young men on the circuit slung at each other, and shot their arrows of sharp and stinging words. Even the gentle Henry Roscoe was not an inexpert or unpractised archer at these meetings, a man of whom no one ever spoke an evil word, and whom it would have puzzled the devil himself, in person or by advocate, to accuse.

The practice of Charles Crompton at the Bar was something from the first. He was never wholly briefless, but his progress was not very rapid. It underwent some disheartening fluctuations, and was not for many years commensurate with his merits. The briefs came, like conservative administrations, at long intervals; and the hopes of the expectant sometimes sank low when the delivery ebbed, or visited other contiguous shores. He had, like many others, his hot and his cold fits of hope. His friends were always more sanguine than he, where his future fortunes were their theme. He never held a high opinion of himself; he doubted his own powers too much, and was easily discouraged; he was apt to ascribe it to some supposed dissatisfaction with himself, when his clients knocked less frequently at his door. He would at such seasons of dearth laughingly say, half in jest and half in earnest, "I suppose they have found me out ;" then, after speaking despondingly of his prospects, he would humorously exaggerate the declining state of his fees, declaring that he had but seventy guineas in the world, which he had hid in an old stocking at home, and that he knew not what he should do when his bank stopped. These jocular forebodings of poverty, by one who never knew really adverse circumstances, were nothing more than humorous exaggerations of a temporary lull in business. Smiling all the while at his own impatience, he compared his feelings under neglect to those of the genie in the tale of the fisherman in the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." In punishment of his rebellion against Solomon, the genie by the power of that monarch lay at the bottom of the sea imprisoned in a jar sealed with a talismanic seal, which the prisoner's art of necromancy was powerless to break. In the first century of his imprison

ment, the genie promised to make his deliverer rich even after death; in the second, to open to him all the treasures of the earth; in the third, to make him a potent monarch, to be always with him in spirit, and to grant him every day three requests, of what nature soever they might be. At last, when no deliverer came, the genie, angry, or rather mad, threatened to kill whoever might deliver him, and to grant him only the choice of the manner of his death. "Too merciful by half," said Crompton," the clemency of the genie is out of nature.” His was always a most fertile imagination. Any laughable thing that occurred to him in his daily practice, any ridiculous or vexatious occurrence which fell under his observation, was moulded by him into conformity with some incident which his reading supplied; he would suppose the most strangely improbable scenes, put his actors, whom he impressed, into them, and dress up a narrative, his premises conceded-at once natural, humorous, and well told.

During his leisure time at the Bar, the future judge was not an unadmiring or inattentive observer of the practice of others. The great masters on the circuit supplied many a valuable lesson, and one or two occasionally furnished food for a jest. "Come," he would say, "let us have done with chattering, and see how Johnny Williams manages this defence;" then would he seat himself near that cautious counsel, and watch from a back row the skill displayed, marking the caution of the steps by which approach was made to a hazardous question, the skilful retreat from before the face of a dangerously hostile witness, the abstinence from damaging questions, and the art shown in gliding without pressure over the dangerous places. At that day a court of justice was like the Bridge of Life in the "Vision of Mirza," full of pitfalls; it was the time of variance, sans stint or salvation, and justice sat a Reine fainéante, like a constitutional monarch of the new version, reigning and not governing. A judge in the Crown Court was provided with a magnifying glass, and sometimes succeeded in detecting a letter ungartered, or without its points. A surgical introspection

into a diseased throat was less minute and searching than the comparison of a document with the record. Counsel could not speak for their clients in cases of felony; many a speech, however, was administered in questions, and the jury were obliged to listen to speeches dropped into their ears as the eggs of a fly into a fat maggot, or infused stillatim, as the drops of a common and less powerful narcotic. There were two classes of defenders of prisoners in those days-the counsel of many questions, and the counsel of few. More copious than cautious in their cross-examinations, the former were often ironically complimented on the assistance which they rendered to Jack Ketch, on their dexterity in throwing the lasso or fitting the halter. The Crown Court was their "rope-walk." The leaders of the men of few questions were Coltman and Williams, both of whom were, in process of time, promoted to the Bench. Three drafts from the Manchester sessions were Scarlett, Williams, and Coltman. The quaintness of the remarks of Williams, his comical gestures, looks, and asides, his indignation when pressed to put dangerous questions, the force of his aside rebukes, the fire of his eye glaring like that of an angry eagle, and the damnatory denunciations when a question proved damaging, of the safety of which he had been strongly assured, mingled much amusement with the instruction which his management of a case conveyed. Scarlett, the first of advocates, was a teacher of a still higher school. Brougham, surpassing all in eloquence, and in some causes unapproached as an advocate, where scalding words, impassioned declamation, ridicule, or deep pathos were needed, was still in the general conduct of causes second to Scarlett. Though Brougham and Lyndhurst in general powers of mind and the higher range of intellect surpassed Scarlett, yet both, though great as advocates, were inferior to that consummate artist. The highest point of art, the concealment of his art, was his in so eminent a degree that common observers scarcely thought of him as the advocate. Partridge saw nothing in Garrick's acting. Miss Edgeworth, with her usual sagacity, puts into

art.

the mouth of her rather priggish young lawyer, Alfred Perry, the answer to Mademoiselle Clairon's question, "De l'Art! et que voudroit-on que j'eusse? Etois-je Phédre, étois-je Andromaque?" She wanted art in that she could not hide her The description of Scarlett as the thirteenth juryman talking the case over with his fellows, is a happy illustration of his ordinary manner. He seldom touched the feelings; yet he could, and did occasionally, rise to passionate declamation, and sustain the flight. Cresswell, in later years, was a successful, but he was seldom an eloquent, advocate. As a speaker he was generally languid and unimpassioned, yet two of the most stirring, effective, and successful addresses ever delivered to a jury on that circuit were made by him, each in a will cause, and in the same year; the first in Perry v. Newton, at the Carlisle assizes, and the other in Talham v. Wright, at an adjournment of the Lancaster assizes. In examining a witness in chief, no one, unless it was Gurney, equalled Scarlett. In cross-examination Scarlett was also great: not boisterous, loud, nor bullying, but keen, persevering, unbaffled, holding to the scent, piercing, stringent, and severe. His face was never clouded; he seemed always unruffled, the ladies said "so goodnatured," and never disconcerted. When the cause was in the throes, he would sit paring his nails with nonchalance, and wearing his smile of confidence before the jury. Williams was often impressive, but never eloquent. There was a quaintness, a certain epigrammatic terseness of expression in his speeches which often told with his audience. A young barrister had commenced his forensic career in a novel and rather dangerous manner by kicking an attorney who was opposed to him on an arbitration. The attorney insulted him, and receiving a kick on the breech, brought his action of assault and battery, which was tried at the ensuing Lancaster assizes. It was the sporting cause of the assize. Williams, who was for the defence, extracted by a dexterous cross-examination the cause of offence, an insulting speech, and concluded a very effective address for his client with these words "An insult, a

kick, a farthing all the world over." The plaintiff obtained his farthing. The counsel for the plaintiff, gathering up his papers, gravely exclaimed as he left the court, "My client has got more kicks than halfpence,"-his only good thing. When Mr. Tracy Tupman, shutting his eyes, and firing at random, brought down by chance his bird, Old Wardle applauded, and judged he had been out before, evidently an old hand. The cowardly knight whose horse ran away with him into the thick of the fray was a hero by general acclamation. Men sometimes make these lucky hits; but the world is not long deceived. We should not call a swan a songster even though it were to glide off the pool of life with a dying shake and a graceful bend. When true eloquence is heard, and is heard but rarely from the same lips, be sure that the pent fire is suppressed. If a man is eloquent when he is deeply moved, why have his feelings been iced? The culture which dwarfs an oak is misused skill. Take the potted tree into the forest, place it by the giants there, and learn what man may do when he suppresses the gush of his heart and divorces himself from his mistress, nature. What torture and what waste go to the making of a dancing dog and an industrious flea! The sweet neglect beats the adulteries of art. Cultivation may be carried too far.

Under these masters Crompton studied. He was not designed by nature for an orator, and he did not struggle with nature. He became a cautious, safe junior; he examined a witness admirably. He acquired a habit of keeping watch over a witness, of observing his face and gestures, and he possessed a happy power of discerning where the witness was likely to stop. He kept his own mind and that of the witness steadily in hand, directing the attention of the latter to the main point on which his evidence was wanted, and letting his narrative flow out in its own way. His mind, singularly acute, penetrated quickly the intricacies of a case; he looked it through and through, and guessed from what was told what probably remained unsaid. His habits of caution made him