under his notice, that "much might be said on both sides." But Felix Binocular improved upon this theory; for, though he had two ways of looking at every question, and confessed, like Sir Roger, that much might be said on both sides, he was convinced the most could always be said on that side where his words had the quality of Midas' touch, and turned into gold as they fell.

"I abhor a pun," he would sometimes observe, when he was in a jocose humor with himself, “and have no personal antipathies or predilections towards mankind in general; but, certainly, in what concerns my clients, I have a sort of preference for your pursey gentlemen." His female clients of the same class, he used to call his guinea-hens, by way of an appropriate correlative. He generally had, or professed to have, a double motive for whatever he did; and, in his pleadings, usually divided his subject into two heads; taking a two-fold view of it in all its bearings; whence he acquired the nick-name of the "bicipital lawyer," and his mode of reasoning, that of the "bifarious school of oratory." So inveterate was this habit in him, of looking at both sides, that one day when he had purchased a beautiful Claude, for seven hundred guineas, his satisfaction was only half complete, till he had turned it round, to see what was on the other side. "Humph!" said he, "it is the same in every thing, I find; the best side is always that which is paid for." But this propensity, strong as it was, had its limits. Felix Binocular was never known to care about the outside of a full pocket, or the inside of an empty one.

Every occurrence of those tender years, when the plastic mind receives its earliest impressions, and every individual retrospect of advancing years, had a double quality in it. And it so chanced, that before he was one-and-twenty, having married against his father's will, he was turned adrift in the world, (being a second son, and his elder brother prone to the vice of longevity,) with scarcely any other inheritance, to provide for a fast increasing family, (his wife having twice presented him with twins, at regular intervals of two years each,) than what he could obtain by his wits. The difficulties he consequently had to struggle with, made him, sometimes almost beside himself; and, like the weird sisters he often found it—

Double, double toil and trouble,

To make the fire burn,' and 'the cauldron bubble.'

Felix Binocular, however, was one of those men who work their way through the jostling crowd of life, and who deserve to do so; for he diligently prepared himself to take advantage of any opening. But it was long before he had an opportunity of putting to the test a maxim of Frederick the Great-that though a lucky accident may lift a man from the ground, it is only by the vigour of his own wing he can sustain his elevation. At length, after dangling about the courts of Westminster Hall for several terms, and bustling in and out with a blue bag, stuffed with everything, except briefs, (on one occasion it actually contained a fine Norfolk turkey and a pair of his wife's stays, which had been ordered

the day before, and were forgotten to be sent home,) he was retained to lead in a cause which involved the alleged invasion of a right of patent. Were it not, that the fact is capable of proof, by a reference to the last edition of " Manning and Ryland's Report's," it would appear almost like invention, to state that this, his first brief, had its DOUBLE quality. For, what was the question to be tried? Neither more nor less than whether the plaintiff or respondent had the prior claim to the invention of "the patent double-bladed oyster-knife;" an instrument so constructed, that while one blade divided the shell, the other, running in a small groove, parallel to it, separated, at the same moment, and without mutilation, the oyster. Felix was retained for the defendant, and exerted himself con amore; for oysters were almost the only fish he ever ate; a predilection created, no doubt, by the circumstance of their being bivalvular. He not only gained the cause for his client, but exhibited, in the course of the trial, so much legal acuteness, so much dexterity in the cross-examination of the plaintiff's witnesses, and such a happy union, of sound argument, with refined humour, in his address to the jury, that a second brief was put into his hands before he left the court.

From this moment his success, though slow, was certain. Every month extended his busi. ness, and multiplied his opportunities of developing those natural and acquired talents, which pre-eminently qualified him to attain distinction at the bar. He was well grounded in the principles and precedents of the common, and well

read in the enactments of the statute, law. He had found leisure, too, to cultivate the higher branches of general literature; and possessing an easy, unpremeditated flow of elocution which sometimes warmed into eloquence, it gave him great power over a jury, whenever it was his object to debauch their reason by inflaming their passions. No man could better brow-beat an honest, tickle a simple, or wrench the truth out of a reluctant witness, than Felix Binocular. No one could identify himself more completely, for the time, with his client. His brief was his oracle; and what he was instructed to believe, nothing could make him disbelieve-till scepticism had its price, and then he was ready to believe either side. It was this singular faculty, which is pos sessed in perfection only by lawyers-(a sort of legal fiction, or moral metempsychosis, by which a man sees and reasons with the eyes and head of another,) that enabled him, on all occasions, to fulfil the injunction of Hamlet to his mother

"Assume a virtue, though he had it not."

There were two occasions, in the course of Felix Binocular's professional career, after he had risen to distinguished eminence, which so strikingly displayed the facility he possessed of looking at both sides of a question, that they deserve to be recorded. The one was, his being retained in two cases of crim. con., both of which were heard the same day, In the first, he was counsel for the plaintiff; in the second, for the defendant. They seemed to resemble each other in all their leading facts; but Felix found a won.

D

derful difference between them, when he consulted his briefs. In what this difference consisted, will be best understood, by giving the peroration of his speech to the jury, in both.

"And now, gentlemen," he exclaimed, addressing them as counsel for the PLAINTIFF, "in the discharge of a painful duty, I have laid before you all the circumstances of this revolting case. I ask for no vindictive damages at your hands; but I do ask, and I feel assured I shall not ask in vain, for such a verdict, as will operate to check this growing evil among us. You cannot, gentlemen of the jury, band back to the heart-broken husband, and to his dishonored children, (dishonored in the crime of their guilty mother,) his happiness, or their pride: you cannot wash out the lecherous stain, or restore the forfeited character: you cannot raise the fallen matron from the depths of her iniquity; neither can you cleanse, from its pollution, the now tainted current of their mingled bloods: you cannot-would to God you could! give my client what he has lost for ever! Alas! gentlemen, it were as easy for you to revive the verdure of a scathed and withered tree, as to cast the freshness of virtue over the rottenness and corruption of vice. But what you can do, and what I read, in the kindling indignation of your countenances, you will do, is this-to strike down the insolent pride of the spoiler-to throw round the sanctuary of private life the strong defences of penal laws--and to teach the beartless libertine, that when be breaks through them in the hot chase of his libidinous desires, it is not alone to his conscience and his God, that he shall be answerable. Gentlemen of the jury, are you busbands? Are you fathers?— But why do I ask these questions? You are menyou are Englishmen and you will know, therefore,