appeared weak and dim in comparison, had they been set forth in any other than the same speech to whose music the ears around him had been taught to thrill in infancy. The operation of translating them into a less familiar tongue, would have chilled the fresh fervour of "Those common thoughts of Mother Earth, Her simplest thoughts, her simplest tears." He knew that "Man's heart is a holy thing," and had no fear of offending by the simplicity of the words in which he clothed his worship. The person against whom Mr. Cockburn is most frequently pitched in the Jury Court for civil cases, is Mr. Jeffrey; and after what I have said of both, you will easily believe that it is a very delightful thing to witness the different means by which these two most accomplished speakers endeavour to attain the same ends. It is the wisest thing either of them can do, to keep as wide as possible from the track which nature has pointed out to the other, and both are in general so wise as to follow implicitly and exclusively her infallible direction. In the play of his wit, the luxuriance of his imagination, the beauty of his expression, Mr. Jeffrey is as much beyond his rival, as in the depth of his reasoning, and the general richness and commanding energy of his whole intellect. In a case where the reason of his hearers alone is concerned, he has faculties which enable him to seize from the beginning, and preserve to the end, a total and unquestioned superiority. There is no speaker in Britain that deals out his illustrations with so princely a profusion, or heaps upon every image and every thought, that springs from an indefatigable intellect, so lavish a garniture of most exquisite and most apposite language. There is no man who generalizes with a tact so masterly as Jeffrey; no multiplicity of facts can distract or dazzle him for a moment; he has a clue that brings him safe and triumphant out of every labyrinth, and he walks in the darkest recesses of his detail, with the air and the confidence of one that is sure of his conclusion, and sees it already bright before him, while every thing is Chaos and Erebus to his bewildered attendants. The delight which he communicates to his hearers, by the display of powers so extraordinary, is sufficient to make them rejoice in the confession of their own inferiority; careless of the point to which his steps are turned, they soon are satisfied to gaze upon his brightness, and be contented that such a star cannot lead them into darkness. A plain man, who for the first time is addressed by him, experiences a kind of sensation to which he has heretofore been totally a stranger. It is like the cutting off the cataract from a blind man's eye, when the first glorious deluge of light brings with it any thing rather than distinctness of vision. He has no leisure to think of the merits of the case before him; he is swallowed up in dumb overwhelming wonder of the miraculous vehicle, in which one side of it is expounded. The rapidity with which word follows word, and image follows image, and argument follows argument, keeps his intellect panting in vain to keep up with the stream, and gives him no time to speculate on the nature of the shores along which he is whirled, or the point towards which he is carried. But when the object of all this breathless wonder has made an end of speaking, it is not to be doubted that a plain, sensible, and conscientious person, who knows that the sacred cause of justice is to be served or injured by the decision which he himself must give, may very naturally experience a very sudden and a very uncomfortable revulsion of ideas. That distrust of himself, which had attended and grown upon him all the while he listened, may now perhaps give way, in no inconsiderable measure, to distrust of the orator, whose winged words are yet ringing in his aching ears. The swiftness of the career has been such, that he cannot, on reflection, gather any thing more than a very vague and unsatisfactory idea of the particular steps of his progress, and it is no wonder that he should pause a little before he decide with himself, that there is no safer and surer issue to which he might have been conducted in some less brilliant vehicle, and with some less extraordinary degree of speed. Nor can any thing be more likely to affect the mind of a person pausing and hesitating in this way, with a delightful feeling of refreshment and security, than the simple, leisurely, and unostentatious manner in which such a speaker as Mr. Cockburn may commence an address which has for its object to produce a quite opposite impression. When he sees a face so full of apparent candour and simplicity, and hears accents of so homely a character, and is allowed time to ponder over every particular statement as it is made, and consider with himself how it hinges upon that which has preceded, before he is called upon to connect it with something that is to follow-it is no wonder that he should feel as if he had returned to his own home after a flight in a parachute, and open himself to the new rhetorician with something of the reposing confidence due to an old and tried associate and adviser. As for causes in the Criminal Court, wherein mere argument is not all that is necessary, or such causes in the Jury Court as give occasion for any appeal to the feelings and affections-I fancy, there are few who have heard both of them that would not assign the palm to Mr. Cockburn without the smallest hesitation. Whether from the natural constitution of Mr. Jeffrey's mind, or from the exercises and habits in which he has trained and established its energies, it would seem as if he had himself little sympathy for the more simple and unadorned workings of the affections; and accordingly he has, and deserves to have, little success, when he attempts to command and controul those workings for purposes immediately his own. I have never seen any man of genius fail so miserably in any attempt, as he does whenever he strives to produce a pathetic effect by his eloquence. It is seen and felt in a moment, that he is wandering from his own wide and fertile field of dominion, and every heart which he would invade, repells him with coldness. It is not by an artificial piling together of beautiful words, and beautiful images, that one can awe into subjection the rebellious pride of man's bosom. It is not by such dazzling spells as these, that a speaker or a writer can smite the rock, and "Wake the sacred source of sympathetic tears." Mr. Jeffrey is the Prince of Rhetoricians; but Mr. Cockburn, in every other respect greatly his inferior, is more fortunate here. He is an Orator, and the passions are the legitimate and willing subjects of his deeper sway. As the Stagyrite would have expressed it, he has both the and the der but Mr. Jeffrey has no pretensions to πιστες the possession of either. LETTER XXXVI. TO THE SAME. P. M. FAR inferior to Mr. Cockburn, or to any of the three gentlemen I first described, as a speaker,-but far above Mr. Cockburn, and far above Mr. Jeffrey, as a lawyer, is Mr. James Moncrieff, without all doubt at this moment the most rising man at the Scottish Bar. This gentleman is son to Sir Henry Moncrieff, a well-known leader of the Scottish Church, of whom I shall, perbaps, have occasion to speak at length hereafter. He has a countenance full of the expression of quicksightedness and logical power, and his voice and manner of delivering himself, are such as to add much to this the natural language of his countenance. He speaks in a firm, harsh tone, and his phraseology aspires to no merit beyond that of closeness and precision. And yet, although entirely without display of imagination, and although apparently scornful to excess of every merely ornamental part of the rhetorical art, it is singular that Mr. Moncrieff should be not only a fervid and animated speaker, but infinitely more keen and fervid throughout the whole tenor of his discourse, and more given to assist his words by violence of gesture, than any of the more imaginative speakers whom I have already endeavoured to describe. When he addresses a jury, he does not seem ever to think of attacking their feelings; but he is determined and resolved, that he will omit no exertion which may enable him to get the command over their reason. He plants himself before them in an attitude of open defiance; he takes it for granted that they are against him; and he must, and will, subdue them to his power. Wherever there is room to lay a finger, he fixes a grappling-iron, and continues to tear and tug at every thing that opposes him, till the most stubborn and obstinate incredulity is glad to purchase repose by assenting to all he demands. It cannot be said, that there is much pleasure to be had from listening to this pleader; but it is always an inspiriting thing to witness the exertion of great energies, and no man who is fond of excitement will complain of his entertainment. His choleric demeanour gives a zest to the dryness of the discussions in which he is commonly to be found engaged. His unmusical voice has so much nerve and vigour in its discords, that after hearing it on several occasions, I began to relish the grating effect it produces upon the tympanum-as a child gets fond of pepper-corns, after two or three burnings of its mouth. And as acquired tastes are usually more strong than natural ones, I am not disposed to wonder that Mr. Moncrieff should have some admirers among the constant attendants upon the Scottish courts, who think him by far the most agreeable speaker of all that address them. They may say of him, as my friend Charles Lloyd says of tobacco, "Roses-violets-but toys |