the audience with laughter; every unnecessary word the hampered witness used was reprimanded as "beyond the question" he was continually adjured to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth;" his expressions were captiously objected to; he was tantalized with repetitions and crossquestioning about the veriest trifles; and, finally, his tormentor, with a face of the utmost gravity, pretended to discover in the witness a levity of bearing, and equivocal replies, which called for a lecture on "the responsibility of an oath;" this was delivered with a pedantic solemnity, in words, accent, and gesture, so like one of his own addresses from the bench, that judge, jury, and spectators, burst forth into irresistible peals of laughter; and the subject of this clear retaliation lost all self-possession, grew red and pale by turns, fumed and at last protested, until his young adversary wound up the farce, by a threat to commit him for contempt of court.

The relation of law to poetry is proverbially antagonistic; and the attempt to bind imagination to technicalities has usually proved a hopeless experiment; and yet it is curious to note how many of the brotherhood of song were originally destined for this profession, and how similar their confessions are, of a struggle, a compromise, and, finally, an abandonment of jurisprudence for the sake of the muses. Övid, Petrarch, Tasso, Milton, Cowper, Ariosto, and others, are examples; Scott was faithful, awhile, to a branch of the law; Blackstone's only known poem is a " Farewell to the Muse;" Marshall and Story wooed the nine in their youth; Talfourd deemed it requisite to declare, in the preface to Ion, that he "left no duty for this idle trade," and Procter only weaves a song in the intervals of his stern task as a Commissioner of Lunacy. With philosophy the law is more congenial-Bacon and Mackintosh are illustrious examples of their united pursuit. Sir Thomas More wrote verses on the wall of his prison with a coal, and Addison compliments Somers on his poetry in his dedication of the Campaign. Lord Mansfield's name appears in history, a successful competitor for the Oxford prize poem. Lyndhurst and

Denham were given to rhyme, and Sir William Jones is popularly known by his nervous lines on "What constitutes a

State." Lord Jeffrey is one of the most characteristic modern examples of the union of legal and literary success-his taste of the latter kind having, with the aid of a felicitous style, made him the most famous reviewer of his day, while the mental traits of the advocate unfitted him to appreciate the ideal as they rendered him expert and brilliant in the discussion of rhetoric, facts, and philosophy.

Its connection with the most adventurous and tragic realities of life, often brings law into the sphere of the dramatic and imaginative. Popular fiction has found in its annals all the material for profound human interest and artistic effect. Scott's most pathetic tale, the Heart of Mid Lothian, 66 • Ten Thousand a Year," and "Bleak House," are memorable examples. The trials of Russell, Strafford, Vane, and other noble prisoners charged with high treason, have furnished both plot and incidents for popular novelists. Thackeray's best work-artistically speaking-Henry Esmond, is largely indebted to the state trials of Queen Anne's time for its material. Have you ever seen Portia enacted by a woman of genius? Then has the romance of law been impersonated forever to your mind. That demoniac plaintiff, so memorably represented by Kean, with his haunting expression and voice-the noble wife of Bassanio, uttering, in tones of musical entreaty, her immortal plea for mercy, and, when it failed to touch the Jew's heart of adamant, cleaving his hope of vengeance by a subtle evasion-the joy of Antonio, the fiat of the judge, the merry reunion and gay bridal talk at Belmont that night, whose moonlit gladness lives forever in the page of Shakespeare!-Queen Katherine's defense, and Othello's argument, before their judges, equally show how effective is a tribunal under the hand of the poet of nature; and every barrister, of long experience, can relate episodes in his career, 66 stranger than fiction."

Although one would naturally turn to the state trials, Causes Célèbres, Memoirs of Vidocq, and similar works, for the dramatic materials developed by process of law, yet, to the initiated, there is an equal fund of interest in those researches of the profession which appear to deal only with technicalities. How many effective situa

tions have playwrights, and such observers of human nature as Hogarth, drawn from, or grouped around, the formal act of making or reading a will? There is positive romance in the task of the conveyancer, when he traces the title of an estate far back through the ramifications of family history, often bringing to light the most curious historical facts, and remarkable personal incidents. Questions of property, of heirship, of fraud, and of divorce, involve manifold relative facts that only require the sequence and arrangement of literary art to make them dramas. Perhaps no field of character has yielded types as memorable to the writers of modern fiction as that of the law. Think of Balzac's diagnoses of the French statutes regulating burial and marriage settlements, in his psychological tales, of Quilp, Nickleby, and Swiveller, of Grassin and Peyton. Libel cases vie with police reports in unveiling the tragedy and comedy of life. That a trial involves scope for the broadest humor, or the most facetious invention, is evident from the moot-court having become a permanent form of public entertainment in London.

No profession affords better opportunities for the study of human nature; indeed, an acute insight of motives is a prerequisite of success; but unfortunately, it is the dark side of character, the selfish instincts, that are most frequently displayed in litigation; and hence the exclusive recognition of these which many a practiced lawyer manifests. In its ideal phase among the noblest, in its possible actuality among the lowest, of human pursuits, we can scarcely wonder that popular sentiment and literature exhibit such apparently irreconcilable estimates of its value and tendencies. English lawyers, of the first class, are scholars and gentlemen. Classical knowledge and familiarity with standard modern literature are indispensable to their equipment, and such attainments are usually conducive to a humane and refined character. In the programme suggested by eminent lawyers, for a general training for the bar, there is, however, an amusing diversity of opinion as to the best literary culture; one writer recommends the Bible, another Shakespeare, one English history, and another Joe Miller, as the

best resource for apt quotation and discipline in the art of efficient rhetoric. Coke was remarkable for his citations from Virgil. But there is no doubt that general knowledge is an essential advantage to the lawyer, if he understand the rare art of using it with tact. The mere fact, that the highest political distinction and official duty are open to the lawyer, ought to incline him to liberal studies and comprehensive acquaintance with literature, science, and philosophy.

The trial of Aaron Burr elicited the most characteristic eloquence of Clay and Wirt; that of Knapp, the tragic force of statement, in which Webster excelled. Emmet's address to his judges has become a charter to his countrymen. Patrick Henry's remarkable powers of argument and appeal, which fanned the embers of revolutionary zeal into a flame, originally exhibited themselves in a Virginia courthouse. And, if eloquence has been justly described as existing "in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion," we can easily imagine why the legal profession affords it such frequent and extensive scope.

The intellectual process by which the advocate seeks his ends, is observable in the best conversation and writing. Almost all good talkers are essentially pleaders; they espouse, defend, illustrate, or maintain a question. Many of Lord Jeffrey's reviews are little else but special pleadings, and Macaulay's most brilliant articles are digests executed with taste and eloquence; the subject is first thoroughly explored, then its presentation systematized, and, afterwards, stated, argued, and summed up after the manner of a charge or plea, with the addition of rhetorical graces inadmissible in a legal case. There is nothing, therefore, in the peculiar exercise of the faculties which renders law a profession apt to pervert second-rate minds; the evil lies in the predetermined side, the logic, a forethought, if we may so say, the interested choice and dogmatical assumption of a certain view undertaken "for a consideration." When from the advocate we pass to the bench, and from the feed barrister to the philosophical jurist, a new and majestic vista opens to the view. As in literature, two great divisions mark the legal character-there is the narrow but thoroughly informed practitioner,

and the comprehensive judicial mind, the first only distinguished within a limited bound of immediate utility and respectable adherence to precedent, and the other a pioneer in the realm of truth-a brave and original minister of the altar of justice. Lord Brougham, in his Sketches of English Statesmen, has admirably indicated these two classes. To the former he says, "The precise dictates of English statutes, and the dictates of English judges and English text-writers, are the standard of justice. They are extremely suspicious of any enlarged or general views upon so serious a subject as law." The second and higher order of lawyers are well described in his portrait of Lord Grant, of whose charges he remarks: "Forth came a strain of clear, unbroken fluency, disposing, in the most luminous order, all the facts, and all the arguments in the cause; reducing into clear and simple arrangement the most entangled masses of broken, conflicting statement; settling one doubt by a parenthetical remark-passing over another only more decisive that it was condensed; and giving out the whole impression of the case upon the judge's mind, the material view, with argument enough to show why he so thought, and to prove him right, and without so much reasoning as to make you forget that it was a judgment you were hearing and not a speech." Do we not often find, in literature and in life, counterparts of this picture of a judicial mind? Add to it discovery, and we have the legal philosopher; intrepid love of right, and we recognize the legal reformer. To this noble category belong such lawyers as Mansfield and Marshall, Romilly, Erskine, and Webster. Genius for the bar is as varied, in its character, as that for poetry or art. In one man the gift is acuteness, in another felicity of language; here extraordinary perspicuity of statement, there singular ingenuity of argument. It is rhetoric, manner, force of purpose, a glamour that subdues, or a charm that wins; so that no precise rules, irrespective of individual endowments, can be laid down to secure

forensic triumph. Doubtless, however, the union of a sympathetic temperament and an attractive manner with logical power and native eloquence, form the ideal equipment of the pleader. Erskine seems to have combined these qualities in perfection, and to have

woven a spell both for soul and sense. He magnetized, physically and intellectually, his audience. "Juries," says his biographer, "declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him when he had riveted, and, as it were, fascinated them, by his first glance;

and it used to be a common remark of men, who observed his motions, that they resembled those of a blood-horse."

One

The tendency to subterfuge in the less highly endowed, is, however, but an incidental liability; in general, law-practice seems to harden and make skeptical the mind absorbed in its details. can almost invariably detect the keen look of distrust or the smile of incredulity in the physiognomy of the barrister. Everything like sentiment, disinterestedness, and frank demonstration is apt to be regarded without faith or sympathy. Most lawyers confess that they place no reliance on the statements of their clients. If you introduce a spiritual hypothesis or a practical view of any topic, it is treated by this class of men with ill-concealed scorn. The habit of their minds is logical; they usually ignore and repudiate those instincts which experience seldom reveals to them, and observation of life in its coarser phases leads them to doubt and contemn. But, while thus less open to the gentler and more sacred sympathies, they often possess the distinction of manliness, of courage, and generosity. The very process which so exclusively develops the understanding, and makes their ideal of intellectual greatness to consist in aptitude, subtlety, and reasoning power, tends to give a certain vigor and alertness to the thinking faculty, and to emancipate it from morbid influences. When the question at issue is purely utilitarian, and the interest discussed one of outward and practical relations, this legal training comes into eminent efficiency; in a word, it is applicable to affairs, but not to sentiment, to fact, but not to abstract truth. Yet, the advocate, like the poet, is occasionally born, not made, notwithstanding the maxim, orator fit. A mind fertile in expedients, warmed by a temperament which instinctively seizes upon, and, we had almost said, incarnates, a cause, is a phenomenon that sometimes renders law an inspiration instead of a dogma. Such a pleader yet lives in one of the eastern states. Not only the grasp of his thought, but his elo

cution announce, that he has literally thrown himself into the case. It would be more strictly correct, to say that he has absorbed it. The gesture, the eye, the tone of his voice, the quiver of the muscle, nay, each lock of his long steelgray hair, that he tosses back from his dripping brow, in the excitement of his fluent harangue, seems alive and overflowing with the rationale and the sentiment of the cause; his enthusiasm is real, however it may have originated; and, by identifying himself with his client, he espouses the argument as if it were vital to his own interest. Such instances, however, are exceptional; few are the lawyers thus constituted. Accepting their cases objectively, and maintaining them by formula, the usual effect is that which Burke describes in his character of Greville: "He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences-a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion."

Why is the poet's function the noblest? Because it is inspired, not arbitrarily decreed by the will. Mental activity is grand and beautiful in proportion as it is disinterested; and it is on account of the almost inevitable forcing, by circumstances, of a lawyer's mind from the line of honest conviction into that of determined casuistry, that the moral objection to the pursuit is so often urged. "The indiscriminate defense of right and wrong," says Junius, "contracts the understanding while it corrupts the heart." Some men, in conversation, affect us as unreal. We attach no vital interest to what they say, because the mind appears to act wholly apart-the fusion of sense and feeling, which we call soul, is wanting; there is no conviction, no personal sentiment, no unselfish love of truth in what they say; and yet it may be intelligent, erudite, and void of positive falsity-yet it is mechanical, the intellect is used not inspired, willed to act, not moved thereto : this is the characteristic of legal training, unmodified by the higher sentiments; it makes intellectual machines, logical grist-mills, talkers by rote; the rational powers, from long slavery to temporary and interested aims, seem to have lost mag

nanimity; their spontaneous, genuine, and earnest action has yielded to a conventional and predetermined habit.

Whoever, in the freshness of youthful emotions, has been present at the tribunal of a free country, where the character of the judge, the integrity of the jury, and the learning and eloquence of the advocates have equaled the moral exigencies and the ideal dignity of the scene and when the case has possessed a high tragic or social interest, can never lose the impression thus derived of the majesty of the law. No public scene of human life can surpass it to the apprehension of a thoughtful spectator. He seems to behold the principle of justice as it exists in the very elements of humanity, and to stand on the primeval foundation of civil society; the searching struggle for truth, the conscientious application of law to evidence, the stern recital of the prosecutor, the appeal of the defense, the constant test of inquiry, of reference to statutes and precedents, the luminous arrangement of conflicting facts by the judge, his impartial deductions and clear final statement, the interval of suspense and the solemn verdict, combine to present a calm, reflective, almost sublime exercise of the intellect and moral sentiments, in order to conform authority to their highest dictates, which elevates and widens the function and the glory of human life and duty. Compare, with such a picture, the base mockery of justice exhibited by the inquisition of old, and an Austrian court-martial of our own day, the arbitrary fiat of an eastern official, and the murderous ordeal of the provisional bodies that ruled during the first French revolution, and it is easy to appreciate the identity of justlyadministered law with civilization and freedom. "Justice," says Webster, "is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Wherever her temple stands, and as long as it is duly honored, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness, and the improvement and progress of our race. And whoever labors on this edifice, with usefulness and distinction, whoever clears its foundations, strengthens its pillars, adorns its entablatures, or contributes to raise its august dome still higher in the skies, connects himself, in name, and fame, and character, with that which is, and must be, as durable as the frame of human society."