Justice, Law and Liberty

Abstract

In what is probably the only novel where the law plays the role of villain, in Bleak House, the story opens with a description of fog:

Fog everywhere … Fog up the river … fog down the river … fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heaths. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out in the yards … fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe … And at the very heart of the fog sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.