166 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Parliient House.
plead in any court in Scotland, and in all Scottish
appeals before the House of Lords-is a body,
of course, inseparably connected, as yet, with the
old Parliament House. From among that body
the judges of the supreme courts and sheriffs of
the various counties are selected. It is the most
distinguished corporate body in Scotland, and of
old, especially, was composed of the representatives
alike of the landed aristocracy, the rank
and intellect of Scotland ; and for more than three
centuries the dignity of the Scottish bench and bar
has been maintained by a succession of distinguished
men, illustrious, not only in their own
peculiar department of legal knowledge, but in
most branches of literature and science ; and it has
produced some men whose worksare read and whose
influence is felt wherever the language of Great
Britain is known.
The whole internal economy of the legal bodies,
and of the courts of law, is governed by the Acts
wildest imagery, have foreseen the Edinburgh and
the Scotland of to-day !
Till so lately as 1779 the Parliament House,
retained the divisions, furnishing, and-save the
royal portraits-other features, which it had borne
in the days when Scotland had a national legislature.
Since that time the associations of this hall-the
Westminster Hall of Edinburgh-are only such as
relate to men eminent in the College of Justice, for
learning or great legal lore, among whom we may
note Duncan Forbes, Lords Monboddo and Kames,
Hume, Erskine, and Mackenzie, and, indeed,
nearly all the men of note in past Scottish literature.
?? Our own generation has witnessed there Cockbum,
Brougham, Horner, Jeffrey, and Scott, sharing
in the grave offices of the court, or takinga part in the
broad humour and wit for which the members of ? the Faculty ? are so celebrated ; and still the visitor
to ,this learned and literary lounge cannot fail to be
gratified in a high degree, while watching the different
groups who gather in the Hall, and noting the
lines of thought or humour, and the infinite variety
of physiognomy for which the wigged and gowned
loiterers of the Law Courts are peculiarly famed.?
consequence of a difikrence having arisen between
the Facultyand the Lords of Session, banished the
whole of the former twelve miles from Edinburgh.
The subject in dispute was whether any appeal
lay from the Court of Session to the Parliament.
It is obvious that in this contest between the bench
and the bar, law and the practice of the court,.
independent of expediency, could alone be con--
sidered, and the Faculty remained banished until
the unlimited supremacy of the Court should be
acknowledged; but what would those sturdy advocates
of the seventeenth century have thought of
appeals to a Parliament sitting at Westminster ?
In 1702 the Faculty became again embroiled.
Upon the accession of Queen Anne a new Parliament
was not summoned, that which sat during
the reign of her predecessor being reassembled.
The Duke of Hamilton and seventy-nine members
protested against this as being illegal, and withdrew
from the House. The Faculty of Advocates passed
-
The Hall is now open from where the throne
stood to the great south window. Once it was
divided into two portions-the southern separated
from the rest by a screen, accommodated the Court
of Session ; the northern, comprising a subsection
used for the Sheriff Court, was chiefly a kind of
lobby, and was degraded by a set of little booths,.
occupied as taverns, booksellers? shops, and toy--
shops, like those in the Krames. Among others,
.Creech had a stall ; and such was once the conditioe
of Westminster Hall. Spottiswoode of that ilk,
who published a work on ?Forms of Process,?
in I 7 I 8, records that there were then ? two keepers
of the session-house, who had small salaries to de
the menial offices there, and that no small part of
their annual perquisites came from the kramrrs in
the outer hall.?
The great Hall is now used as a promenade and
waiting-room by the advocates and other practitioners
connected with the supreme courts, and
during the sitting of these presents a very animated
scene ; and there George IV. was received in kingly
state at a grand banquet, on his visit to the city
in 1822.
