And
even in that case the pleasure is not unalloyed. You have, indeed,
the gratification of seeing the man whom all the world has been
talking about for the last nine days, face to face; and of being seen
in a position which causes you to be acknowledged as a man of mark;
but the intolerable stenches of the Court and its horrid heat come
up to you there, no doubt, as powerfully as they fall on those below.
And then the tedium of a prolonged trial, in which the points of
interest are apt to be few and far between, grows upon you till you
begin to feel that though the Prime Minister who is out should murder
the Prime Minister who is in, and all the members of the two Cabinets
were to be called in evidence, you would not attend the trial, though
the seat of honour next to the judge were accorded to you. Those
be-wigged ones, who are the performers, are so insufferably long in
their parts, so arrogant in their bearing,--so it strikes you, though
doubtless the fashion of working has been found to be efficient
for the purposes they have in hand,--and so uninteresting in their
repetition, that you first admire, and then question, and at last
execrate the imperturbable patience of the judge, who might, as you
think, force the thing through in a quarter of the time without any
injury to justice.
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