tudy the difcipline which enables the combatant to use them with skill and vigour. He will bend his mind to thofe acquifitions by which the talent of public elocution is fupplied with carly nutriment; and is at length enabled, when foftered by the genial influence of practice, to produce fruit in mature perfection even in the chill and fterile regions of Law. Conscious that the speaker in vain attempts to communicate with perfpicuity and force the ideas which imprefs themselves feebly on his mind, or float before it in vague obfcurity; he will not difdain to ftrengthen and arrange his conceptions by the fimple rules of rational logic. He will not be deterred from a beneficial habit by hearing it derided as mechanical. He will remember, that it is by the help of the fquare and the compass that the nobleft works of art are planned and executed. He will ftudy the rules of oratory confecrated by the recommendation of the antient masters of eloquence; and while he avoids the folly of pedantic veneration for whatever has the fanction of claffical authority, he will not think thofe instructions can be useless to the modern pleader, which flowed from the pens and have immortalized the names

of

of Cicero (c) and Quinctilian. He will be awake to the charms of graceful delivery, of manly and unaffected action. He will attend to the philofophy of the human mind; he will mark the tendency of the various paffions, and the caufes by which they are refpectively excited and affuaged. In a word, he will feek for fuccefs not in the undifciplined fallies of brilliant abilities, however he may occafionally fee them crowned with precarious reputa tion; but in the fyftematic obfervance of ftable and fundamental principles fuggefted by reason, and confirmed by uniform experience. While he looks up to every thing which is excellent in his contemporaries at the bar, he will be early on the watch against contracting a relish for that dry, technical, and unimpreffive fiyle

(c) Let me not be understood to recommend an implicit obfervance of the rules delivered by Cicero. The thetorician will in truth find more to approve in them than the moralift. The object of the Roman Orator in his pleadings feems to have been to gain his cause by whatever mode of argument or of abuse appeared likely to be effectual; and his inftructions to others were naturally conformable to his own practice. Yet many of his directions are founded on folid wifdom; and are fuch as a Chriftian need not blush to adopt.

which prevails in the courts of juftice; a ftyle in fome degree perhaps imposed on men of the legal profeffion by the abftruse and unalluring nature of the difcuffions, in which they are commonly engaged; but in a great measure refulting from want of precaution against growing habits, and from a neglect of the more elegant branches of literature. Were the pleader accustomed to warm his imagination by the study of those efforts of eloquence which shook the Roman Senate, and roufed the Citizens of Athens; were he to expand his genius and refine his tafte by intimacy with the first poets of antient and modern ages, and with the principal works of polite and ornamental learning, which have appeared during the last and the prefent century in this country and in fome other parts of Europe; he would tranffufe their spirit into his own exertions; he would pour forth his thoughts in elevated and flowing language; and, even when cramped by rugged and impracticable fubjects, would adorn his forenfic erudition with illustrative imagery, copious, though felect; and gleams of fancy, vivid, though chaftifed.

In addition to the Courts of Juftice there is yet another and a nobler school of oratory open to the public, in which the Student may be inftructed and gratified by the grandeft difplays of modern eloquence. The facility of accefs which the Houses of Parliament offer is a circumstance peculiarly advantageous to the youthful pleader, not only from the light which is thrown in the courfe of debate on controverted queftions of law; not only from the improvement to be derived from witnessing the eager contefts, the vigorous attacks, the wary methods of defence, exhibited by men of the moft confpicuous talents, rivals alike in abilities and interefts; but efpecially from this confideration, that the fpeakers are in general exempted by the nature of their functions from those defects to which pleaders are peculiarly expofed. The Houfe of Commons in particular affords the moft ftriking examples of that bold, exuberant, and rolling tide of elocution, fo rarely to be found at the bar. It must however be remembered, that the fitua tion of parliamentary orators renders them liable to faults of their own, and to different faults in the different Houfes. Let not blind

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admiration

admiration lead the young Barrister to mistake defects for excellence; nor to forget that what is an excellence in Parliament cannot always be transferred with advantage to a Court of Juftice.

It remains under this head to speak of cer tain difpofitions and habits, which it behoves every man engaged in the profeffion of the law to cultivate with the utmost folicitude; and of fome peculiar temptations, against the effects of which he ought to guard himself with unremitting vigilance.

It is scarcely neceffary to obferve, that uncorrupt integrity is a virtue fo naturally allied to the character of a man, whose avowed office is to procure the establishment of rights and the redress of injuries, that the poffeffion of it affords little claim to praife; the want of it enfures indelible infamy. In the common courfe of proceedings, allurements to dishonesty and breach of truft will rarely exhibit themfelves in very attractive colours. The Barrister on whom religion has little hold, will in general be restrained by the principle of honour.

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