all of his faculties did not often, if ever, find employment in his profession may be true likewise. So far he appeared to better advantage in a deliberative assembly or before the people, because there he had a wider range and subjects of a more general interest, and was not fettered by rules and precedents; his genius expanded over a larger area, and exercised his powers in a greater variety and number. Moreover a stump speech is rarely made chiefly for conviction and persuasion, but to gratify and delight the auditors and to raise the character of the speaker. Imagery, anecdote, ornament, eloquence and elocution are in better taste than in a speech at the bar, where the chief and only legitimate aim is to convince and instruct. "It will always be a mooted point among Prentiss' admirers as to where his strength chiefly lay. My own opinion is that it was as a jurist that mostly excelled; that it consisted in knowing and being able to show to others what was the law. I state the opinion with some diffidence, and, did it rest on my judgment alone, should not hazard it at all. But the eminent Chief Justice of the high court of errors and appeals of Mississippi thought that Prentiss appeared to most advantage before that court, and a distinguished judge of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who had heard him before the chancellor of Mississippi, expressed to me the opinion that his talents shone most conspicuously in that forum. These were men who could be led from a fair judgment of a legal argument by mere oratory, about as readily as old Playfair could be turned from a true criticism upon a mathematical treatise by its being burnished over with extracts from Fourth of July harangues. Had brilliant declamation been his only or chief faculty, there were plenty of his competitors at the bar who, by their learning and powers of argument, would have knocked the spangles off of him and sent his cases whirling out of court, to the astonishment of hapless clients who had trusted to such fragile help in the time of trial.

"It may be asked how is this possible? How is it consistent with the jealous demands which the law makes of the ceaseless and persevering attention of her followers as a condition of her favors? The question needs an answer. It is to be found somewhere else than in the unaided resources of even such an intellect as that of Sergeant Prentiss. In some form or other, Prentiss always was a student. Probably the most largely developed of all his faculties was his memory. He gathered information with marvelous rapidity. The sun stroke that makes its impression upon the medicated plate is not more rapid in transcribing, or more faithful in fixing its image than

was his perception in taking cognizance of the principles, or his ability to retain them. Once fixed, the impression was there forever. It is true, as Mr. Wirt observed, that genius must have materials to work on. No man, how magnificently soever endowed, can possibly be a safe, much less a great, lawyer, who does not understand the facts and law of his case. But some men may understand them much more readily than others. There are labor-saving minds, as well as labor-saving machines, and that of Mr. Prentiss was one of them. In youth he had devoted himself with intense application to legal studies, and had mastered, as few men have done, the elements of the law, and much of its text-book learning. So acute and retentive an observer must, too-especially in the freshness and novelty of his first years of practice-'have absorbed' no little law as it floated through the courthouse, or was distilled from the bench and bar.

"But more especially it should be noted that Mr. Prentiss, until the fruition of his fame, was a laborious man, even in the tapestring sense. While the world was spreading the wild tales of his youth, his deviations, though conspicuous enough while they lasted, were only occasional, and at long intervals, the intervening time being occupied in abstemious application to his studies. Doubtless, too, the supposed obstacles in the way of his success, were greatly exaggerated, the vulgar having a great proneness to magnify the frailties. of great men, and to lionize genius by making it independent for its splendid achievements of all external aids.

"In the examination of witnesses he was thought particularly to excel. He wasted no time by irrelevant questions. He seemed to weigh every question before he put it, and see clearly its bearing upon every part of the case. The facts were brought out in natural and simple order. He examined as few witnesses and elicited as few facts as he could safely get along with. In this way he avoided the danger of discrepancy, and kept his mind undiverted from the controlling points of the case. The jury were left unwearied and unconfused, and saw, before the argument, the bearing of the testimony.

"He avoided, too, the miserable error into which so many lawyers fall of making every possible point of a case, and pressing all with equal force and confidence, thereby prejudicing the mind of the court and making the jury believe that the trial of a cause is but running a jockey race.

"In arguing a cause of much public interest, he got all the benefit of the sympathy and feeling of the bystanders. He would some

times turn towards them in an impassional appeal, as if looking for a larger audience than court and jury; and the excitement of the outsiders, especially in criminal cases, was thrown with great effect into the jury box.

"Mr. Prentiss was never thrown off his guard or seemingly taken by surprise. He kept his temper, or if he got furious, there was 'method in his madness.'

With these allowances, however, truth requires the admission that Mr. Prentiss did, when at the seat of government, occupy the hours usually allotted by the diligent practitioner to books or clients in amusements not well suited to prepare him for those great efforts which have indissolubly associated his name with the judicial history of the State.

"As an advocate, Mr. Prentiss attained a wider celebrity than as a jurist. Indeed, he was more formidable in this than in any other department of his profession. Before the Supreme, or Chancery, or Circuit Court, upon the law of the case, inferior abilities might set off, against greater native powers, superior application and research; or the precedents might overpower him; or the learning or judg ment of the bench might come in aid of the right, even when more feebly defended than assailed. But what protection had mediocrity, or even second-rate talent, against the influences of excitement and fascination let loose upon a mercurial jury, at least as easily impressed through their passions as their reason? The boldness of his attacks, his iron nerve, his adroitness, his power of debate, the overpowering fire-broadside after broadside-which he poured into the assailable points of his adversary, his facility and plainness of illustration, and his talent of adapting himself to every mind and character he addressed, rendered him on all debatable issues next to irresistible. To give him the conclusion was nearly the same thing as to give the verdict.

"He had a faculty in speaking I never knew possessed by any other person. He seemed to speak without any effort of the will. There seemed to be no governing or guiding power to the particular faculty called into exercise. It worked on, and its treasures flowed spontaneously. There was no air of thought, no elevation, frowning or knitting of the brow, no fixing up of the countenance, no pauses to collect or arrange his thoughts. All seemed natural and unpremeditated. No one felt uneasy lest he should fail; in his most brilliant flights, the empyrean heights' into which he soared seemed. to be his natural element, as the upper air the eagle's.

"Among the most powerful of his jury efforts were his speeches against Bird for the murder of Cameron, and against Phelps, the notorious highway robber and murderer. Both were convicted. The former owed his conviction, as General Foote, who defended him with great zeal and ability thought, to the transcendent eloquence of Prentiss. He was justly convicted, however, as his confession, afterwards made, proved. Phelps was one of the most daring and desperate of ruffians. He confronted his prosecutor and the court, not only with composure, but with scornful and malignant defiance. When Prentiss rose to speak, and for some time afterwards, the criminal scowled upon him a look of hate and insolence. But when the orator, kindling with his subject, turned upon him and poured down a stream of burning invective, like lava, upon his head; when he depicted the villainy and barbarity of his atrocities; when he pictured in dark and dismal colors the fate which awaited him, and the awful judgment to be pronounced at another bar upon his crimes, when he should be confronted with his innocent victims; when he fixed his gaze of concentrated power upon him, the strong man's face relaxed, his eyes faltered and fell, until at length, unable to bear up any longer, self-convicted, he hid his head beneath the bar, and exhibited a picture of ruffian audacity cowed beneath the spell of true courage and triumphant genius. Though convicted, he was not hung. He broke jail and resisted recapture so desperately that, although he was encumbered with his fetters, his pursuers had to kill him in self-defense, or permit his escape.

"In his defense of criminals, in that large class of cases in which something of elevation or bravery in some sort redeemed the lawlessness of the act, where murder was committed under a sense of outrage, or upon sudden resentment, and in a fair combat, his chivalrous spirit upheld the public sentiment, which, if it did not justify that sort of wild justice,' could not be brought to punish it ignominiously. His appeals fell like flames on those

'Souls made of fire and children of sun,

With whom revenge was virtue.'

"I have never heard of but one client of his who was convicted on the charge of homicide, and he was convicted of one of its lesser degrees. So successful was he that the expression-Prentiss couldn't clear him,' was a hyperbole that expressed the desperation of a criminal's fortunes.

"Mr. Prentiss was employed only in important cases, and gener

ally as associate counsel, and was thereby relieved of much of the preliminary preparation which occupies so much of the time of an attorney in getting a case ready for trial. In the Supreme and Chancery Courts, he had, of course, only to examine the record and prepare his argument. On the circuit his labors were much more arduous. The important criminal and civil causes which he argued necessarily required consultations with clients, the preparations of pleadings and proofs, either under his supervision, or by his advice and direction, and this, from the number and difficulty of the cases, must have consumed time and required application and industry.

"At the time of which I speak his long vigils and continued excitement, did not enfeeble his energies. Indeed, he has been known to assert that he felt brighter and in better preparation for forensic debate after sitting up all night in company with his friends than at any other time. He required less sleep, probably, than any man in the State, seldom devoting to that purpose more than three or four hours in the twenty-four. After his friends had retired at a late hour in the night, or rather at an early hour in the morning, he has been known to get his books and papers and prepare for the business of the day.

"His faculty of concentration drew his energies as through a lens, upon the subject before him. No matter what he was engaged in, his intellect was ceaseless in play and motion. Alike comprehensive and systematic in the arrangement of his thoughts, he reproduced without difficulty what he had once conceived.

"Probably something would have still been wanting to explain his celerity of preparation for his causes, had not partial nature gifted him with the lawyer's highest talent, the acumen which, like instinct, enabled him to see the points which the record presented. His genius for generalizing saved him, in a moment, the labor of long and tedious reflection upon and collection of the several parts of a narrative. He read with great rapidity; glancing his eyes through a page he caught the substance of its contents at a view. His analysis too, was powerful. The chemist does not reduce the contents of his alembic to their elements more rapidly or surely than he resolved the most complicated facts into primary principles.

"His statements-like those of all great lawyers—were clear, conspicuous and compact; the language simple and sententious. Considered in the most technical sense, as forensic arguments merely, no one will deny that his speeches were admirable and able efforts. If the professional reader will turn to the meagre reports of his argu