whose names are familiar to the readers of the Court Journal and Morning Post.  Several noblemen, amateurs of the subject, arrived on horseback.  By eight o’clock the four sides of Red Lion-square were, if we may be allowed the metaphor, a mass of living heads.  We owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Davis, the respected and conscientious officer for the Sheriff of Middlesex; that gentleman, in the kindest spirit of hospitality, allowing us six inches of his door-step when the crowd was at its greatest pressure.  Several inmates of Mr. Davis’s delightful mansion had a charming view of the scene from the top windows, where we observed bars of the most picturesque and moyen age description.  At ten minutes to nine, Mr. Charles Phillips, counsel for the plaintiff, arrived in Lamb’s Conduit-passage, and was loudly cheered.  On the appearance of Mr. Adolphus, counsel for the defendant, a few miscreants in human shape essayed groans and hisses; they were, however, speedily put down by the New Police.

We entered the court at nine o’clock.  The galleries were crowded with rank, beauty, and fashion.  Conflicting odours of lavender, musk, and Eau de Cologne emanated from ladies on the bench, most of whom were furnished with opera-glasses, sandwich-boxes, and species of flasks, vulgarly known as pocket-pistols.  In all our experience we never recollect such a thrill as that shot through the court, when the crier of the same called out—­

BONBON v.  PUNCH!

Mr. SMITH (a young yet rising barrister with green spectacles) with delicate primness opened the case.  A considerable pause, when—­

Mr. CHARLES PHILLIPS, having successfully struggled with his feelings, rose to address the court for the plaintiff.  The learned gentleman said it had been his hard condition as a barrister to see a great deal of human wickedness; but the case which, most reluctantly, he approached that day, made him utterly despair of the heart of man.  He felt ashamed of his two legs, knowing that the defendant in this case was a biped.  He had a horror of the mysterious iniquities of human nature—­seeing that the defendant was a man, a housekeeper, and, what in this case trebled his infamy, a husband and a father.  Gracious Heaven! when he reflected—­but no; he would confine himself to a simple statement of facts.  That simplicity would tell with a double-knock on the hearts of a susceptible jury.  The afflicted, the agonised plaintiff was a public man.  He was, until lately, the happy possessor of a spotless wife and an inimitable spring-van.  It was was a union assented to by reason, smiled on by prudence.  Mr. Bonbon was the envied owner of a perambulating exhibition:  he counted among his riches a Spotted Boy, a New Zealand Cannibal, and a Madagascar Cow.  The crowning rose was, however, to be gathered, and he plucked, and (as he fondly thought) made his own for ever, the Swiss Giantess!  Mr. Bonbon had wealth in his van—­the lady had wealth in herself; hence it was, in every respect, what the world would denominate an equal match.