obstinacy (as it was called) would, perhaps, in most cases, be impolitic for his client, as causes are now conducted, yet in this instance he obtained and merited a verdict.

Of wit or humour Mr. MARRY AT has not a particle: he probably never made nor relished a joke in his life; but he is not deficient in good sense and its companiondiscretion. His greatest excellence is zeal, and his greatest defect ignorance.

MR. SERGEANT BEST.

Quick wits be commonly apt to take, unapt to keep; more quick to enter speedily, than able to pierce far; even like oversharp tools whose edges be very soon turned.Roger Ascham's Schoolmaster.

WHEN We reflect upon the many qualifications necessary for a perfect advocate, according to the mode in which law is now administered in this country;-when we remember that he must possess much more than the great pattern of eloquence required in an orator;that he ought to be gifted not only with extraordinary powers of language-with great learning, general and particular, but also with discretion and a peculiar quickness, acumen, and cunning, apparently inconsistent with his higher and nobler faculties,

it makes us despair of ever beholding at our bar an individual so endowed. Experience too shews, that such despair is not ill-founded; for most of the qualifications above enumerated are rare even in their separate excellence, and few have ever figured in the profession who have enjoyed more than two or three in combination. To go no further back than the memory of some of our younger legal aspirants -Mingay was shrewd and forcible, but vain and ignorant; Erskine was eloquent and energetic, but wanted much legal knowledge and a little legal cunning; Garrow had quickness and cunning beyond any of his rivals, but was deficient in the lowest elements of learning; and Gibbs, with scholarship, a knowledge of his profession, both in its magnitude and in its minuteness, had scarcely a spark of eloquence, and was outwitted by men of half his talents and one tenth-part of his attainments. But as there are in the law so many different departments, room is found for men of all kinds-the dullest can obtain employment, and the brightest, if he will at first condescend to a few of the tricks of

trade, and if he have sufficient firmness, may make occasions for the display of his powers.

The subject of the present criticism is taken from the Court of Common Pleas, with the proceedings of which the public at large is comparatively but little acquainted. The smallness of all our Courts renders it impossible that many visitors should be admitted; and, generally speaking, an opinion is formed of the merits of Advocates from the reports in the newspapers of trials in which they have been concerned but it is somewhat singular, that while every day a long detail is given of the business of the King's Bench, little or no notice is taken of the Common Pleas. It has surprised many persons, that while in the former the cause-paper is over-loaded, so that one Judge is almost incompetent to superintend the decisions, in the latter they are comparatively few, though frequently important. Some have attributed this disparity to a want of confidence in the Judges; but surely this is paying an ill-compliment