know to be a scoundrel, and his attorney is what is termed a keen lawyer—a fellow who is pre-eminent for his dexterity in getting rogues out of scrapes, and honest folks into them; an haranguer of mobs, and a reformer of abuses, with a vast superflux of public spirit, and a marvellous paucity of private principle. True it is, there is enough of abuse to be reformed, and of corruption to be swept away, but purity cannot come of pollution, and when a knave puts his hand to the plough honest men are deterred from aiding in the labour. By such opponents everything that can be effected by hard swearing will be put in practice. I have already spoken to a counsel on the subject, who, on my putting him in possession of the particulars of the case, entered into it with an extraordinary exhibition of interest, and absolutely refused a fee. Though a young man, he is a sound lawyer, and possesses talents which render him infinitely better adapted for our purpose than a mere case-quoter. "Twelve months ago," continued Mr. Elphinstone, "he was a briefless barrister, and it happened that I had a cause, of a nature very similar to yours. I had had some opportunities of judging of his talents and legal knowledge, and determined to put the cause, which was one of considerable importance, into his hands; not from any favour towards him, but because I thought him peculiarly qualified to plead it with effect. The result justified my confidence, and we were mutually benefited: I gained a verdict, while he, from that hour, rose rapidly into notice, and has now a very considerable and improving practice." The trial came on in the following term, and it was deemed expedient by Mr. Elphinstone that Clara should be in court, as circumstances might arise to render a communication between the defendant and her attorney essential to her interests. It was with great difficulty that he overcame her repugnance to appear in so public a place, and it was only on his assurance that she should occupy a situation as little conspicuous as possible, that she consented to be present. The case was opened by the plaintiff's counsel (of course, upon the exparte statement of his brief), with the ability which distinguishes the English bar: the gist of his argument, in which he depended upon his witnesses to bear him out, was that Mr. Tomkins, at the time of executing the deed conveying the policy to Miss Stanley, was in a state of mind in which he would be a passive instrument in the hands of any designing person; that the defendant had, by a series of previous unremitting attentions, in which she allowed none to take a share, acquired an almost unlimited control over his mind, and that she had turned that influence into the channel of her own selfish purposes. His speech was delivered with great ability, and evidently produced no inconsiderable effect on the minds of the jury. When he had called and examined his first witness, the counsel on the opposite side rose for the purpose of proceeding in the crossexamination. The latter was a young man, with a high forehead, a nose somewhat inclining to the aquiline, and a full and piercing gray eye; while the paleness of his complexion, partly natural, and partly the result of close application to study, gave to his features, when in repose, a somewhat cold and statue-like appearance. The full deep melody of the tone in which he put his first question to the witness, startled Clara by its familiarity to her ear, and on shifting her position, to obtain a sight of the countenance of her advocate, she was surprised to recognize in him the gentleman who had been so welcome a guest at her father's table, and the sudden cessation of whose visits had been the subject of so much speculation and regret. Mr. Worthington, for such was his name, conducted his cross-examinations with a degree of shrewdness and tact, joined to a mildness of manner, which, in many instances, encouraged the garrulity of the witnesses, who were, for the most part, persons in an inferior station of life, and thus elicited much which did not altogether "dove-tail" with the context of their evidence. This portion of his duty having been accomplished, he commenced his reply, under the conviction that his task was one of no ordinary difficulty. He saw plainly that the opposite counsel had, by his eloquent and ingenious speech, succeeded in establishing a strong prejudice against the defendant in the minds of the jury. He felt, therefore, that much of his chance of success depended upon the effect with which he could combat his adversary with his own weapons. He commenced by stating the case of his client, and, in doing so, collected all its favourable points, and presented them to the jury in the simplest possible form. He then called their attention to the weaker points of his adversary-animadverting upon the nature of the opposing evidence, and referring to the prevarication of one witness, and the extraordinary lapse of memory in another. Conscious of the justice of his cause, he concluded his address by a direct appeal to the feelings of the jury. With the skill of a master, he gave a vivid to the stillness which prevailed. “We find for the DEFENDANT" were the words of the foreman, and no sooner were they pronounced than a suppressed murmur of satisfaction ran through the crowd, which was, of course, instantly checked by the judge, though he could not help exclaiming, "I entirely agree with you, gentlemen." sketch of his client's history, touching upon of enjoining silence, was the only interruption her youth, her misfortunes, her virtues, her accomplishments, as eminently calculated to enlist the sympathies and engage the affections of her benefactor. He put it to the jury if they would lend themselves to negative the kind intentions of the deceased, and dwelt feelingly upon the situation in which a verdict for the plaintiff would place her. Then, by a sudden transition, which showed him an adept in his art, he flung back, with indignant scorn, upon his opponents the imputation of selfishness. As he proceeded, his features gathered animation at every sentence, his cheek became flushed, and his eye flashed, and he concluded his speech with a sweeping torrent of eloquence, which, if it did not convince, had the effect of electrifying his hearers. The judge alone of all present was unmoved; he preserved throughout the same calm dignity so much in keeping with his office. Once or twice he had interposed between the counsel and a browbeaten witness, or reminded the former that he had asked a similar question before, and was trespassing upon the time of the court by putting it into other words. Clara's counsel then proceeded to call his witnesses, of whom I was one, and their testimony went to establish the fact that Mr. Tomkins was of perfectly "sound and disposing mind" at the time of the execution of the disputed deed, as well as to prove that, so far from the defendant assuming an exclusive control over the deceased, she had afforded every facility to his relations in their intercourse with him, and had actually, and at the risk of his displeasure, interposed her good offices in reconciling him to some of his relations with whom he had been at variance, and who gave testimony in court to that effect. The cross-examination of his witnesses elicited nothing which could shake their evidence; and the judge, after a short summary of the case, informed the jury that the question was more a matter of fact than one of law, and that therefore their verdict must be governed by the degree of credit which they attached to the witnesses on the respective sides, and left the issue entirely in their hands. The jury retired to consider their verdict, and from the duration of their absence it was to be inferred that they had some difficulty in making up their minds. In the meantime, a breathless anxiety appeared to pervade the court; the very barristers, in spite of their professional coldness, exhibited signs of impatience, and when the jury returned, the voice of the crier, in his then unnecessary duty To gratify Clara's desire to express personally her thanks to her generous advocate, Mr. Elphinstone invited him to dinner, during which the young barrister was frequently rallied on the unusual gravity of his manner. When the ladies had retired, the elder Mr. Elphinstone pleaded an engagement at an evening consultation, and left his son and Mr. Worthington together. "By the way, Arthur," said the former, "my mother, the girls, and Miss Stanley are off to the cottage at Dorking next month: you must go down with me for a week in the long vacătion." "Impossible, my good fellow!" was the answer; "you forget that I must go the circuit, and I have been retained in more causes than, I fear, I shall make myself master of in the interim." "Nonsense, man!" rejoined the other; "you may con your briefs at the cottage, if you like. There is the library at your service; you know I do not trouble it much, and the girls are always out of doors from morning to night. Come, you may as well spend a few of my remaining days of freedom with me, for I suppose you have heard that I am about to commit matrimony?" "I have," said Worthington, "and hope you may live long to enjoy the happiness which the virtues, beauty, and accomplishments of your destined bride cannot fail to confer." "I thank you, Arthur; but pray, what makes you so well acquainted with the young lady's beauty and accomplishments? Have you ever seen her?" inquired young Elphinstone. "Have I not dined with her?" said Worthington. Where and when?" asked his companion "Why, to-day at this table," responded the other. "You talk in riddles: pray speak out, and tell me whom you mean. "Miss Stanley, to be sure." "Clara Stanley!" exclaimed Harry in surprise; "what caused you to think I was going to marry her?" "The simple fact of your having been con stantly almost in her company, and showing her every possible attention, both at home and abroad. I am not singular in drawing the conclusion; all the world have set it down as a match." "Then, my dear fellow," replied Harry, "I pray you take this as an example that what all the world says is not necessarily true. I was a doomed man long before I had the pleasure of knowing Miss Stanley, and, being perfectly aware of it, she has treated me with a degree of frankness which possibly has favoured the misconception into which you and all the world' have fallen. I thought you knew I was engaged to Charlotte Percy." 'No, I did not; but now that I do know it," responded Worthington, seizing the claretjug, "I beg to drink to your happiness and speedy union." "I am much obliged to you, Arthur," said the other, with a smile of peculiar significance, "for I am convinced of your sincerity; and, now that I have let you into a secret, which I thought everybody knew, perhaps you will withdraw your plea, and go down to Dorking with us." "But what will my clients say?" was the inquiry. "Say?" replied Harry, "why, that you are labouring in your vocation, and have only moved your cause from one court into another, resembling it in one point at least, since the presiding divinity of each is represented as being blind." Worthington appeared not to understand the innuendo, but proposed their joining the ladies in the drawing-room, where his vivacity and glee formed a striking contrast to the gravity of his demeanour at the dinner table; a change which, though contributing in no trifling degree to the amusement of the evening, was perfectly inexplicable to every one but Harry, who kept his own counsel. About three weeks afterwards, as young Elphinstone, with his two sisters and Clara, was walking in the grounds at Dorking, they observed a horseman approaching in the direction of the cottage. can keep there. Have a care, sir," he continued, as he perceived Worthington, who had diverged from the road, riding up to a fence, by way of a short cut; "have a care, Arthur; remember you are retained in 'Dobbs versus Jenkins,' and have no right to break your neck without the plaintiff's permission." "Never fear," said his friend, as he cleared the fence; "I could ride almost before I could walk, and, though a little out of practice, am not to be brought up by a gooseberry bush." While he was speaking he rode up to the wicket, which opened from the meadow into the lawn, and, giving his horse to a servant, joined the party, from every individual of which he was welcomed, and not the least cordially by her whose form, from the first day in which he had seen her at her father's table, had never been absent from his mind. It would be somewhat antiquated to speak of love with reference to rural life, and therefore I will not shock the taste of my reader by quoting Shenstone on this occasion; the old poets, however, had a pretty notion of things in general, and when celebrating the influence of romantic scenery in disposing the heart to the tender passion, they drew as largely, I doubt not, upon their experience as on their imagination. For my own part, had I forsworn matrimony, I would confine myself to the metropolis, and plunge fearlessly into society, under the conviction that a man may carry his heart, like his purse, in safety through a crowd, and yet be robbed of it in a retired lane, a shady copse, or a lonely common. Arthur Worthington, however, had not taken the vow of celibacy, and was well content to lose his own heart, provided he could obtain another in exchange. I know not the particular spot, or the precise terms, in which he made a declaration of the sentiments with which Clara Stanley had inspired him; I only know that he sustained his reputation as an eloquent pleader, and gained a verdict from one whose gratitude and admiration he had previously excited by the generous and disinterested manner in which he had undertaken her cause, at a time when he believed her to be "The man of briefs," exclaimed Harry," and the betrothed of another. mounted on a real horse, as I live!" "Is there anything very wonderful in that?" inquired one of his sisters. "I suppose you think no one can mount a horse but yourself, Mr. Harry." "No," he replied; "I am quite aware that it is possible for any man, with the assistance of a groom and a joint-stool, to get upon the back of a horse, but it is not every person who VOL. IV. FOOL AND WISE. Endow the fool with sun and moon, 91 COVENTRY PATMORE. FAREWELL TO NANCY. BY ROBERT BURNS.1 Ae fond kiss and then we sever; Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, Naething could resist my Nancy: But to see her, was to love her; Love but her, and love for ever.Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met-or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted. Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest! Deep in heart-wrung tears I pledge thee, SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. She was a phantom of delight To be a moment's ornament; I saw her upon nearer view, A spirit, yet a woman too! A countenance in which did meet A creature not too bright or good And now I see with eyes serene THE MINISTER'S WIG. BY JOHN GALT. By an agreement with the session (said Mr. Birkwhistle) I was invited to preach the action sermon at Kilmartin, and my new wig coming home from Glasgow by the Saltcoats carrier on the Thursday afore, I took it unopened on the Saturday evening in the box to the manse, where I was to bide during the preachings with the widow. It happened, however, that in going in the stage-fly from my own parish to Kilmartin, a dreadful shower came on, and the box, with my new wig thereintil, being on the outside tap of the coach, the wind blew and the rain fell, and by the help and colleaguery of the twa, the seams of the box were invaded, and the wig, when I took it out on the Saturday night, was just a clash o' weet. At that time o' night, there wasna a barber to be had for love or money within three miles o' the manse; indeed, I dinna think, for that matter, there was a creature o' the sort within the bounds and jurisdictions of the parish, so that I could make no better o't than to borrow the dredge-box out of the kitchen, and dress the wig with my own hands. Although Mr. Keckle had been buried but the week before, the mistress, as a' ministers wives of the right gospel and evangelical kind should be, was in a wholesome state of composity; and seeing what I was ettling at, said to me, the minister had a blockhead whereon he was wont to dress and fribble his wig, and that, although it was a sair heart to her to see ony other man's wig upon the same, I was 1 Sir Walter Scott said that the four lines beginning welcome to use my freedoms therewith. Ac "Had we never loved sae kindly," "contains the essence of a thousand love-tales." Byron used the stanza as the motto to his Bride of Abydos. 1 cordingly, the blockhead on the end of a stick. like the shank of a carpet besom, was brought intil the room; and the same being stuck into the finger-hole of a buffet-stool, I set myself to dress and fribble with my new wig, and Mrs. Keckle the while sat beside me, and we had some very edifying conversation indeed. During our discoursing, as I was not a deacon at the dressing of wigs, I was obligated now and then to contemplate and consider the effect of my fribbling at a distance, and to give Mrs. Keckle the dredge-box to shake the flour on where it was seen to be wanting. But all this was done in great sincerity of heart between her and me; although, to be sure, it was none of the most zealous kind of religion on my part, to be fribbling with my hands and comb at the wig, and saying at the same time with my tongue orthodox texts out of the Scriptures. Nor, in like manner, was it just what could be hoped for, that Mrs. Keckle, when I spoke to her on the everlasting joys of an eternal salvation, where friends meet to part no more, saying, "A bit pluff with the box there on the left curls" (in the way of a parenthesis), that she wouldna feel a great deal; but for all that, we did our part well, and she was long after heard to say, that she had never been more edified in her life than when she helped me to dress my wig on that occasion. But all is vanity and vexation of spirit in this world of sin and misery. When the wig was dressed, and as white and beautiful to the eye of man as a cauliflower, I took it from off its stance on the blockhead, which was a great shortsightedness of me to do, and I prinned it to the curtain of the bed, in the room wherein I was instructed by Mrs. Keckle to sleep. Little did either me or that worthy woman dream of the mischief that was then brewing and hatching, against the great care and occupation wherewith we had in a manner regenerated the periwig into its primitive style of perfectness. But you must understand that Mrs. Keckle had a black cat that was not past the pranks of kittenhood, though in outwardly show a most douce and well-comported beast; and what would ye think baudrons was doing all the time that the mistress and me were so eydent about the wig? She was sitting on a chair, watching every pluff that I gave, and meditating, with the device of an evil spirit, how to spoil all the bravery that I was so industriously endeavouring to restore into its proper pedigree and formalities. I have long had a notion that black cats are no overly canny, and the conduct of Mrs. Keckle's was an evidential kithing to the effect that there is nothing of uncharitableness in that notion of mine; howsomever, no to enlarge on such points of philosophical controversy, the wig being put in order, I carried it to the bed-room, and, as I was saying, prinned it to the bedcurtains, and then went down stairs again to the parlour to make exercise, and to taste Mrs. Keckle's mutton ham, by way of a relish to a tumbler of toddy, having declined any sort of methodical supper. Considering the melancholious necessity that had occasioned my coming to the Kilmartin Manse, I was beholden to enlarge a little after supper with Mrs. Keckle, by which the tumbler of toddy was exhausted before I had made an end of my exhortation, which the mistress seeing, she said that if I would make another cheerer she would partake in a glass with me. It's no my habit to go such lengths at ony time, the more especially on a Saturday night; but she was so pressing that I could not but gratify her; so I made the second tumbler, and weel I wat it was baith nappy and good; for in brewing I had an e'e to pleasing Mrs. Keckle, and knowing that the leddies like it strong and sweet, I wasna sparing either of the spirit bottle or the sugar bowl. But I trow both the widow and me had to rue the consequences that befell us in that night; for when I went up again intil the bed-room, I was what ye would call a thought off the nail, by the which my sleep wasna just what it should have been, and dreams and visions of all sorts came hovering about my pillow, and at times I felt, as it were, the bed whirling round. In this condition, with a bit dover now and then, I lay till the hour of midnight, at the which season I had a strange dream-wherein I thought my wig was kindled by twa candles of a deadly yellow light, and then I beheld, as it were, an imp of darkness dancing at my bed-side, whereat I turned myself round and covered my head with the clothes, just in an eerie mood, between sleeping and waking. I had not, however, lain long in that posture, when I felt, as I thought, a hand clamming softly over the bed-clothes like a temptation, and it was past the compass of my power to think what it could be. By and by, I heard a dreadful thud on the floor, and something moving in the darkness; so I raised my head in a courageous manner to see and question who was there. But judge what I suffered when I beheld, by the dim glimmer of the starlight of the window, that the curtains of the bed were awfully shaken, and every now and then what I thought a woman with a mutch keeking in upon me. The little gude |