This is in no sense a law book. The general reader cares little for lawyers and their dry rules of law, or the prosaic forms of practice and procedure in our courts. Everybody, however, is interested in the drama of a great trial, where the property, reputation, liberty, or life of a human being is often at stake. This has been strikingly exemplified recently by the great interest taken in the trial of Madame Steinheil in France, accounts of which were published in all the leading newspapers of the world. The Tichborne case, the Beecher trial, the Parnell inquiry, the Dreyfus case, and countless others are still fresh in the memory as further illustrations of the in tense interest taken throughout the civilized world in arriving at the truth or falsity of any important legal controversy.