Bacon, and Hale, and Mansfield, strengthen, adorn, illumine, dignify her seats of Justice. But that was a period when these great master-spirits were wanted to build up, and cope in, to the fulness of perfection, her system of Jurisprudence;

to reduce the judicial decisions of her various courts of equity and of common law, to one uniform level of wisdom, justice, and certainty, throughout all the reach of her extended empire. It was also at a time, when her political circumstances were such, as permitted her to spare a portion of her primary talent to rear the infancy, and to establish the manhood of her legal system.

But during the last thirty years, so great and so continued has been the pressure of her political condition, that she has been compelled to pour out nearly all her first rate intellect over the whole of her own dominions, comprehending at least one-fifth of the habitable globe, in the persons and the exertions of her executive statesmen, and senators, and provincial governors; and to spread that highest flood of intellectual light over all the rest of the civilized world, in the persons and the exertions of her naval heroes, and her land warriors, and her ambassadors. And, consequently, as primary talent is never produced, excepting in very small quantities, in any given age and country, she has been scarcely able to spare any of it permanently to the service of the Bar; but the moment she has discovered it to have accidentally strayed into the precincts of the Forum, she has immediately called it thence into the upper regions of the state ;-as she did her Burke, her Pitt, her Grenville, her Canning, and her Brougham.

Whence, as native genius is equally distributed, both as to quantity and quality, over all the nations and sections of the earth, and differs only in different countries, in the amount of its developement, and effectual display, according to the circumstances in which it is placed, whether favourable or unpropitious for the full, unfolding, and extensive exercise of its powers; and as the American Bar employs all the first-rate talents of the United States,-and the British Bar uses only the secondary capacities of Britain,-it inevitably follows, that, other things being equal, the American Bar must mani

fest a greater general average display of intellectual power than is afforded in the British Forum, more especially, in the exhibition of extemporaneous eloquence.

Nevertheless, within the memory of man, the British Bar has seen her vanguard led by Mansfield, Thurlow, and Loughborough ;-three illustrious Lawyers, who were equalled by few, and by none surpassed, in the heighth, and depth, and breadth, and compass, and variety of wisdom and eloquence. And now, even now, in this, her day of degeneracy, -her age of secondary lawyers, the forensic labours of the Bar of England have been conducted to perfection by Mr. Erskine's most felicitous combination of profound legal argument with splendid eloquence.

Perhaps it is not going too far to say, that the speeches of Mr. Erskine, now presented to the public, are the most finished specimens of bar-eloquence, that any age or country has produced. When I say this, I take it for granted, the reader bears in mind the marked distinction between the forensic and the Parliamentary orations of Demosthenes and Cicero. Their bar-speeches are not equal to those of Mr. Erskine ;-but there is no assignable proportion between the forensic effusions of these Greek and Roman orators, and the legislative energy of Demosthenes, or the Senatorial majesty of Cicero.

Few men have ever lived, who, like Erskine, could unite so much fire and eloquence, such intense heat of passion, such brilliancy of imagination, such extensive, yet selected command of language, with so much clearness of argument, such closeness of reasoning, such nice, acute, subtle discrimination. The prominent feature in the character of Mr. Erskine's bar-eloquence is, that in no one sentence does he ever lose sight of his cause, his client, his verdict. And while he is melting the hearts, inflaming the passions, and dazzling the understandings of his audience, he has always his own oratory under such perfect controul, as never to omit even the minutest details that may serve to give a favourable complexion to his cause. He is, indeed, unrivalled in the skill with which he has bent down the genius

of an orator of the highest order to the practical dexterity of a consummate advocate.

He who speaks more than is necessary on any public occasion, makes his speaking an end ;-whereas, he who speaks enough, and no more, uses his eloquence as the means of obtaining some ulterior end, some greater object. The last is the most effective, practical being. Julius Cæsar always said enough;-Cicero sometimes said more than enough ;— and Cæsar bore Cicero down by the superior weight of his brain; by the more efficient energy of his practical wisdom. Many other great men, besides Ciceró, have in this respect, erred ;—and have lost sight of their existing object,—of the business they had to perform, in the eagerness of their anx iety to achieve a brilliant oration.

Gentlemen who are in training for the Bar, are more particularly interested in observing, and in acting upon this distinction ;-not only, because those among them who happen to possess genius, are prone, in common with all powerful minds, to give the reins to their imagination, and permit the spirit of their heated enthusiasm to swing and sweep beyond the flaming bounds of space and time,-extra flammantia mænia mundi ;-but also, because the Law itself,-occupied as it is, in watching over the little, multiplied details of human life, and trammelled up, as it is, by the use and practice of a certain, precise, defined, ascertained phraseology, sanctioned by immemorial custom, and, although useful, not necessarily, nor inseparably allied to elegance, can seldom be prevailed upon to tolerate in a forensic speaker the bursts of deep, intense, genuine passion,-or a rich variety of imagery, or extatic flights of poetry, or the finer touches of extreme tenderness, or the heavenly visions of a sublimated philosophy,—or the majestic amplitude of a style full, sonorous, flowing, fervid, and replete with energy and animation.

"Monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres
Quem super notas aluere ripas,

Fervet, immensusque ruit profundo

Pindarus ore"

It is also necessary to bear in mind a broad and marked distinction between the eloquence of ancient and of modern days. The ancient statesmen made it the main business of their lives to become great proficients in the art of public speaking; and consequently, if we allow the modern orators to possess native talents equal to those of Cicero and Demosthenes, yet as they do not bestow the same intense and continued labour on the study of their art, modern oratory cannot attain the elevated standard of that of antiquity. It must be inferior in methodical composition,-in the distribution of the subject,-in the style, elaborated to perfection by the combined efforts of persevering study and exalted genius, -in the mode of delivery, refined and purified by a long course of the most exact discipline,-in the exquisite union of refinement with the most perfect air of simplicity, in the happiest combination of art with nature.

For full proof of the fact now asserted, the reader is confidently referred to the deliberative speeches of Demosthenes, and the Senatorial orations of Cicero, as compared with the Parliamentary and Congressional effusions of modern debaters.

Yet, doubtless, the extemporaneous reasoning and declamation of modern times are much better fitted for transacting the business of real life, than are the more highly adorned and finished compositions of antiquity. And therefore, as all life consists essentially of action, it is, perhaps, wiser for public men, more particularly for lawyers, whose whole business it is to be occupied in the transactions of real life, to accustom themselves to the habit of extemporaneous speaking, which, although it can never render them such regular and finished orators, as Greece and Rome boasted of in their best days of high and palmy greatness,-will yet render them much more able to discharge with credit to themselves, and with benefit to the community, those various important and difficult duties which must ever be devolved upon genius and wisdom, amidst the ceaseless activity of commercial enterprize, and the everlasting agitations of popular freedom.

Can it be incumbent on the Editor of these orations, to inculcate the necessity, and to expatiate upon the benefit of an earnest, intense, habitual study of the best recorded speeches, both of ancient and of modern times?

It requires but little knowledge, and less reflection, to perceive, that such compositions contain a vast fund of moral, political, financial, commercial, and legal information ;-de livered by the ablest men of the most civilized countries, in their most cultivated ages, as the last result of their happiest intellectual efforts, under the fullest inspiration of excited genius, giving vent to its effusions in thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. They furnish the best models of clear, profound, comprehensive, conclusive reasoning, illumined and adorned by all the brilliancy of splendid eloquence. They afford the finest exercise to the analytical powers of the student's mind, while tracing the golden links of their chain of argumentation;-and they enlarge his understand. ing and elevate his imagination, by opening to him the richest treasures of lofty sentiment and extensive thought; glistening in all the splendour of the most felicitous combinations of selected, appropriate, and copious language.

New-York, May 25, 1813.