 there, of a quality so precious as to make a man wink.
    We had an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day - about excommunicating
a baker who had been objecting in a vestry to a paving-rate - and as the
evidence was just twice the length of Robinson Crusoe, according to a
calculation I made, it was rather late in the day before we finished. However,
we got him excommunicated for six weeks, and sentenced in no end of costs; and
then the baker's proctor, and the judge, and the advocates on both sides (who
were all nearly related), went out of town together, and Mr. Spenlow and I drove
away in the phaeton.
    The phaeton was a very handsome affair; the horse arched their necks and
lifted up their legs as if they knew they belonged to Doctors' Commons. There
was a good deal of competition in the Commons on all points of display, and it
turned out some very choice equipages then; though I always have considered, and
always shall consider, that in my time the great article of competition there
was starch: which I think was worn among the proctors to as great an extent as
it is in the nature of man to bear.
    We were very pleasant, going down, and Mr. Spenlow gave me some hints in
reference to my profession. He said it was the genteelest profession in the
world, and must on no account be confounded with the profession of a solicitor:
being quite another sort of thing, infinitely more exclusive, less mechanical,
and more profitable. We took things much more easily in the Commons than they
could be taken anywhere else, he observed, and that sets us, as a privileged
class, apart. He said it was impossible to conceal the disagreeable fact, that
we were chiefly employed by solicitors; but he gave me to understand that they
were an inferior race of men, universally looked down upon by all proctors of
any pretensions.
    I asked Mr. Spenlow what he considered the best sort of professional
business? He replied, that a good case of a disputed will, where there was a
neat little estate of thirty or forty thousand pounds, was, perhaps, the best of
all. In such a case, he said, not only were there very pretty pickings, in the
way of arguments at every stage of the proceedings, and mountains upon mountains
of evidence on interrogatory and counter-interrogatory (to say nothing of an
appeal lying, first to the Delegates, and then to the Lords); but, the costs
being pretty sure to come
