the working daies most of them apply them selves to the study of law, and on the holy daies to the study of Holy Scripture and, out of the time of divine service, to the read ing of Chronicles. For there, indeed, are virtues studied and the vices exiled. So that, for the endowment of virtue and the abandonment of vice, knights and barons, with other states and noblemen of the realm, place their children in those inns, though they desire not to have them learned in the laws, nor to live by the practice thereof, but only upon their father's allowance." In the olden time, then, the lawyer, the scholar, and the accomplished gentleman were one. No doubt a considerable portion of the business of the bar is of a different charac ter, and appears to give " ample room and verge enough" for the development of some of the more ambitious and ornamental branches of the art of rhetoric. Not a few, for instance, of the causes tried at nisi prins are of this description, as involving either circumstances of general importance and public interest or matters of great conse quence to the welfare or character of partic ular clients. The criminal courts, also, often supply cases which admit of a high degree of eloquence. This is seldom the case with prosecutions, to which a dispassionate and unpretentious style is more appropriate, but it frequently happens that defenses of pris oners and of other persons accused of crime give great opportunities for the ex ercise of rhetorical powers. All these are cases in which the nature of the subject appears to admit, and indeed to invite, a lofty or powerful and impassioned style of speaking. Yet it must be admitted that, even in cases of this kind, great displays of eloquence are far from frequent, and the style generally adopted in them differs from the level and common place mode of speech which we have been considering, chiefly by the addition of a certain amount of indignant or pathetic energy and emphasis. Erskine was the best forensic speaker of
modern times, and he is the only English barrister now endearingly remembered as a great advocate. Lord Brougham's elo quence at the bar was well known and appre ciated, but he was an advocate far inferior to Lyndhurst or O'Connell. Lord Lyndhurst was one of the most elegant and, at the same time, one of the most able speakers that ever adorned the English bar. In a word, in addition to oratorical powers rarely surpassed, he possessed sound discretion, great powers of argumentation, various and well-digested knowledge, and a zealous devo tion to the interests of his clients — to the postponement of mere self. The last of the three was, as a forensic orator, perhaps the greatest. It is almost impossible to conceive a more powerful advocate than O'Connell was before a judge and jury. Impassioned and rigorous as Brougham, discreet, argu mentative and zealous for his client, and forgetful of himself as Lyndhurst, he had a playfulness of humor, a readiness of wit to affix an irresistibly ludicrous epithet or ap ply some story fraught with ridicule in an appalling degree where he pleased — a power, moreover, of deepest pathos, to which the two former were strangers. No man probably ever possessed the power of mov ing the feelings and passions of a jury in, the same degree as O'Connell. At the present day there are several cir cumstances which combine to restrain the eloquence of the advocate within somewhat narrow limits. In the first place, he must keep tolerably close to the point and not diverge into irrelevant topics. If this rule had prevailed in ancient times, it would have nipped in the bud half the eloquence of the Greek and the Roman orators; and even in more recent times it is well known that Erskine owed much of his success to his famous, but irrelevant, attack upon Lord Sandwich in Captain Baillie's case. One important result of the rule is, that the domain of the passions, in which the most splendid triumphs of eloquence have been
