rows of seats. The court is lighted from a cupola in the roof. The general effect of the courts is admirable. The proportions are good, although much smaller than the ordinary court rooms in the United States, and the fittings are all of solid oak, frequently carved and ornamented very elaborately. The acoustic properties are good, but the great distance which some of the counsel are from the jury box, inakes it difficult for them to hear. In England it is not thought necessary for counsel to be so near the jury that they can touch them with their hands, or wink at them as they make telling points.

The western portion of the building takes up two thirds of the whole space. The great quadrangle round which the eastern portion stands, measures about 300 feet in length by about 100 feet in breadth: In this portion of the building, which begins on the south side of the Strand, and starting from the clock tower which forms so conspicuous a feature in the building, runs up the whole length of Bell Yard and some distance along Carey Street on the north, are grouped on four floors some of the most important offices in connection with the courts. Facing Bell Yard we find the whole of the top floor occupied by the chancery taxing masters.

At the south end of the same portion of the building are placed the offices of the Masters of the Queen's Bench Division on the court floor and the floor next above it, and the central office is placed on the ground floor.

At the north, on the court floor and the floor next above are the offices of the chancery registrars, and on the ground floor those of the chancery paymaster and the branch office of the Bank of England.

At the north side of the great quadrangle and on its western side, and also on the western side of the Central Hall on the two uppermost floors, are the offices of the chief clerk of the judges of the chancery divisions. At the north end of the great quadrangle is the bar room (not tap room), on which the late Mr. Street, the renowned architect, expended ornamentation with a profusion not to be found elsewhere in a building by no means deficient in ornament. Above the bar room are the lunacy rooms.

The original project for the building comprised more than nine hundred apartments, including twenty-two court rooms, but parliament modified that scheme, and the estimate was reduced and the amount of room restricted.

Great difficulty was found in providing for all of the officers of the probate, divorce and admiralty division, and for several others; and many rooms originally designed for waiting and consultation rooms have, we are informed, been taken possession of in order to accommodate the demands of the public.

COURT ROOMS AND ACCOMMODATIONS FOR THE BAR.-The first feeling that one experiences in going into the court rooms, is one of surprise at their modest proportions, and this is not materially diminished when one passes into the three larger ones, two of which are at the south and the third at the north end of the Central Hall. It was at first intended that there should be four such larger court, but the original plans in this respect have been modified, and what would have been the fourth one has principally been converted into a broad vaulted chamber, which is no doubt intended to give a means of communicating with some additional buildings: These, our informant said, it may surprise some to hear, will be built at the northwest corner of the present buildings, and plans for them have, indeed, already long ago been prepared.

The whole of the present nineteen courts are on the same floor, and are built, so to speak, in pairs.

Facing the judge's seat in each court, is the gallery for the public, and in the smaller courts, there is certainly not room for more than forty persons in these galleries. This is much to be regretted, as there are cases in which we cannot but think that it is a matter of the highest importance that there should be room for at least two or three times that number. However this may be, the design of all courts is to accommodate the parties who have business to transact, and not the public in general. On a line with the galleries for the public are the galleries for jurors, in one court to the right of the judge's seat, and in another to the left.

The judges' seats are somewhat peculiar, and as we should think, likely to prove uncomfortable; they resemble such as

are found in college chapels for heads of houses, but are much

narrower.

On a line with the seats for the judges in the smaller courts will be found on either side of them four or five seats petitioned off. These again, though they have no canopy over them as the judges' seats have, have a quasi ecclesiastical look that seems much out of place. Immediately in front of the bench, are the seats for the officers of the courts.

In the common law courts, the tables for solicitors are placed so that they face the judge, but in the chancery, the solicitors appear to sit with their backs to the bench and turn around in order to address the court.

The bar have but little reason to complain of the amount of space allotted to them, as the whole body of the courts seems to be absolutely given up to them. By the relegation of the public and the jurors to galleries, counsel are able to pass in and out of all the courts with the greatest freedom.

The short-hand reporters and the reporters of the daily papers have not been forgotten. Their seats are at the sides of the courts, between those of the Masters and the Queen's Counsel, but at right angles to them. They are, therefore, exceedingly well placed for hearing. The fittings of the interior of the courts are all oak, presenting a very solid and handsome appearance, the oak wainscoting going all around them to the height of some ten feet.

VENTILATING AND LIGHTING.-Great attention has been paid to the ventilation and lighting of the courts, and the arrangements appear to be excellent. The royal courts of Cook County may well pattern after them.

We counted sixteen small courts all arranged alike except that those on the east side are wider than those on the west by some two feet. The three larger ones would appear about half as large again. There are book cases in all of them, in which many of the later acts of Parliament and recent decisions of the courts of last resort are kept for the use of the court and bar.

CONSULTATION ROOMS.-Outside the courts but on the same floor, there are some ten consultation rooms, and robing rooms

for the bar are found at the north and south ends of the buildings. Those at the north are on the floor on which counsel enter, but owing to the descent from Carey Street to the Strand, those on the south are on the first floor.

Just at the entrance on the south or Strand, are two good sized arbitration rooms; they are on a level with the ground, and to an outsider seem to be dark and cold.

HEATING APPARATUS.-Underneath the Central Hall are six large boilers and a steam engine, which are used in warming the building by means of hot water pipes, whose ramifications extend throughout the passages, and as regards the engine, in supplying power for lighting by etectricity the entire building.

While the corridors are warmed by means of hot water pipes, the rooms are all provided with open fire places, and the consumption of coal must necessarily be enormous.

It will scarcely be credited that the space originally provided by the architect, was not sufficient for a fortnight's consumption. "Fresh cellerage" as the Englishmen say, or as we say, "additional cellerage," had to be provided. In the west end of the building are "lifts" [elevators], for raising coal to the several floors.

The sanitary arrangements are ample, and in the roof are large tanks of water for the service of the building, and to supply the numerous hydrants set in every corridor for the protection of the building from fire.

Among the minor defects noticeable in this large and admirable building, may be noted that much of the stone with which the staircases are constructed and the passages paved, is already wearing out.

It must, like most of the stone used in the erection of our Chicago Court House, have been originally soft and unfit for

use.

There is another similarity to our Court House, and that is, th. t many of the stairways, staircases, corridors and passages are exceedingly dark, and have to be constantly lighted, policed and protected in order to avoid danger, to those who are not prepared for steps, descents and pitfalls.

This structure is among the grandest and most complete of

its kind ever devised, and surpasses in its design and details anything before attempted in ancient or modern times. The Royal Assize Courts of Manchester just completed, is modeled after the Royal Courts of Justice, and contains many conveniences that they do not.

St. George's Hall in Liverpool, we regard as one of the finest structures of the kind in the world, and yet it did not cost as much to erect as the Cook County Court House, in the City of Chicago. The science of court house architecture appears to be yet in its infancy in this country, and until it bécomes understood that these buildings are to be designed to transact the public business and not to furnish lounging places for the idle and those seeking to be amused, we can hope for but little improvement in their internal arrangements. Most of our court rooms are too large, and in most of them there are not accommodations for ladies, or for witnesses or jurors, but all are permitted to huddle together promiscuously and vitiate the air with their presence, without any adequate means of ventilating the rooms, to the death and destruction of the judges, the attorneys and officers of the court. The acoustic properties of many of our court rooms, are as bad as anything can possibly be. This could be remedied by placing over the judge's seat a canopy to hold the sound, such as is provided in every court room in Europe, and not making the rooms so high as they are now.

The Central Criminal Court rooms at the Old Bailey, where all of the important criminal cases are now tried, are not much larger than the small court rooms recently erected in the rotunda of our court house, but they have several rooms attached for witnesses, for jurors, for ladies, with lavatories and other conveniences, which render them very complete in all of their appointments.

There is not a court room in Europe that is as large as the common law court rooms on the 2d and 3d story of our court house in Chicago occupied by Judges Gary and ourselves. Indeed these court rooms are almost as large as the House of Commons.

In the Royal Courts of Justice, the witnesses and their friends