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been sometimes inclined to believe, that a man's division of his argument would be generally found to contain a secret history of the difficulties which he himself has encountered in the investigation of his subject. I am firmly persuaded that the extreme prolixity of many discourses to which we are doomed to listen, is chargeable, not to the fertility, but to the darkness and impotence of the brain which produces them. A man who sees his object in a strong light, marches directly up to it, in a right line, with the firm step of a soldier; while another, residing in a less illumined zone, wanders and reels in the twilight of the brain, and e'er he attains his object, treads a maze as intricate and perplexing as that of the celebrated labyrinth of Crete. It was remarkable of the

....... of the United States, whom I mentioned to you in a former letter, as looking through a subject, at a single glance, that he almost invariably seized one strong point only, the pivot of the controversy; this point he would enforce with all his powers, never permitting his own mind to waver nor obscuring those of his hearers, by a cloud of inferior, unimportant considerations..... But this is not the manner of Mr. ................... I suspect, that in the preparatory investigation of a subject, he gains his ground by slow and laborious gradations, and that his difficulties are numerous and embarrassing. Hence it is, perhaps, that his points are generally too multifarious ; and although, among the rest he exhibit the strong point, it's appearance is too often like that of Issachar, "bow'd down between two burdens." I take this to be a very ill-judged method. It may

serve indeed to make the multitude stare; but it frustrates the great purpose of the speaker. Instead of giving a simple, lucid and animated view of a subject, it overloads, confounds and fatigues. the listener. Instead of leaving him under the vivacity of clear and full conviction, it leaves him. bewildered, darkling, asleep; and when he awakes, he

........ wakes, emerging from a sea of dreams "Tumultuous; where his wreck'd, despond"ing thought,

"From wave to wave of "wild uncertainty At random drove, her helm of reason lost,'

I incline to believe that if there be a blemish. in the mind of this amiable gentleman, it is the want of a strong and masculine judgment. If such an agent had wielded the sceptre of his understanding, it is presumable, that e'er this, it would have chastised his exuberant fondness for literary finery and the too ostentatious and unfortunate parade of points in his argument, on which I have just commented. If I may confide in the replies which I have heard given to him at the bar, this want of judgment is sometimes ma nifested in his selection and application of law cases..... But of this I can judge only from the triumphant air with which his adversaries seize his cases and appear to turn them against him...... He is certainly a man of close and elaborate research. It would seem to me, however, my dear S......., that in order to constitute a scientific law. yer, something more is necessary than the patier.

and persevering revolution of the leaves of an author. Does it not require a discernment sufficiently clear and strong to eviscerate the principles of each case; a judgment potent enough to digest, connect and systematize them, and to distinguish at once, in any future combination of circumstances, the very feature which gives or refuses to a principle, a just application.....Without such intellectual properties, I should conjecture (for on this subject, I can only conjecture) that a man could not have the fair advantage and perfect. command of his reading. For, in the first place,. I should apprehend, that he would never discover the application of a case, without the recur-rence of all the same circumstances; in the nextplace, that his cases would form a perfect chaos, a rudis indigesta que moles, in his brain; and lastly, that he would often and sometimes perhaps fatally mistake the identifying feature, and furnish his antagonist with a formidable weapon a gainst himself.

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. But let me fly from this entangled wilderness, of which I have so little knowledge, and return to Mr. Although when brought to the standard of perfect oratory, he may be subject to the censures which I have passed on him; yet it is to be acknowledged, and I make the acknowledgment with pleasure, that he is a man of extensive reading, a well informed lawyer, a fine belle lettres scholar, and sometimes a beautiful speaker.

The gentleman who has been pointed out to me, as holding the next, if not an equal grade in the profession, is Ir. He is, I am told,

upwards of forty years of age; but his look, L think, is more juvenile. As to stature, he is about the ordinary height of men ; his form genteel; his person agile. He is distinguished by a quickness of look, a sprightly step, and that peculiarly jaunty air, which I have heretofore mentioned, as characterizing the people of New-York. It is an air, however, which (perhaps, because I am a plain son of John Bull) is not entirely to my taste. Striking, indeed, it is ; highly genteel, and calculated for eclat; but then, I fear, that it may be censured as being too artificial; as having, therefore, too little appearance of connection with the heart; too little of that amiable simplicity, that winning softness, that vital warmth, which I have felt in the manner of a certain friend of mine. This objection, however, is not meant to touch his heart. I do not mean to censure his sensibility or his virtues. The remark applies only to the mere exterior of his manners; and even the censure which I have pronounced on that, is purely the result of a different taste, which is, as probably, wrong, as that of Mr.

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Indeed, my dear S......., I have seen few eminent men in this or any other country, who have been able so far to repress the exulting pride of conscious talents, as to put on the behaviour which is calculated to win the hearts of the people. I mean that behaviour, which steers between a low-spirited, cringing sycophancy, and ostentatious condescension on the one hand, and a haughty, self-importance and supercilious contempt of one's fellow-creatures on the other; that behaviour, in which, while a man displays a just

respect for his own feelings and character, he seems, nevertheless, to concenter himself with the disposition and inclinations of the person to whom he speaks; in a word, that happy behaviour, in which versatility and candor, modesty and. dignity, are sweetly and harmoniously attempered and blended. Any Englishman, but yourself, my S......., would easily recognize the original from which this latter picture is drawn.

This leads me off from the character of Mr. ....., to remark a moral defect, which I have, several times, observed in this country. Many well meaning men, having heard much of the hollow, ceremonious professions and hypocritical grimace of courts; disgusted with every thing which savours of aristocratic or monarchic parade; and smitten with the love of republican simplicity and honesty, have fallen into a ruggedness of deport-ment, a thousand times more proud, more intolerable and disgusting, than Shakespeare's fop-pish lord, with his chin new reapt and pouncet box. They scorn to conceal their thoughts; and in the expression of them, confound bluntness with honesty. Their opinions are all doginas...... It is perfectly immaterial to them what any one else may think. Nay, many of them seem to have forgotten, that others can think, or feel at all. In pursuit of the haggard phantom, of republicanism,' they dash on, like Sir Joseph Banks, giving chace to the Emperor of Morocco, regardless of the

This phrase is scarcely excusable, even in

a Briton and a Lord.

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