not in the service of such men as Stokes, Barnard, and Tilton, that he will find his permanent and most satisfactory fame. Singularly enough, in Mr. Porter we find a life long professional antagonist of Mr. Beach. It is gratifying to know that like two athletes who have long struggled doubtfully for the mastery, they have the profoundest respect for each other. A more complete contrast to Mr. Beach than Mr. Porter, in every point of view, could not be im agined. In person rather insignificant, and in manner apparently somewhat theatrical, he pos sesses none or few of the graces of the orator. But he possesses something which is more effec tive; namely, the indefinable magnetism which enables some rare men to fascinate their auditors. In our opinion, Mr. Porter comes nearer to being a genius than any other man at our bar. If we were called on to point out his most prominent and potent characteristic, we should say it is his dramatic power. His trial of a cause from the start is a consecutive drama. No question and no suggestion but has some connection in his mind with his final argument. We have watched his wondrous power in this respect until we have grown to regard it as something almost magical. It has sometimes seemed to us almost as if he swayed the cause at his own sovereign pleasure. In summing up, his glowing imagination, his ex quisite ingenuity, his magnificent generalizations, his manly pathos, his faculty of grouping and con trasting facts, his fertility of illustration, and his vivid and dramatic rhetoric seize upon the listenerj and carry him out of himself and make him the property of the orator. Mr. Beach fills us with admiration of the advocate, Mr. Porter makes us in love with his cause; Mr. Beach lifts us up, Mr. Porter carries us away; when we listen to the one we are afraid we shall yield without knowing it. A great actress said that when she played Juliet to Garrick's Romeo, she felt that she could not deny him access to the balcony; when she played Juliet to Barry's Romeo, she felt that she must inevitably descend to him. This expresses the difference between these two orators. The one would raise a mortal to the skies; the other would draw an angel down. Erskine or Choate may have surpassed this advocacy, but we doubt it. Before a jury Mr. Porter is peerless. In the higher plane of professional labor of which we have spoken, he is a shining and original, but not
an unrivalled debater. When, however, the ques tion is one of mixed law and fact, as in the Parrish will case, it would be difficult to conceive anything more admirable than his presentations. As we have not hesitated to speak of Mr. Beach's defi ciencies as an advocate, so we shall allude to what seems to us Mr. Porter's main defect. He always strikes us, on reflection, as an actor. He is just as effective in a bad case as in a good one. The cause lends him no aid; he makes the cause. At the moment we yield, just as the jury does. If he has the last word, the day is his. But we sus pect that if he is to be answered by a strong man. his wondrous spell might fade. We now come to Mr. Evarts, who has a more extended reputation than either of his brethren. With a world-wide celebrity as a lawyer and a statesman, he stands as the representative man of our profession. But Mr. Evarts is not a shining orator, and consequently cannot be compared with Mr. Beach or Mr. Porter as an advocate. In sev eral essentials, however, we think he surpasses both of them. In humor, in adroitness, in judg ment, in patience, in self-mastery, and in a knowl edge of law in its highest and broadest sense, he is in our opinion facile princefs. As we are not a juryman, we confess that after quaking at the thunders of Beach and growing feverish over the drama of Porter, it is refreshing to listen to the calm, clear logic of a man like Evarts. If one considers a case under Beach's presentation, it is like looking at an object through a superior magnifying-glass; when Porter presents it, you gaze through a variously stained glass window of many panes; when Evarts presents it, you see it through a broad, clear pane of French plate. We had feared, however, that Mr. Evarts would not appear to his best advantage in this trial. We had supposed that his proper and exclusive arena was where grave constitutional questions are dis cussed, — as, for instance, on the impeachment trial of President Johnson. But his conduct of this case has been a surprise to us, as we dare say it has been to every one else. It seems to us that it has been faultless. In every point of view — as an examiner and cross-examiner, in the discussion of points of evidence and in the summing up — he has exhibited .most varied and admirable talents of a lawyer. His cross-examination of Theodore Tilton, in our judgment, was an unequalled master piece; and his final argument, while it must yield
