At Naples, we found a considerable apprehension prevailed also. The miserable gazettes of the town had detailed all the pomp and circumstance of the Pope's coronation, with all the festivals of the carnival; but were profoundly silent on the events which occurred at the same time; and no one that I conversed with knew even of the proclamations published by the Government till I produced some of them, which I had in my pocket. They, therefore, all looked for some undefined calamity, which was travelling on to visit them in its way, and which the fugitives taught them to expect immediately. This was greatly heightened by the events which had occurred in Naples. A short time before, placards of the most violent and seditious character, were pasted up through the city, and news had arrived, that a conspiracy, of a most serious nature, had been discovered in Sicily, in consequence of which General Lecki had been dispatched thither with three thousand men. On his arrival at Reggio, he thought it right to pass over first himself, and ascertain something of the nature and extent of what was apprehended. Among others, he had information that the Archbishop and his brother, together with the British Consul, were deeply concerned, and that they had forwarded arms and ammunition every night from the island to the insurgents in Italy. On farther inquiry, he found that this plot was a fabrication of the Luogo Tenente, or Viceroy, to forward one of his own. His plan was to alarm the Neapolitan Government so much, that they would call in the assistance of the Austrians, who were only waiting for an invitation to take the island under their protection. Having clearly ascertained this to be the fact, he returned with his men to Naples: the Viceroy was deposed and banished, and the King sent his own brother to conciliate the Sicilians. Notwithstanding this, the Sicilians are very discontented. They had been long promised, by the late King, a remission of taxes; and the promise has been renewed by the son, but it is not yet fulfilled; and they have now a proverb, in every one's mouth, that the son is as bad as the father.

Such, then, is the actual political situation of Italy, in February 1831. The States of the centre in complete revolution, and those at the extremities expecting every day to become so. The Austrians, like crouching tigers, ready to spring on the first weak state which they can make their prey; and the French, like lions, watching them; while the English, who crowd all the cities, are escaping in every direction, and ships of war are hastening from Malta to different sea-ports to afford them protection.

THE DUET.

COME, Sing those tender words again,.
Sing them, I pray, with me,

'Tis sweet, though but in Music's strain,
To hear of love from thee;

My watchful friends may stand around,
Nor think of harm or wrong,
While in a trembling gush of sound,
We breathe our faith in song!

Oh! when we meet in yonder grove,

How do we shrink and start,

Lest one should hear our murmur'd love,
Our language of the heart!

But now, we dare the tale to tell
Before a listening throng,

And safe in Music's mighty spell,
Exchange our vows in song!

M. A.

SKETCHES OF THE ENGLISH BAR, NO. IV.

Sir James Scarlett.

SIR James Scarlett is a man of matchless adroitness in the practice of his profession; the very head and front of his ability hath this extent, no more. He has never done any single act which would stamp him as a man of lofty talent or profound sagacity; he has made no speech that the world remembers; written no book that the world quotes; taken the lead in no matter of public interest; and yet, singular to relate, the world at large is tolerably familiar with his name: nor is the old adage, that "familiarity breeds contempt," at all contradicted in this particular instance. The career of Sir James, as a public man, has been rather unfortunate for himself, and not particularly satisfactory to the community: he began as a Whig, the advocate of liberal principles, and of the free promulgation of opinions, however inimical to the powers that were; and, therefore, he spoke and voted against the "Six Acts," which Lord Castlereagh introduced to the House of Commons for the restraint of a certain portion of the press, which was running riot in blasphemy and sedition. When Mr. Canning was made Prime Minister, he went over, with other Whigs, to the Treasury side of the House, and opposed Mr. Hume's proposition to have one of those acts repealed. When the Duke of Wellington came into power, Sir James went out of office; but, when the Duke became an Emancipator, and honest Charley Wetherell proclaimed his determination to act as the "independent Member for Plympton," Sir James took office again, and, forgetting his accustomed prudence, attempted to wage war with the press. He was not, however, a man of weight or mettle fit to bear him through such an enterprize, even had he been right in the particular case where he made the attack; and his partial success was followed by such a pelting of the pitiless storm of wrath, from review, magazine, and newspaper, as sorely damaged him with the public. When the Duke's Government fell, and the Whigs came into plenitude of power, Sir James had the mortification to find himself thrust out of office by those to whom his early vows of political adoration had been paid : he was laid upon the shelf, while the man who had for years sat behind him, in a stuff gown, was elevated to the woolsack, and his own office given to another, whom he must have considered as far behind him in the race towards professional dignity and emolument. Without any honour reflected from the past, with greatly diminished hope for the future, he became not even the independent Member for Malton, but was obliged to resign that too, on the first occasion of voting against the Ministry which had used him so scurvily. He is now nothing but plain Sir James Scarlett, the cleverest practitioner in the Court of King's Bench. Had it been our lot to sketch Sir James this time twelvemonths, when he enjoyed the possession of official power, and the prospect of high promotion, and when the recollection of his bitter, and, in some respects, paltry persecution of the newspapers was strongly in our mind, we should have been inclined to write in a strain of severity that now we are willing to soften. Sir

James sinned against the public, and circumstances have so fallen out as to punish him he has ceased, for the present, at all events, to be a public man, and our task will be to paint him as accurately as we can, merely as the leading barrister of the Court of King's Bench.

Those who have been accustomed to associate the idea of a lawyer in great business, with a spare body, lank jaws, and a complexion of parchment hue, look with an incredulous smile upon their guide, who first points out to them the portly form and full rosy features of Sir James: his business is prodigious, but it seems never to have entailed upon him that much study which is a weariness of the flesh. He seems insensible to passion, or anxiety, or distress, but goes on from cause to cause, and brief to brief, with as much facility and dispatch, and apparently with as little elevation of sentiment about the matter, as a clever auctioneer, when he turns from one article to another, in proceeding through his catalogue. Sir James looks as if he ate well, and slept o'nights, and lacked not of wine, that maketh glad the heart of man, nor oil, which causeth his face to shine; yet he leads no life of indolent luxury. No one is earlier at his post in court, and few more regular in their attendance at chambers in the evening, during Term; but he has the happy art of seeing, with great quickness, what is to be done, and managing it with such smartness, as to dispatch his business without fretting himself. Sir James being generally the senior counsel, who has "any thing to move" at the sitting of the Court, whoever goes to the King's Bench early, will be apt to find addressing the Court, a portly, handsome, rosy gentleman, with an unpowdered wig, his hands behind his back, and beneath his silk gown, while he talks to the Judges with manner so colloquial, and voice so little above the ordinary pitch of conversation, that you cannot hear more than one word in six of what he lets fall; yet the Judges seem to hear, and to understand him perfectly: they ask him questions, which, by the readiness of his answers, he seems to have anticipated; but still, it is no more than readiness, and without any character of sharpness, or force, or decision. The matter ends generally by a decision in favour of Sir James's application, and he proceeds to something else. Thus the live-long day is passed; brief after brief is opened, and the matter disposed of; settlements of lands and corporate rights; questions of insurance and defamation, and bills of exchange, writs of mandamus, and quare impedit, and rules to show cause innumerable, are all mentioned in the same unvarying, easy tone and manner; insomuch, that the mere spectator grows wearied, and almost disgusted, with what seems to him so careless and so passionless a method of advocating causes. Not so the attorneys; their souls, or what should be their souls, rejoice within them, as they see some case in which great difficulty was anticipated, put in such an easy way, that it seems nothing but a matter of course; the motion, for the fate of which they trembled, is not only granted, but granted with costs; they swear that Sir James is the cleverest of mortal men, and they hie homeward to prepare more briefs, and more fees, to be sent to his chambers.

The quantity of his business, and his success with juries is not less than with the Judges. It is even more remarkable; he knows the law

well, the practice of the law much better; but he knows mankind and the world best of all, and manages a jury with such amazing tact, such nice discrimination, and such perfect self-possession when difficulties arise, that, though altogether destitute of energy, force, earnestness, passion, or pathos, he can get a verdict from them when no one else could. Those who recollect the men who have been leaders in the Court of King's Bench, would expect something like eloquence, something like the power of a great speaker, from any man who has risen to that situation; but in Scarlett they will find no such thing;

"For he has neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

Action nor utterance, nor the power of speech
To stir men's blood."

He can neither rouse their passions, nor touch their sympathies: he can no more cause their hearts to beat, nor move their eyes to tears, than he could shake the Monument by the straining of his arms. Yet still he may well say,

"Jus anceps novi: causas defendere possum."

He can flatter their prejudices, level his argument to their understanding, and refrain from giving offence. It was remarked long ago, we believe in the "Tatler," that the height of good breeding is shown rather in never giving offence, than in doing obliging things; and thus he who never shocks you, though he is seldom entertaining, is more likely to keep your favour than he who often entertains, and sometimes displeases you. The same rule seems to hold with regard to the manner of conciliating the favour of English juries: many barristers can interest and entertain them more than Sir James Scarlett, but few can treat them with the uniform respect and attention which he is accustomed to show. Few can receive from a juryman remarks, even the most pointedly adverse to their cause, with the deferential courtesy of Sir James; who, instead of endeavouring to show the stupidity or error of the observations, takes them in good part, and twists them round so as to make them appear to favour his side of the question, and the juryman is allowed to remain pleased with his own sagacity, while he is befooled by the adroitness of the advocate.

It may be said, that all this is merely evidence of great dexterity, of skill and facility in the lower branches of an advocate's art; and, so far from showing that the subject of our sketch is a great man, rather proves the contrary, as it is very improbable, if not altogether impossible, that a man with a great mind could condescend to that kind of cleverness which we have endeavoured to describe. To this conclusion we do not demur: it is quite true, that Sir James Scarlett is not, was not, never will be, a great man, even in the profession to which he belongs. He possesses unrivalled skill to gain causes, but he does not gain them by lofty means: he will never take the hearts of men captive by winning eloquence, like Erskine, nor bear them along in a torrent of argument and passion, and sarcasm, like Brougham. When he meddles with matters of high import, of great, extensive, and enduring interest, he fails; but, in the ordinary busi

ness of his Court, he is par negotiis nec supra; and, if he never carries his cause by the application to it of loftier faculties than the circumstances of the case would seem to call forth in any ordinary man, he, on the other hand, never blunders by attempting too much, nor seeks to place the claims of his client upon ground so high, that he is forced afterwards to recede from it.

ita mentitur, sic veris falsa remiscet Primo ne medium, medio ne discrepet imum."

Great man he will not be, except in the eyes of attornies, and of that extensive class who measure the greatness of man by the power which he possesses of amassing a fortune. Sir James will bequeath no name to posterity, even in the law; but he will bequeath a great fortune, earned by persevering diligence and singular skill, which were so constantly employed in serving himself, that he had no time left to do any thing for mankind.

It is the peculiar good fortune of Sir James Scarlett, as an advocate, that the easiness and tranquillity, and absence of deep anxiety, which keep him so hale, and rosy, and comely a personage, absolutely contribute very much to his success in the management of causes: the adverse point of law started, which would confound a man of inferior skill, or the unfortunate piece of evidence brought out, which would overset an anxious man, by filling him with despair, are received by Sir James with the most admirable self-possession, as though they were but mere matters of course: he is no whit disturbed, but with the readiest tact, alters the whole bearing and direction of his case, so as to get out of the way of what seemed about to overwhelm him, and in the end he will often obtain a verdict where other men, and men of much loftier capabilities, would have been unable to avoid a nonsuit. The faculty of extremely nice discrimination is that in which the superiority of Sir James Scarlett over other barristers is most manifest. He does not appear to have gone as far and as laboriously into the profound depths of the law as other practising lawyers have done, but he is never at a loss for what will bear upon the particular points of the case at issue; and it is astonishing with what dexterity he will evade an objection, or satisfy a scruple of Lord Tenterden, whose clearness of intellect, profound knowledge, and unflinching honesty in the discharge of his duty, make it impossible to believe that he yields without his understanding being convinced. But in the examination of witnesses, and in commenting upon evidence to juries, this power is yet more evident and effectual. Every one knows that there are various ways of telling the same story, so as materially to alter its complexion, and Sir James always contrives to make his witness tell the story in the way which makes the most for the point he wishes to establish; and, above all, he prevents him from telling more than enough. Again, when he comes to comment upon the evidence to the jury, he seems as if he took the measure of the character, and mode of judging of the men whom he addresses; and though, as has been before observed, he can neither rouse their passions nor move their feelings, yet he adapts himself to what appears to be their views, and dwells upon nothing but what is calculated to make them pleased