audience and judgment chamber; and here all criminal cases of the rural commune of Vezzaja and Ghiralda were tried and decided by the young attorney who administered the law to some ten thousand persons in all matters, from a fifty-franc debt to murder, arson, and theft, and who had for his salary about as much as one gives one's groom, and not half what one gives one's coachman.

The country is divided into districts; each district has its own Pretore, who unites in his one ill-paid person the onerous duties of county-court, civil, and criminal judge. In England the first of these offices is deemed worth as many hundreds a year as it gets pounds here. That, notwithstanding such treatment, the Preture-ship is sometimes filled by very excellent and upright men, is a credit to the legal fraternity of Italy; it is no thanks to the administration. A man

has the peace, the purse, the virtue, the liberty, almost the life, of a whole community in his hands, and he is paid less than a groom or a gardener as a jewel in a toad's head

is a just man in this office.

The country Pretore can be harassed by the King's Proctor, and his verdicts can be protested against in the city courts, bus fr the main part, and certainly over all te you classes of his districts, he is used und his decrees are inviolable. Aride in w onerous a position could scaredy mee out perfect justice. I have known, as I say, admirable and excellent persons in this post, and I respect them deeply; but they are rare exceptions, naturally, and in the lonely country places the Pretore exercises a power that is practically irresistible, and that would be a perilous temptation to a Solon.

A crowd had got about the law court this

day, for the rumour had run like wildfire that the miller's son at Santa Rosalia had murdered the rural guard. His father and brothers, and Gigi Canterelli had come over to see if they could aid, or speak for, him, and they had brought poor old half-frantic Pippo with them; beside these there were the apothecary, and Bindo's friends, and also the Public Minister, as the little lawyer is called who prosecutes for the Municipality, and there were also the Chancellors and the Conciliators of both borough and village.

Messer Nellemane stayed at home; he was never seen in person to appear against any member of the commune, in great cases or small. He always said with a deprecating smile, that it did not become one who served them in the capacity he filled, to sway the balance of justice either way.

Nevertheless, he was very good friends

with the Pretore of Pomodoro and Carciofi ; a young advocate, fussy and bustling, and of as shrewd a nose for promotion as ever a dog of the south for truffles; a young advocate who hated Pomodoro and all belonging to it, and its musty court, and its simple population, and the scanty forty pounds a year it gave him, but who, nevertheless, took them all as stepping stones. In the future he, too, meant to be a states

man.

This day the young man, who was a little,. sallow, sharp-eyed creature, by no means imposing, even though he donned a black robe and black cap, just such as those that Portia wore, took a violent aversion at first sight to Carmelo as the accused, between the carabiniers, was marched in front of the Pretore's desk.

This day should have been the youth's

For the Pastorini youths had never had a stain or slur upon their name, and for many a generation the men at the mill had been law-abiding, God-fearing, and most dutiful sons of the soil.

'I did right!' said Carmelo doggedly, and his brothers all echoed, 'Yes, you did right. But alas!—alas !

Meanwhile Messer Nellemane stood by the bedside of Bindo, who had taken to his bed at once, and groaned, and shivered, and vowed all his bones were broken, and the complaisant apothecary rolled him up in wadding soaked in almond oil, and pretended he might die; Messer Nellemane, tenderly regretful and benevolently compassionate, bent over the sufferer and said in benignant

tones :

your

'My poor, poor fellow! This is all reward for a too zealous love of duty, and of