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di," united with so much terseness of thought, and brilliancy of imagination, and managed with so much unconscious, almost instinctive ease. If he be not the most delightful, he is certainly by far the most wonderful of speakers.

Like Cranstoun, this splendid rhetorician was many years at the Bar, before his success was at all proportioned to his talents. The reputation enjoyed by his Review, was both a friendly and a hostile thing to him as a barrister; for it excited universal attention to him whenever he made any appearance at the Bar, and yet it prevented many people from soliciting him to undertake the conduct of their cases, by inspiring a sort of fear, that his other, and more delightful, and better-rewarded pursuits, might perhaps prevent him from doing full justice to matters of every-day character-the paltry disputes of traders, and the mean tricks of attornies. this, however, has been long since got over, and Jeffrey is now higher than almost any of his brethren, in his general character of an advocate, and decidedly above them all in more than one particular department of practice. The same powers which have enabled him to seize with so firm a grasp the opinion of the public, in regard to matters of taste and literature, give him, above

All

cerer.

all, sway unrivalled over the minds of a jury. There cannot be a finer display of ingenuity, than his mode of addressing a set of plain conscientious men, whom it is his business to bamboozle. He does not indeed call up, as some have dared to do, the majesty of sleeping passions, to overawe the trembling indecision of judgment. The magic he wields is not of the high cast, which makes the subject of its working the conscious, yet willing slave of the sorHis is a more cunning, but quite as effectual a species of tempting. He flatters the vanity of men, by making them believe, that the best proof of their own superiority will be their coming to the conclusion which he has proposed; and they submit with servile stupidity, at the very moment that they are pluming themselves on displaying the boldness and independence of adventurous intellect. In criminal trials, and in the newly-established Jury Court for civil cases, Mr Jeffrey is now completely lord of the ascendant; at least, he has only "one brother near the throne."

64

LETTER XXXV.

TO THE SAME.

THE three gentlemen whom I have already described to you, stand together, at a considerable elevation, above all the rest of their brethren, chiefly because they possess each of them a union of powers and talents, that must be sought for separately, (and may be found separately)-else; where. There are, indeed, no persons at present at the Scottish Bar, who can pretend to be quite so great lawyers as Mr Clerk or Mr Cranstoun, but there are some who come so near to them in this respect, that their inferiority would be much less observed or acknowledged, did they possess any of the extraordinary abilities in pleading displayed by those very remarkable men. And, in like manner, there are some others who speak so well, that they might easily take place with Mr Cranstoun

or Mr Jeffrey, did they bring with them any measure of legal knowledge, which might sustain a comparison with that of the former, or were they capable of rivalling that intuitive keenness of intellect or of genius, which supplies, and more than supplies, the want of ordinary, drudgery and ordinary information in the case of the latter.

There is one gentleman, however, whose infe riority of practice I am much at a loss to account for, because I understand that he is, if not a firstrate, certainly a very excellent lawyer, and I have myself seen and heard enough to be able to attest, that as a pleader, he is, in many respects, of the very first order of eminence. His practice, however, is also very considerable, and perhaps he is inferior in this respect to his rivals, only because it is impossible that more than three or four men should, at the same time, hold first-rate practice at this Bar. He seems to have been cast by Nature in the happiest of all possible moulds, for the ordinary routine of business, and withal to have received abundantly gifts that might qualify him for doing justice to many of the highest and noblest functions, which one of his profession can ever be called upon to dis

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charge. Nay, great and splendid and multifarious as are the faculties of the three wonderful men of whom I have spoken to you, there are some things in which they are each and all of them totally and manifestly deficient, and it so happens that those very things are to be found in perfection in this Mr Henry Cockburn. This, however, is only adding to a difficulty, which, as I have already said, I find myself unable adequately to resolve.

It is, I think, a thousand pities that this gentleman should wear a wig in pleading; for when he throws off that incumbrance, and appears in his natural shape, nothing can be finer than the form of his head. He is quite bald, and his is one of those foreheads, which, in spite of antiquity, are the better for wanting hair. Full of the lines of discernment and acumen immediately above the eye-brows, and over these again of the marks of imagination and wit, his skull rises highest of all in the region of veneration; and this structure, I apprehend, coincides exactly as it should do with the peculiarities of his mind and temperament. His face also is one of a very striking kind-pale and oval in its outline, having the nose perfectly aquiline, although not very large -the mouth rather wide, but, nevertheless, firm

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