whisper, you could see how tremendous grasp he was capable of taking of the very hearts of his hearers. It is true, 'that without profound legal learning, this power could no more be exerted in a court of justice than a man could fly without wings, but with the profoundest learning alone it could no more be exercised than a man could fly with wings. It is a mysterious and indescribable faculty. One man may address a jury, fluently, correctly, agreeably, and with apparent force, and not one word leave the slightest impression on opponent, judge or jury. A man of awkward manners may reply, confused and embarrassed in his opening, setting at defiance all rules of elocution, and entirely unattractive to the mass of the audience: and you shall find every word of that man to pierce the very heart of his adversary; you shall see jurors opposed to him up to that moment, unconsciously nodding to each other, as much as to say, I told you so, and it shall require all the strength of a strong judge to restrain them from injustice. Like the wind, it bloweth where it listeth and we cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth.

Oftentimes, it is probably exercised

most unexpectedly to the speaker himself; and again, like the remorseless spirits in the play, it may be sedulously summoned without response. Preparation frequently spoils it, and in the absence of preparation it is sounding brass. Without it no man can rise to eminence in the profession of the law. He may browbeat well and distort well; he may be able to cite cases by the hour and to assert the existence of everything in a case except what does exist, to ferret out facts, to cross-examine skilfully, to render doubtful everything that is certain, and to sustain by show of reasoning the most paradoxical positions; but in all this he is like a child setting up his toy windmills, which shall be torn to atoms by the first breath which nature in her agony breathes over the scene. A portion of the effects of spoken eloquence has been attributed by philosophers to the effect of mere sound on the ear, just as the highest and best music, when not a word is uttered or understood, will fill the mind with deep emotion. But certainly one of its most indispensable elements is the language in which it is uttered. In our language, it must be natural, simple Saxon; a language not only

agreeable to the ear, but equally well understood both by learned and unlearned. A man may accustom himself to express his thoughts on paper in stiff, inverted, Latinized, Johnsonian English; and this may suit his own purposes sufficiently well; but if he is ever the advocate of another man's cause, in which every word he utters must tell on the tribunal he is addressing-where no preparation or previous arrangement is possible-where he must reply to everything his opponent has advanced, and leave nothing in his own track to be replied to-he will lay aside such a style as necessarily as a coat of mail would be put off by a mechanic working at his anvil. The pertinency of these observations has doubtless been apparent. The style of Judge Gibson was well adapted to the uses to which he put it. It possessed, as we shall see, many of the highest and rarest characteristics of judicial writing. To every extent in which he had employed such a mode of conveying his thoughts at the bar, he would have signally failed. Other disqualifications may also have existed. He possessed no aptitude for that exhausting physical labor so essential to success in the practice

of the law. When well roused, the entire professional mind of the state knows what he was capable of producing; but both his mind and his body seemed incapable of exertion, even to the pitch of writing, unless urged by the excitement of a great subject. Of the practical inconvenience of this, he frequently complained. -I resume the narrative.

In 1810 he was elected by the Democratic party of Cumberland County, a member of the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania, and served as such in the sessions of 1810-11, and 1811-12. His appearance at this time is recollected by many persons yet on the stage. He was considerably over six feet in height, with a muscular, well proportioned frame, and a countenance expressing strong character and manly beauty. Until the day of his death, although his bearing was mild and unostentatious, so striking was his personal appearance, that few persons to whom he was unknown, could have passed him in the street without remark; youth and vigor must have rendered his presence even more commanding. In the business of the House he bore at least a useful part. Beside giving the customary attention to affairs pertaining to his

own county, and affecting his own constituents, he originated numerous measures of public importance. The legislature convened on the 4th of December, 1810, and on the 15th of December, he moved for the appointment of a committee, "to bring in a bill to abolish the right of joint tenants to take by survivorship, and to make real estate held in joint tenancy, divisible." The resolution was adopted, and throughout the session he seems to have labored for the passage of the bill with unusual diligence. On every occasion it was called up on his motion, (pp. 100, 290, 306, &c., of the Journal.) But he was not successful in passing it until the succeeding session. In the spring of 1811, the impeachment proceedings against Thomas Cooper, then President Judge of the Eighth Judicial District, had begun to occupy a share of public attention, and on the 7th of March, Mr. Gibson was appointed one of the committee to consider the complaints against him. On the 27th of March, the committee reported the draft of an address to Governor Snyder for the removal of the Judge from his office. Against this address, and the doctrines which it advocated, Mr. Gibson placed on record a written protest, which will be read