you upon the death of the virtuous Viscount Stafford! An orator without attempting to be one, he

The Arnauld (not Arnaud) here referred to is Antony Arnauld the younger, who for more than forty years was the champion of Port-Royal. He was the youngest of twenty children of Antony Arnauld, sen., who was esteemed the greatest lawyer and advocate of his time. This family formed the rallying-point of the sect of the Jansenists in France. Another member of it, Antoine le Maitre, a grandson of Antony Arnauld the elder, and nephew of the great Arnauld celebrated by the author, was probably superior to both as an orator. "At the age of twenty-seven," says a late writer, "he had been advanced to the rank of councillor of state, and enjoyed at the Bar an unrivalled reputation for learning and for eloquence. When he was to speak even the churches were abandoned. Quitting their pulpits, the preachers assisted to throng the hall of the palace of justice; and some of the most celebrated among them actually obtained from their superiors a permanent dispensation from their ecclesiastical duties at such seasons, that they might improve in the arts of public speaking by listening to the great advocate. When he spoke, the delight of the audience broke out into bursts of applause, which the judges were unable or unwilling to repress. 'I would rather be the object of those plaudits than enjoy all the glory of my lord the cardinal,' was the somewhat hazardous exclamation of one of his friends, as he joined, heart and hand, in the universal tumult." He shortly after resigned his office and calling, and entered the religious retreat of Port-Royal, where in solitude, silence, and continued penances he passed the remaining twenty-one years of his life.

does not discover any design to affect you; but by the simple recital of facts, merely by logical arguments, by the depositions of the witnesses upon which the Catholics were condemned, he irrefraga

To Le Maitre and Patru, posterity have insisted, in spite of the author's judgment, on awarding the highest place at the French Bar in the seventeenth century. They are thus compared, or, more properly, contrasted by Mr. Hallam: "The forensic speeches of Le Maitre are more eloquent in a popular sense of the word, more ardent, more imaginative than those of Patru; the one addresses the judges alone, the other has a view to the audience; the one seeks the success of his cause alone, the other that and his own glory together; the one will be more perused by the lovers of legal reasoning, the other by the majority of mankind; the one more resembles the oratory of Demosthenes for his private clients, the other those of Cicero. Le Maitre is fervid and brilliant; he hurries us with him; in all his pleadings, warmth is his first characteristic, and a certain elegance is the second. In the power of statement I do not perceive that he is inferior to Patru; both are excellent. Wherever great moral or social topics, or extensive views of history and human nature can be employed, Le Maitre has the advantage. Both are concise relative to the common verbosity of the Bar, but Le Maitre has much more that might be retrenched. He has less simplicity, less purity of taste than Patru; his animated language would, in our courts, be frequently effective with a jury, but would seem too indefinite and commonplace to the judges; we should crowd to hear Le Maitre, we should be compelled to decide with Patru."— Hist. of Lit., vol. ii., p. 228.-Am. Ed.

See also Appendix B.

bly proves their innocence, he moves your compassion for the fate of the unfortunate persons, whose misfortunes he recounts, and he stamps with perpetual infamy the memory of the invented that absurd calumny. demonstration carried farther.

famous Oates, who Never was moral Nor ought we to

forget that in this work Arnaud justifies the Jesuits whom he hated, and defends their cause with a zeal as noble as affecting.

It were doubtless to be wished that this celebrated Arnaud had always selected subjects equally proper for the display of his talents. He was only in his twenty-eighth year when Des Cartes consulted him on his " Physical Meditations," and was astonished at the depth of his genius. He was born with the spirit of a warrior. The works he composed were chiefly polemical. But he deserves to be ranked among the most eloquent men of his age. We know that he was a most profound grammarian, and that he equalled Malebranche in metaphysics. Boileau esteemed him as his oracle in poetry; he remained constantly attached to him, notwithstanding his long misfortunes; and afterward rendered homage to the merit of this illustrious exile, in his epitaph for Bourdaloue, whom he styles, "after Arnaud, the most illustrious man in France."*

* To these brief notices of the great lights of the French Bar in the seventeenth century, it may be proper to add one or two sketches of English barristers, drawn by the hand of

SECTION XIV.

OF CICERO.

It would be a vain attempt to excuse the distance so perceptible between the advocates of the French

a master.* "It is to the Forum, and not the Senate, that we must hasten, if we would witness the 'coronam multiplicem, judicium erectum, crebras assensiones, multas admirationes, risum cum velit, cum velit fletum, in Scenâ Roscium;' in fine, if we would see this great man (ERSKINE) in his element and in his glory. Nor let it be deemed trivial or beneath the historian's province to mark that noble figure, every look of whose countenance is expressive, every motion of whose form is graceful; an eye that sparkles and pierces, and almost assures victory while it speaks audience ere the tongue.' Juries have declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him when he had riveted, and, as it were, fascinated them by his first glance; and it used to be a common remark of men who observed his motions, that they resembled those of a blood horse; as light, as limber, as much betokening strength and speed, as free from all gross superfluity or encumbrance. Then hear his voice of surpassing sweetness-clear, flexible, strong, exquisitely fitted to strains of serious earnestness--deficient in compass, indeed, and much less fitted to express indignation or even scorn than pathos, but wholly free from either harshness or monotony. All these, however, and even his chaste, dignified, and appropriate action, were very small parts of this wonderful advocate's excellence. He had a thorough knowledge of men-of their passions and their feelings; * Lord Brougham.

Bar and the orators of the Roman Senate, by subgesting the different interests which were intrusted

he knew every avenue to the heart, and could at will make all its chords vibrate to his touch. His fancy, though never playful in public, where he had his whole faculties under the most severe control, was lively and brilliant; when he gave it vent and scope it was eminently sportive, but while representing his client it was wholly subservient to that in which his whole soul was wrapped up, and to which each faculty of body and mind was subdued, the success of the cause. His argumentative powers were of the highest order; clear in his statements, close in his applications, unwearied and never to be diverted in his deductions; with a quick and sure perception of his point, and undeviating in the pursuit of whatever established it; endued with a nice discernment of the relative importance and weight of different arguments, and the faculty of assigning to each its proper place, so as to bring forward the main body of the reasoning in bold relief, and with its full breadth, and not weaken its effect by distracting and disturbing the attention of the audience among lesser particulars. His understanding was eminently legal; though he had never made himself a great lawyer, yet he could conduct a purely legal argument with the most perfect success; and his familiarity with all the ordinary matters of his profession was abundantly sufficient for the purposes of the forum. His memory was accurate and retentive in an extraordinary degree; nor did he ever, during the trial of a cause, forget any matter, how trifling soever, that belonged to it. His presence of mind was perfect in action, that is, before the jury, when a line is to be taken upon the instant, and a question risked to a