OUR JUDGES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3536, 7 November 1882, Page 3

OUR JUDGES.

The London Law Times contradicts tho statement of a newspaper writer that ' many of our Judges jump off the bench, mount a hack at Westminster Hall, and subsequently play lawn tennis until it is time to dress for dinner.' The Times says : —' Judges on their appointment, however young in years they {may be, become old in their habits. Mr Justice Chitty, on being made a Judge, ostentatiously abandoned lawn tennis. Mr Justice North abandoned his morning meerschaum down Oxford-street. They necessarily shrink into themselves. They hold little intercourse with tho Bar, and notwithstanding their youth the habits of ago aro forced upon them.' ' We must confess, says the Albany Law Journal, ' we should hardly like to see our Judges skipping around at lawn tennis, looking cross and muttering morosely when they made ineffectual passes at the empty air. Still less Bhould we like to see one puffing a pipe on the street like a 'dummy ' engine. But there are dignified out-door amusements, combining health and grace, and affording opportunity for the reflective and calculating faculties. Wo have already discoursed on horseback riding. Light vaaf dawn upon a judge on horseback, as it did upon St. Paul. If an English judge should indulge in this, however, he would yearn to follow the hounds, and would bob up and down in his saddle after the ungraceful orthodox English fashion, as if converted into a human churn. Chancellor Kent v/as very fond of driving with a single hortfe and ' buggy' and his wife Betsy.

Chief Justice Marshall was an adept at quoits. We have seen one of our most eminent judges making a respectable figure at croquet. Fishing is a good amusement for judges. Daniel Webster rehearsed his last Bunker Hill oration to himself while fishing, and exclaiming, 'Venerable men, you have come clown to us from a former generation,' jerked a large perch into a tree. Our judges, like the English, ' hold little intercourse witli the Bar,' but it is from necessity, not from choice. If counsel would shorten the official interviews in their speeches and briefs, there would be more time for social intercourse between the Bar and Bench. We cannot say that we have noticed any disposition or tendency on the part of our judges to ' shrink' socially, intellectually, or physically."