Sergeant Hill, who was much celebrated as a lawyer, and eminently qualified to find out a case in point on any disputed question, was somewhat remarkable for absence of mind, the result of that earnestness with which he devoted himself to his professional duties.  On the very day when he was married, he had an intricate case in his mind, and forgot his engagement, until reminded of his waiting bride, and that the legal time of performing the ceremony had nearly elapsed.  Being once on circuit, and having occasion to refer to a law authority, he had recourse as usual to his bag; but, to the astonishment of the court, instead of a volume of Viner’s abridgment, he took out a specimen candlestick, the property of a Birmingham traveller, whose bag the learned sergeant had brought into court by mistake.

During the long vacation, the sergeant usually retired to his country seat at Rowell in Northamptonshire.  It happened, during one autumn, that some of the neighbouring sportsmen, among whom was the present Earl Spencer, being in pursuit of a fox, Reynard, who was hard pressed, took refuge in the court-yard of this venerable sage.  At this moment the sergeant was reading a case in point, which decided that in a trespass of this kind the owners of the ground had a right to inflict the punishment of death.  Mr. Hill accordingly gave orders for punishing the fox, as an original trespasser, which was done instantly.  The hunters now arrived with the hounds in full cry, and the foremost horseman, who anticipated the glory of possessing the brush, was the first to behold his victim stretched lifeless on the ground, pinioned to the earth by plebeian pitchforks.  The hunters were very anxious to discover the daring culprit who had presumed to deprive the field and the pack of their prey; when the venerable sergeant made his appearance, with his book in his hand, and offered to convince them that execution had taken place according to legal authority.  The sportsmen got outrageous, but the learned sergeant was not intimidated; he knew the force of his authorities, and gravely invited the attention of his auditory to a case from one of the old reporters, that would have puzzled a whole bar of modern practitioners to controvert.  The effect was ludicrous; the extraordinary appearance of the worthy sergeant, not in his bargown, but in what these adventurous mortals called a mere bedgown; the quaintness of his manner, the singularity of the occurrence, and the novelty of the incident, threw them completely out.

LIBRARIANS.

Budaeus, a very learned man, librarian to Francis the First of France, was one day engaged in deep study, when his servant came running to him in a great fright, to tell him that the house was on fire.  “Go,” said he, with perfect calmness, and hardly raising his eyes from his book, “and inform your mistress, ’tis her concern, you know I never interfere in domestic matters.”