execution, who might answer with the gentleman in the New Whig Guide, when questioned respecting their information on any point, that they are "wholly ignorant and uninformed on that and all other subjects." The assertion would probably be very true; but what would be the utility of it? As for myself, I can not say with the gentleman just mentioned, that "I am not such a fool as I am generally supposed to be;" for I am persuaded that I have credit for quite as much sense as I actually possess, and in many cases I have found that people think I have more knowledge than I really have. I have never undeceived them, and I never will: the only sentiment I feel on such occasions is a desire to justify their opinions. I think it is Mungo Park, who says, in his Travels, that he has suffered more than he will ever tell: like him I say, I am more ignorant than I will ever tell. He is a bungler indeed, who can not, in this age of shallowness and skin-deep learning, travel through the world without exposing himself. There are a thousand royal roads to superficial knowledge. It does not require much to make a ma intellect passable: if he will only read the reviews, he w be very well qualified for general society. A German schol reads gentleabout sixteen hours a day on an average; if an Engl man will devote the same portion of time every me to learning, he may cut a very respectable figure. It is shame, where knowledge is so cheap, that any man should less that he has not a competent share of it. He may read oth the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Reviews for fourpence and then he is qualified to talk with the learned of the land To prevent yourself from exposing your ignorance is not, after all, a difficult task. Πολλακις ή γλώττη προτρέχει την διάνοια says Isocrates, the tongue outstrips the judgment very often; if you are silent, nobody knows that you could not say something very much to the purpose. When Megabysus paid a visit to Appelles in his painting-room, he stood gazing on the pictures for some time without speaking, but at last he began to give his opinion on the painter's labours. Appelles could not brook this, and exclaimed, "While thou wast silent, I thought thee some extraordinary person by thy chain and thy rich hah; but now that we have heard thee speak, there is not the eanest boy in my shop that does not despise thee." Pyth goras enjoined silace to his disciples, not so much that they right acquire knowledge, for that is generally gained by free mmunication, but at they might not expose themselves by Jetraying their ignoraice. May it not be the case that women i general are reputed to possess inferior intellects to men, meray because, by talking more than men, they more frequently display their deficiencies in knowledge? Lest the foundation of this argument should be denied, I beg leave to quote a

Youth is said to be the period for the acquisition of knowledge; so perhaps it is, but it is not the best for the retention of it. The memory is most pliant at that age, but then it is most fickle, and the mind seldom dwells on grave and useful matter; for what is useful is, unfortunately, generally disagreeable. In my own case at least, I find that many of the acquisitions of my non-age have aeady forsaken me. I know many persons, whom I do not becapable of working a rule-of-three sum, who were formerly, I hav no doubt, very expert at such matters. I really suspect, that as rople grow older, the knowledge they have acquired in youth graually deserts them, for which they make amends by a more pruden and ingenious concealment of their increasing ignorance. In t knowledge of the world, of course, they can not avoid making son. this to be my own cae. All my mathematics are fled; algebra, progress. It is with great pain that I find trigonometry, fluxions, sometry, have all oozed through my head, and passed across my memory like the ghosts in Macbeth. If there be any consolation in companionship, I believe I may enjoy it, for I observe the same process in the minds of my acquaintance. If a "little learning is a dangerous thing,"

Then have I in me something dangerous,

Which let your wisdom fear.

THE nature of my puruits has occasionaly led me through various works, in which the introduction and ssing of laws in either House of Parliament ave been recorded. The views with. which new bills were institutel, the manner in whis, they were accepted or resisted, and the modifications which they received, are sometimes very necessary to be known, and often guide us to the true construction of the laws, as they now stand. Even

when they supply no assistance of that kind, collections of the different opinions, which have been delivered upon an old statute, present matter for study at once amusing and instructive. I rejoice when I see one of those venerable sages of the law, whom we have been accustomed to look to as nearly infallible, opposed, and now and then driven from his ground, by a sturdy, unsophisticated country gentleman. The uncompromising love of liberty in the latter, the determined spirit with which he contends for his opinion, the homely energy of expression, or the undisciplined but manly eloquence, which he sometimes puts forth, have more charms for me than the most brilliant metaphors of many modern orators. From the pleasure and utility, which I have reaped, during these desultory incursions into the regions of parliamentary debate, I have often thought that it would be a curious and beneficial labour to trace the history of legislative elocution, from the times in which it was first permitted, to those in which it now maintains so great an ascendancy. In a country, such as this, where the exercise of eloquence may raise an individual to fortune and dignity, no enquiries subservient to that noble art can be without interest. It is not, however, to eloquence alone, that such enquiries might be useful. They would tend to throw a strong light upon the rise, progress, and perfection of that constitution, by the support of which this island has reached to its present rank among nations. They would show, moreover, that Parliament has not been, in the "olden time," altogether so destitute of eloquence as some writers would induce us to believe.

It may be true, that there is not, in the whole of our parliamentary records, one specimen of oratory, which could be compared with the best speeches of Demosthenes or Cicero. I shall not pre sume to say that this defect is entirely to be attributed to the habit of extemporaneous speaking, which has prevailed so much in both houses, or to the want of perfect reports of the most striking addresses, which have been delivered in them; but this I may venture to assert, that, even before the time of Chatham, there are many fragments of the purest eloquence to be met with--passionate appeals, which must have been surrounded by sentiments of a congenial character; and affecting perorations, which must have been preceded by arguments and narratives clothed in the warmest colours, which energy of feeling, or splendour of imagination, could impart.

The specimens, which I mean to produce, shall be taken within a period beginning with the reign of the first Henry, and ending with the accession of George III. After the latter epoch, eloquence rose to a much higher strain than it had ever before attempted; and the subject then assumes a different aspect, which is not within the range of my present design. But, before I pro

ceed to cite any passages, it may not be deemed superfluous to make some general observations on the great advantages which the ancients had over the moderns, in the encouragements and facilities, which were afforded them for the cultivation of eloquence.

The style of an oratorical address is necessarily regulated by the character and power of the audience, to whom it is directed. The speeches of Demosthenes, at least his best speeches, were all addressed to the people-the "men of Athens." Those which were delivered, in the course of his professional duties, in the court of the Archon, were in fact also addressed to a popular assembly; for we read, that five hundred, and not rarely a thousand or fifteen hundred judges, or, as we should say, jurors, sat to hear the same cause, who were chosen by lot, and who decided by a plurality of suffrages. The refinement of the Athenian people is proverbial. To earn the applause of this great tribunal, Demosthenes laboured, in youth and manhood, with incessant activity. What sensibility must an audience have possessed, for whose ears such a speaker thought it necessary to give harmony to his periods, and whose tastes he found capable of discriminating a common from a graceful expression, and a loose from a compact style! How passionately must we suppose his countrymen to have been devoted to the charms of eloquence, when we read, that, when Demosthenes was to plead, people flocked to hear him, not merely from the neighbourhood of the Parthenon, but from all parts of Greece! What assembly has England similar in character, equal in sensibility and in taste, to such a body as this?

The general character of the Roman people for refinement was greatly inferior to that of the Athenians. But the most excellent of Cicero's speeches were not addressed to the people. It is true, that he frequently harangued them from the rostrum. Whenever a great question was agitated, in which that orator took an active interest, (for instance, while he was pursuing measures against Cataline, which were discussed in the senate) it was his practice, when the house rose, to appear in the presence of the people, who were collected in anxious crowds outside, and to report to them the whole of the debate, which had taken place. On other occasions also he addressed the people; but his best orations are those, which he made as an advocate before the judges, or as a minister and a statesman before the senate.

Both of these bodies were refined hearers, but, what is still more essential to an orator, they were both likely to be persuaded by a powerful speaker. The judges decided upon a few general principles of law or equity, which were subject to infinite dispute when applied to particular cases; they were not bound to act upon precedents, and thus there was a hope always in the mind of the advocate, that the success of the cause under his

management depended, not so much upon his skill in law, as upon his powers of eloquence. Hence the Roman retoricians constantly inculcate the necessity of prepossessing the judges in our favour. They pretend to ascertain the periods in a pleading, when the attention of the judges is most awakened, when the expectation is most acute, and when the mind is most susceptible of impressions. But with us, nothing is addressed to the judges, save a mere dry, methodical string of arguments, which are drawn directly either from positive laws, or recorded decisions. Pathos of sentiment, ornament of expression, appeals to the feeling of the judges, are arts of rhetoric, so foreign to the matter in dispute, and to the tribunal which is to decide, that it would be quite absurd to attempt the use of them. Our judges are bound to act on law and precedent. They have nothing, or very little, to do with general principles. They discharge their duty under the solemn sanction of an oath; they can not diverge into personal or philosophical considerations from the palpable line before them. In this respect, our judges are very differently situated from the judges of republican Rome. These had to apply unlimited ideas of justice to a particular case, and thus an opportunity was given for eloquence to induce them to take different views, not only of the facts of the case itself, but of the principles by which it was to be tried. But here, so far as the judges are concerned, case rules case; nothing is left to an uncertain rule of justice; the nature of almost every possible dispute which brings men into a court of law, has been already settled; and the argument is decided, not by individuals liable to be influenced by eloquence, but by authorities, which may indeed be misconstrued by ingenuity, but which of themselves, speak only one invariable language.

It is true, that in the trial of actions, indictments, and informations, the jury are to be addressed; and they undoubtedly are liable to be affected, on many occasions, by a master in the art of oratory. And, in point of fact, we are not without pretensions to an emulation of Roman fame in this respect. The concluding years of the last century heard some very magnificent specimens of forensic eloquence from Erskine and Curran. The latter, indeed, was said to have sacrificed, in many instances, his character as a lawyer to his pre-eminence as a speaker. Erskine happily combined an intuitive knowledge of the constitution with attention to detail in one department of law, and to these he added a rich and electric eloquence, which has not been rivalled since he left the bar.

But although on trials by jury, an English counsel may have opportunities for eloquence, scarcely inferior to those which the Roman advocate possessed, yet how differently circumstanced