blunt the sentiments and quicken to crime; and, finally, without any contemporary nation to study, the imitation of which would not tend to enfeeble their virtues and in most cases intensify their vices. Besides, Rome was without any municipal police, and the habits of her citizens were demoralized by those imperial fortunes which inadequate legislation had permitted to accumulate, and which had begotten all the intolerable vices of great social inequality. Surely these are sufficient causes both to prove and account for the existence of loaded criminal calendars.

Thus we see that the lawyer was the pivot upon which were often balanced the most engrossing interests of society. Fortune, fame, and often life itself, were suspended upon his exertions alone. We see further. That it was for the protection of no paltry wretches, who lived undistinguished and died unregretted, that the Roman learning, ambition, and enterprise, were so exclusively devoted to the study of eloquence but for the governors, prætors, quæstors, proconsuls, and senators, cum judicium esset de fama fortunisque, ‡ for the pillars of state by whose favor the government stood firm, and whose wrath could make it tremble. On the lips of their advocate appeared oftentimes suspended the happiness of millions, and when successful, great was their reward. They became at once the preservers and benefactors for whom no amount of gratitude was sufficient, no amount of devotion profane. And perhaps there never was an audience which in all respects the orator would prefer to that which the eloquence of the Roman republic addressed. Though not so cultivated and apprehensive as that of Pericles or Isocrates, yet the broadest scholar and the most bril

*Modern municipal police, or night-watch, first made its appearance in Europe, and probably in the world, shortly after, and in consequence of the introduction of Gipsies into Europe, in the fifteenth century.

The commercial relations which had been then recently established, suffered severely from the thieving propensities of those Ishmaelites of Egypt, whose hands were against every man, and against whom was every man's hand. The obvious necessity of a municipal police, then probably for the first time, effected such an organization.- Dissertation on the Gipsies, by H. M. G. Grellman.

+ For instances of this wealth, see Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," p. 503, et seq. "Sex Domini," says Cato the Elder, "semissem Africae possidebant."

Cicero, for Muræna.

In Cicero's defence of Roscius, he exposed himself to the vengeance of the dictator Sylla. The boldness of the orator's conduct made him almost divine in the eyes of the people. He has left his own opinion of the aptitude of that and similar cases calling forth popular sympathy, for oratorical display, in a letter to his son. De Off. 2. 14.

liant rhetorician had ample verge and scope for the powers he chose to exert. But better than all, when the Roman people were changed, they retained the thunder and the lightning which the orator could control. They were both susceptible and firm. They kept faith with their advisers nobly, for a people not united by any systematic organization. While the capriciousness of the Greeks was so conspicuous that we almost wonder that any should have been found among them reckless enough to have risked notoriety, the Romans almost always treated their public servant and successful aspirant with a discriminating and permanent affection. Though Cicero violated the laws of his country and the dearest rights of the people, though he was ever in principle a rigid aristocrat, though he was attacked at one time by the eloquence and assurance of Antony, at another by the virulence of Clodius, and again by the cautious disfavor of the rising Augustus, and afterwards by all their powers combined; and though at one time quite wealthy, a cardinal vice in the eyes of the ancient democracy, yet "Roma patrem patria libera dixit."* The people always liked him, always listened to him with admiration, almost always went his ways, and, unlike the Greeks, when once they espoused a project, there was a plausible if not a logical reason if they deserted it. It was for such an audience mostly, and for such issues, that the Roman lawyer became so laborious a student of the art of eloquence.

It is from this point that we have to regret our want of information most deeply. We would fain know in what manner and to what extent the lawyer was accustomed to prepare himself for a trial, how he got up his cases, his mode of examining witnesses, the kind of mental training most essential to his success, and the kind of habits most frequently resulting therefrom. These are a few of the dead facts which the burial-places of history, we fear, can never be made to surrender. What we do know of those facts is chiefly inferential.

In all their great efforts, the preparatory labor appears to have been perfectly prodigious. Contributions were levied upon every known art and science, and a whole life was too short to satisfy their aspirations. As we should expect from their devotion to rhetoric as an art, the most studious attention was paid to action.

* Juvenal, 8. 244.

Hortensius, who was a perfect enthusiast in his profession, and who never permitted himself to pass a day "unexercised and unbreathed" in its cultivation, appears to have devoted himself especially to gesture, and with great success; though to the critical eyes of Cicero his manner was not always sufficiently artless, but rather precise for an orator. But it is sufficient evidence of his skill, that he used to draw Roscius and Esopus, one the most successful tragic, and the other the most successful comic actor of his, or perhaps of any age, to study his action.‡ Valerius Maximus says that his manner was so fascinating that many did not know whether they went to the forum to hear or to see him.§

Cicero, whose action was originally as defective as that of Demosthenes, appears to have been nearly as devoted in correcting and improving it—as we have already seen. He used to receive instructions from Roscius and Esopus, and one of his common recreations was with Roscius to try their respective skill in representing different passions, the one by his eloquence of gesture, and the other by his eloquence of speech. Stage effect appears to have been no less carefully studied than action; and some magnificent situations are to be found in the history of Roman eloquence.

What can be more impressive, indeed, more sublime, than Cicero before the Roman senate, whom he had called together at day-break, to act upon the arrest of the Allobrogian ambassadors, with whom Catiline had been tampering? Behold him, pale with watching, and exhausted, rising in the midst of that surprised assembly, and proceeding to expose the systematic scheme of villainy which, but for him, would have changed the whole form of government in less than thirty-six hours. He has extracted the fangs from the conspirators; he piles upon the tables of the senate evidence of their guilt and the city's danger. The consul, who is the central figure of the scene, has done all which his authority permits, and waits the further constitutional action of the government. He triumphs in the deeds of a protecting angel, while, as a man, he receives all the accumulated sympathy and love to which such deeds have entitled him.

* Cicero, De Claris Oratoribus, 88. + Ibid.

Val. Max. 1. 8. c. 10.

Plutarch in Cic.

"Ac certe satis constat contendere eum cum ipso histrione solitum, utrum ille sæpius eandem sententiam variis gestibus efficeret, an ipse eloquentiæ copiam sermone diverso pronuntiaret. Quæ res ad hanc artis suæ fiduciam Roscium abstraxit, ut librum conscriberet, quo eloquentiam cum histrionâ compararet." Mac. Sat. 2, x.

Again, several of the scenes in the trials of Verres and Cluentius are equally effective; and more particularly his argument for the restoration of his Palatine house, which, after his banishment, Clodius had confiscated, and converted into the temple of Concord, for the purpose of preventing its reversion into the hands of Cicero.*

The dress and personal appearance of the Roman advocate was as much studied, and with as much propriety, we think, as stage situation. Macrobius says that Hortensius dressed with the most scrupulous care and neatness; that he prepared his attitudes and adjusted his toga before a mirror when about to speak, and so tucked up and secured its folds by a concealed knot as to give them a peculiar flowing appearance.t

An illustrative anecdote, whether true or false, is told of Hortensius by the same desultory miscellanist, of his instituting an action for damages against a man who rubbed carelessly against him and disturbed his toga, while he, "elaboratus ad speciem," was walking in the street.‡

Augustus legislated specially against wearing the lacerna, a kind of military cloak, in the forum, either as hearer or speaker, a custom which had recently come into fashion, but which appeared to him inconsistent in that place with the dignity of the "togatæ gentis;" and on a certain state occasion discharged some citizens thus dressed from the assembly, repeating indignantly from Virgil, "Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam."S

The influence of such kind of art, when skilfully managed, is unquestionably effective, however bad it may look upon record. Lord Chatham, certainly no bad authority, was a

This, as a law argument, appears superior to any thing Cicero has left us. It is exceedingly ingenious, and being for the recovery of his own property, he was more anxious to keep the attention of the court fixed upon the argument than the orator, a merit unfortunately but too rare in Cicero's professional career.Oratio pro Domo suo.

+ Macrobius, Saturnalia, lib. 2. c. 9.

"Ut bene amictus iret, faciem in speculo ponebat: ubi se intuens, togam corpori sic applicabat, ut rugas non forte sed industriâ locatas artifex nodus constringeret, et signus ex composito defluens nodum lateris ambiret. Is quondam cum incederet elaboratus ad speciem, collega de injuriis diem dixit, quod sibi in angustiis obvius offensu fortuito structuram toga distruxerat, et capital putavit quod in humero suo locum rugæ mutasset." Mac. Sat. 1. 2. c. 9.

§ Suetonius Aug. 40. "Quantum humilitatis putamus eloquentiæ adtulisse pænulas istas, quibus adstricti et velut inclusi cum judicibus fabulamur." Cic. de Causis Corruptæ Eloquentiæ, 39.

most devoted student of stage effect. "We know that one of the most distinguished of his partisans often complained that he could never obtain admittance to Lord Chatham's room till every thing was ready for the representation, till the dresses and properties were all correctly disposed, till the light was thrown with Rembrandt-like effect on the head of the illustrious performer, till the flannels had been arranged with the air of a Grecian drapery, and the crutch placed as gracefully as that of Belisarius or Lear."*

Mr. Bulwer, we are told, so far from finding his account in simplicity of dress, is one of the most notorious ultra fops in the three kingdoms. Augustus W. Schlegel is perhaps even more extravagant in his attention to personal appearance: he never permits himself to appear in the lecture-room save in full dress. Making a sufficient allowance for personal idiosyncracy, we yet find, in the example of such men, high justificative authority for such kind of art. Of course we speak of it entirely as a means to an end, and without reference to other than professional effect. There is one species of preparation, too frequently considered with us as misplaced and inexpedient, for which we are happy to quote the unquestionable authority of the Roman bar. It was habitual with the Roman lawyers to write out their speeches in heavy cases, and speak them from memory. Cicero, in criticising the oratory of Servius Galba, says, that the reason why his written speeches were not as good as those which he had spoken extempore, was because he was not in the habit of polishing all his discourses with care, which Cicero considered indispensable to great success.t

We have the best authority for believing that all of Cicero's greatest efforts were written. Hortensius owed much of his success to his prodigious memory, which, says Cicero, distinguished him from any person he ever knew. He remembered what he had written with the greatest facility, and employed this natural advantage so skilfully, that he remembered not only what he had himself written and premeditated

* Edinburgh Review of Thackeray's Chatham, for 1834.

"Nulla enim res tantum ad dicendum proficit quantum scriptio."-De Claris Oratoribus, 91. "Stylus optimus et præstantissimus dicendi effector ac magister."-De Oratore, lib. i. 33. Again: "Hæc sunt quæ clamores et admirationes in bonis oratoribus efficiunt, neque ea quisquam, nisi diu, multumque scriptitarit, etiam si vehementissime se in his subitis dictionibus exercuerit, consequetur."-Ib.