workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box." But how are the twelve good men to find the truth? The judge knows nothing of the case; the jury know nothing of the case. The attorneys and advocates are the eyes and ears of the court the agencies that develop the facts in the presence of judge and jury, and thus enable the judge to apply the law, and the jury to find the facts.

If deprived of the agency and aid of attorneys, the courts of justice would soon lose their value. By jury-trials, the rights of men are decided, and, as a verdict is not a precedent, the evils resulting from error are limited to the case at bar. The rule of the twelve is a limited rule; but the decis ions of the twelve, when massed and considered together, touch and control nearly all the controverted questions of society.

In this view of the importance of jury-trials, it was not a low ambition, nor an unworthy purpose, which led Mr. Choate to select that forum for the development and exhibition of his powers, talents, and genius.

The questions submitted to a jury are often questions of magnitude, in a public sense, and they are always questions of present and pressing im

*"Present State of the Law," February 7, 1828.

portance to the parties concerned. In the investigations incident to and necessary in the trial of causes, not only is a knowledge of the law required, but a knowledge also of the arts, industries, and sciences of the world is essential to the advocate. Beyond these qualifications even, there is a field for the use-I do not say display—but a field for the use of every variety of learning that can be gathered by the most diligent student. In all these acquisitions, Mr. Choate was the best-equipped advocate ever known by the American bar.

For half a century he pursued his studies, special and general, in season and out of season, by day and by night, denying himself pleasures, amusements, relaxations even, dividing his time between his library and the court-room.

The Bible was a book of constant study, and his devotion to the New Testament in Greek led Mr. Webster to say, as he examined the books upon the shelves of Mr. Choate's library, "Thirteen editions of the Greek Testament, and not one copy of the Constitution of your country!" He translated the Greek and Latin classics, studied French law and history in the language, and in English he read everything from the Black-Letter to Dickens. The four great men of England, in his estimation and in their order, were Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, and Burke. Indulging in exaggeration, he wrote to

Sumner, "Out of Burke might be cut fifty Mackintoshes, one hundred and seventy-five Macaulays, forty Jeffreys, and two hundred and fifty Sir Robert Peels, and leave him greater than Pitt and Fox together.".

With a mind so given to exaggeration, it is difficult to realize that he was a close — not a concise, but a close-logical reasoner, whose arguments, whether to court or jury, were seldom overloaded or embarrassed by imagery or illus

trations.

Logic is the one quality, the one power, absolutely essential to the advocate. Without this there can be no success. There are advocates, however, usually men of an inferior sort, but sometimes they are men at once able and disingenuous, whose arguments are logical in the parts but illogical in their combinations. Mr. Choate's arguments were logical in the parts and logical in the whole. His competitors in the field of logic were Mason, Webster, and Curtis, and he was the equal of either of them in the propriety and scientific arrangement of his arguments, though not in the power of statement; but in learning, in genius, in the capacity to weave and unweave the webs of human testimony, he was superior to either of these men, as he was to all the lawyers of America of the generations to which they belonged.

In addressing a court upon questions of law, or even upon mixed questions of law and fact, it is both wise and safe to limit the discussion to pivotal propositions-those propositions on which the case must be decided. In this faculty, Judge Curtis excelled; but so predominant was this quality in him as to impair essentially his standing as a jurylawyer. In Mr. Webster, the logical power, the power of statement, wealth of imagination, and purity and splendor of diction, were so combined as to render him equally formidable before the court and to the jury. But Mr. Choate excelled Mr. Webster in the variety and extent of his learning, in the facility and genius that he displayed in the cross-examination of witnesses a field in which causes are sometimes won, but more frequently lost-in his resources of argument, often designed to meet the peculiarities of individual jurors, and in his ability to repeat a thought with new illustrations, and in a diction at once fresh and attractive.

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Much may be assumed of a court, but of a jury it can not be assumed that secondary considerations may not have great weight, and therefore the skillful advocate will sometimes dwell upon insignificant topics, and in different forms present his views to the various men upon the panel. In all these things Mr. Choate was unsurpassed, and yet

so great were his powers that his arguments were never tedious, even to those who thought further discussion unnecessary.

It is the misfortune of many men of large reading, that, in the use of the knowledge thus acquired, they show their dependence upon notes and commonplace-books-those aids to inferior intellects and hindrances to growth in the young. What Mr. Choate read he assimilated to himself, so that in its use there were no betrayals of the sources. His quotations were not many, and generally they were brief and so apt that their omission seemed impossible. When commonplace-books are discarded by the student, he will then become self-reliant, and read with the purpose of holding in his memory whatever may be worth possessing.

Mr. Choate seemed never to forget anything, and his practice of writing his arguments served to fix in his memory what he wrote, or to aid him in reproducing it. But this habit must have been due to a purpose, inasmuch as his power as an extempore speaker was not only adequate to all the exigencies of professional life, but no distinction could be made between his written and his unwritten arguments.

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At the end the test of greatness is success. single triumph is not success either in the field or the forum; but a series of victories due always to