Atlantic Monthly | Page 8

of a court-room to the intelligent spectator.
I remember, long ago, being attracted by the distinction of the counsel,
and the local importance of the cause, into the court-room. The
prisoner's counsel were the strongest and cunningest lawyers in the
Commonwealth. They drove the attorney for the State from corner to
corner, taking his reasons from under him, and reducing him to silence,
but not to submission. When hard-pressed, he revenged himself, in his
turn, on the judge, by requiring the court to define what salvage was.
The court, thus pushed, tried words, and said everything it could think
of to fill the time, supposing cases, and describing duties of insurers,
captains, pilots, and miscellaneous sea-officers that are or might
be,--like a schoolmaster puzzled by a hard sum, who reads the context
with emphasis. But all this flood not serving the cuttle-fish to get away
in, the horrible shark of the district-attorney being still there, grimly
awaiting with his "The court must define,"--the poor court pleaded its
inferiority. The superior court must establish the law for this, and it
read away piteously the decisions of the Supreme Court, but read to
those who had no pity. The judge was forced at last to rule something,

and the lawyers saved their rogue under the fog of a definition. The
parts were so well cast and discriminated, that it was an interesting
game to watch. The government was well enough represented. It was
stupid, but it had a strong will and possession, and stood on that to the
last. The judge had a task beyond his preparation, yet his position
remained real; he was there to represent a great reality, the justice of
states, which we could well enough see beetling over his head, and
which his trifling talk nowise affected, and did not impede, since he
was entirely well-meaning.
The statement of the fact, however, sinks before the statement of the
law, which requires immeasurably higher powers, and is a rarest gift,
being in all great masters one and the same thing,--in lawyers, nothing
technical, but always some piece of common sense, alike interesting to
laymen as to clerks. Lord Mansfield's merit is the merit of common
sense. It is the same quality we admire in Aristotle, Montaigne,
Cervantes, or in Samuel Johnson, or Franklin. Its application to law
seems quite accidental. Each of Mansfield's famous decisions contains
a level sentence or two, which hit the mark. His sentences are not
always finished to the eye, but are finished to the mind. The sentences
are involved, but a solid proposition is set forth, a true distinction is
drawn. They come from and they go to the sound human understanding;
and I read, without surprise, that the black-letter lawyers of the day
sneered at his "equitable decisions," as if they were not also learned.
This, indeed, is what speech is for, to make the statement; and all that is
called eloquence seems to me of little use, for the most part, to those
who have it, but inestimable to such as have something to say.
Next to the knowledge of the fact and its law, is method, which
constitutes the genius and efficiency of all remarkable men. A crowd of
men go up to Faneuil Hall; they are all pretty well acquainted with the
object of the meeting; they have all read the facts in the same
newspapers. The orator possesses no information which his hearers
have not; yet he teaches them to see the thing with his eyes. By the new
placing, the circumstances acquire new solidity and worth. Every fact
gains consequence by his naming it, and trifles become important. His
expressions fix themselves in men's memories, and fly from mouth to
mouth. His mind has some new principle of order. Where he looks, all
things fly into their places. What will he say next? Let this man speak,

and this man only. By applying the habits of a higher style of thought
to the common affairs of this world, he introduces beauty and
magnificence wherever he goes. Such a power was Burke's, and of this
genius we have had some brilliant examples in our own political and
legal men.
Imagery. The orator must be, to a certain extent, a poet. We are such
imaginative creatures, that nothing so works on the human mind,
barbarous or civil, as a trope. Condense some daily experience into a
glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified. They feel as if they
already possessed some new right and power over a fact, which they
can detach, and so completely master in thought. It is a wonderful aid
to the memory, which carries away the image, and never loses it. A
popular assembly, like the House of Commons, or the French Chamber,
or the American Congress, is