 he is, by
telling you what Doctors' Commons is. It's a little out-of-the-way place, where
they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks
with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the
world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in
a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It's a place that has an ancient
monopoly in suits about people's wills and people's marriages, and disputes
among ships and boats.«
    »Nonsense, Steerforth!« I exclaimed. »You don't mean to say that there is
any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?«
    »I don't, indeed, my dear boy,« he returned; »but I mean to say that they
are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors'
Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them blundering through half the
nautical terms in Young's Dictionary, apropos of the Nancy having run down the
Sarah Jane, or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of
wind with an anchor and cable to the Nelson Indiaman in distress; and you shall
go there another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con.,
respecting a clergyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge
in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman's case, or contrariwise.
They are like actors: now a man's a judge, and now he is not a judge; now he's
one thing, now he's another; now he's something else, change and change about;
but it's always a very pleasant profitable little affair of private theatricals,
presented to an uncommonly select audience.«
    »But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?« said I, a little
puzzled. »Are they?«
    »No,« returned Steerforth, »the advocates are civilians - men who have taken
a doctor's degree at college - which is the first reason of my knowing anything
about it. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get very comfortable fees, and
altogether they make a mighty snug little party. On the whole, I would recommend
you to take to Doctors' Commons kindly, David. They plume themselves on their
gentility there, I can tell you, if that's any satisfaction.«
    I made allowance for Steerforth's
