliers, gay, chivalrous,
and romantic. See, the veteran Whitewhisker,
first to the right; we dread him specially—
an awful ancient, pitiless, and reputed
to be a grand inquisitor in the matter of
handling witnesses.

It is a duello between Madame Innocence
and Major Mephistopheles. Madame
Innocence has told her story first. Days ago, in
the very first act of the piece, there had arisen
a hum, a rustle, a stretching of necks, as a
small figure was seen ascending into the awful
pillory or pulpit reserved for witnesses. Straw-
coloured hair, almost golden, and folded back
after that seductive French fashion— soft and
tender eyes— a small round face, almost " baby-ish"