asked me, Justus Fabius, why, when former ages were so distinguished by the genius and renown of orators, our own age, destitute and bereft of glory, scarce retains the very name. For we style none such now except the ancients; but the speakers of the present day are called pleaders, and advocates, and barristers, and anything rather than orators."

Judging from what Juvenal says of it, the bar in his time, at Rome, was by no means in a prosperous and satisfactory

state:

"Say now what honours advocates attend,

Whose shelves beneath a load of volumes bend;
The voice stentorian in the courts we hear,

But chiefly when some creditor is near :

A show of business eager to display,

Their lungs like panting bellows work away.
Alas! a hundred lawyers scarce can gain,
What one successful jockey will obtain.—
The court has met with pale and careworn face
You rise to plead some helpless client's case,
And crack your voice; for what? when all is o'er,
To see a bunch of laurel on your door.
This is the meed of eloquence; to dine

On dried-up hams, and cabbage, and sour wine :
If by good luck four briefs you chance to hold,
And your eye glistens at the sight of gold;
Think not to pocket all the hard-won fee,
For the attorney claims his share with thee.
Large sums Æmilius can command, 't is true,
Although a far worse advocate than you;
But then his steed of bronze and brazen car
The rich Æmilius to the world declare;

While lance in hand he rides a sculptur'd knight,
And seems a warrior charging in the fight."

Pliny the younger also speaks of the changed condition of the forum in his day, and of the unprofessional and unworthy arts which were resorted to to gain a reputation and attract clients. In one of his epistles to a friend he says: "You are right in your conjecture. I am tired to death of causes in

the centumviral courts, which give me practice rather than pleasure, for they are for the most part trifling and trumpery. A case seldom occurs distinguished either by the rank of the parties, or the importance of the matter in dispute. Besides, there are very few counsel with whom it is at all agreeable to be engaged. The rest are generally obscure young men with plenty of effrontery, who go there to make declamatory speeches with such rashness and want of modesty, that my friend Attilius seems to have said, with great truth, that boys at the bar begin with causes in those courts, just as they did with Homer at school."

Pliny also mentions, with disapproval, the practice of certain advocates who hired claqueurs to attend upon them and applaud their speeches in court. He says: "If you chance to pass through the hall, and wish to know how each counsel acquits himself, you have no occasion to listen to what he says. You may rest assured that he is the worst speaker who has the loudest applause." Pliny says that Sergius Licinius first introduced this practice: "Once, when Domitius Afer was pleading a cause before the centumvirs, he suddenly heard, in the adjoining court, a loud and unusual shouting, and for a few moments he stopped. When the noise ceased he went on, but soon there was another shout of applause and he again paused. After he had resumed his argument, he was again interrupted, and he then asked who was speaking in the other court. He was told that it was Licinius; upon which he said, addressing the judges, 'This is a death-blow to the profession.'

Ulpian in his treatise Ad Edictum tells us that an express law was enacted to prevent the fair sex from pleading in the courts of law, "that they might not intermeddle in such matters, contrary to the modesty befitting their sex, nor engage in employments proper to men." The cause of this edict being passed, is said to have been the conduct of a virago named Carfania, a most troublesome and ill-conditioned lady, who gave the magistrates a great deal of trouble by her importunity in court. An exception was made, however, in favour of the daughters of advocates who could not

attend in person on account of sickness or infirmity, and who could not get anyone else to plead for them."

In one of the books written during the middle ages the following advice is given to the forensic orator. He was told that, in order that his discourse "might have dignity. and beauty, there are three things necessary: first, it must please; secondly, it must convince; thirdly, it must persuade. For the first effect the pleader must speak gracefully; for the second plainly; for the third with great ardour and fervency."

CHAPTER III.

MODERN ORATORY.

RATORY is immortal. In some form or other

oratory will live, and have its influence upon man

kind, as in past ages, and in different countries, as long as the human heart is inhabited by the passions which are inherent to our nature and which have taken up their residence there, and as long as it is necessary to discuss important questions in the pulpit, the senate, and the bar.

"Not until human nature is other than it is, will the function of the living voice-the greatest force on earth among men-cease," said Henry Ward Beecher. The same magnificent orator said, also: "I advocate, therefore, in its full extent, and for every reason of humanity, of patriotism, and of religion, a more thorough culture of oratory; and I define oratory to be the art of influencing conduct with the truth set home by all the resources of the living man.'

The study of oratory has of late years been too much neglected by public speakers-especially by lawyers. They do not give enough attention to general literature. By giving a portion of their time to the study of polite literature, aside from the benefits derived from an accumulation of valuable facts and felicitous phrases, they would return to their more rugged pursuits with greater alacrity and with renewed strength.

The mind is invigorated, strengthened, and improved by turning it into other channels occasionally.

"A mere lawyer is a mere jackass, and has never the power to unload himself; whereas I consider the advocatethe thoroughly accomplished advocate-the highest style of man. He is always ready to learn, and always ready to teach. Hortensius was a lawyer, Cicero an orator. The one is forgotten, the other is immortal," said one of the greatest of American lawyers-David Paul Brown.

Good speaking, in a republican form of government like our own, is usually a direct road to riches and honour, and it should be cultivated assiduously by those who are endowed by nature with the requisite natural ability.

The oratory of the American bar is not as good as it should be. Too many of our speakers imagine they are heaven-born geniuses, and that it is useless for them to study the art of oratory. The success of many of our forensic orators is owing in a great measure to the exertions of strong parts and masculine understandings, breaking through and surmounting the incumbrances of a bad style and an ungraceful elocution. We are often content to fatigue our attention in listening to these men, because we know that their matter and their acuteness in the application of it will, in the end, make us compensation. The pleasure of hearing them, however, is greatly diminished by the incorrectness of their language, the want of conclusiveness of their arguments, and the dryness of their diction.

There are, however, bright stars in our legal hemisphere to whom this criticism does not apply. But their eloquence derives that dazzling lustre with which it is irradiated, from the acquirements of logical and rhetorical support and

ornament.

Neither Greece nor Rome, in their palmiest days, presented a fairer field than that which now invites the culture. of the enlightened citizens of America. We enjoy as much liberty as is consistent with the nature of man. We possess as a nation all the advantages which climate, soil, and situation can bestow, and nothing but merit is here required as a qualification for the highest offices of state. Eloquence

never had more ample scope.