his relations and friends to back his cause
in court; and it is our consolation to feel
that there would have been nothing in that
system to prevent the lady's uncle and
cousins, had they been so minded, from
claiming a hearing after herself and her
father, and so extending the twenty-five
days of that memorable hearing to an
inappreciable length. The case of Dr. Thom,
too, threatened at one time, to the eternal
scandal of our law, to afford another
instance of the same kind. Most thankful
may we be that the danger has been
averted, and that one of the gravest and
most momentous inquiries of modern times
is not to be converted into an encounter of
wits between an unaccustomed layman and
a strong bar of trained and skilful
advocates. The public attention thus directed
to these cases, however, it may not be
without some interest to trace, as briefly as
may be, something of the rise and history
of the professional advocate, evolving him,
as we shall,* chiefly from the interesting
and scholar-like pages of Mr. Forsyth's
Hortensius, a book in which much quaint
and various learning on matters connected
with the history of the bar is pleasantly
collected.
* It is as well, nowadays, to add, with the sanction
and kind assistance of the author.

An advocate and a lawyer, though in
accordance with common usage we have given
the latter sense to D'Argis's "avocat," are
two very different people, and legal
knowledge may be said, even now, to be more
an accident than the foundation of an
advocate's training. It belongs to him, as a
smattering of all knowledge belongs to
him, as matter for the exercise of his
powers of talk. All that Cato required of
the advocate was, that he should be "a
good man skilled in talking;" and, the
element of goodness more or less modified
by circumstances, such the eminent
nisiprius barrister very much remains. In
Athens and at Rome, until some period
difficult to fix, advocacy and law were
things apart. Athens, indeed, had no
lawyers properly so called, unless we seek
them in the "logographers," who wrote
and composed the speeches that were to be
delivered in court by others; and, at Rome,
the jurisconsults, and the "prudentes," the
"procuratores," and the "cognitores,"
chamber-lawyers as we should call them
now, were not given to practise in the
forum—the first recorded instance of the
appearance of one of them in that capacity
having resulted in disastrous failure. One
Scævola, the wisest jurist of his time, took
on himself to argue a will case, as, with
some confidence, he might, seeing that it
turned entirely on a point of law, against
his learned friend Crassus, who boasted of
much eloquence, but no law. And Crassus
won, probably because he was put up to
his points by some one as good as Scævola,
or that he knew more than he allowed, while
in the matter of speaking he had it all his
own way. Cicero was wont to assert that
he knew no law, but that in three days he
could make himself as good as any
jurisconsult of them all; but in comment on
the silly boast, we may read Niebuhr's
acute criticism, that, though he may have
had no scientific view of the law, he had
probably very sufficient practical
knowledge of it. In the difference between the
practical and the scientific knowledge lies
the distinction between the advocate and
the lawyer.

But if it is right that we, for our present
purpose, should not confound the lawyer
and the advocate, to the world, which
much affects generalities, especially when
abusive, a lawyer is a lawyer, and there ia
an end of him. And a pleasant time the
lawyers have had of it from the laity, since
Lucian first began to gird at the "clever
fellows ready to burst themselves for a
three-obol fee," and Juvenal let loose the
flood-gates of his magnificent abuse upon
the hapless head of the barrister.

  Men of your large profession, who could speak
  To every cause, and things mere contraries,
  Till they were hoarse again, yet all be law.

  So wise, so grave, of so perplexed a tongue,
  And loud withal, that could not wag, nor scarce
  Lie still, without a fee.

So writes rare Ben Jonson of the profession
that Gulliver further describes as
"bred up in the art of proving, by words
multiplied for the purpose, that white is
black and black is white, according as they
are paid; but in all points out of their own
trade usually the most stupid and ignorant
generation among us."

"Pray tell me," says a brilliant French
writer, "where I am to find an advocate
with principles;" and Racine, in Les
Plaideurs, has the pleasant passage:

    Vous en ferez, je crois, d'excellents avocats:
    Ils sont fort ignorants.

Perhaps on these lines may have been based
a certain eminent barrister's reported
estimate of his own qualifications, when
attributing his success to "unbounded assurance,
popular manners, and total ignorance of
law."