first plaudits of his theatre on the determination of his harangue, than the multitude outside the court, taking up the acclamations which were heard within the building, expressed their feelings with such deafening clamor, and with so many signs of riotous intention, that Erskine was entreated to leave the court and soothe the passions of the mob with a few words of exhortation. In compliance with this suggestion he left the court, and forthwith addressed the dense out-door assembly in clear, ringing tones that were audible in Ludgate Hill, at one end of the Old Bailey, and to the billowy sea of human heads that surged round St. Sepulchre's Church at the other extremity of the dismal thoroughfare. At the subsequent trial of John Horne Tooke, Sir John Scott, unwilling that Erskine should enjoy a monopoly of theatrical artifice, endeavored to create a diversion in favor of the government by a display of those lachrymose powers, which Byron ridiculed in the following century. "I can endure anything but an attack on my good name," exclaimed the Attorney General, in reply to a criticism directed against his mode of conducting the prosecution; "my good name is the little patrimony I have to leave to my children, and, with God's help, gentlemen of the jury, I will leave it to them unimpaired." As he uttered these words tears suffused the eyes which, at a later period of the lawyer's career, used to moisten the woolsack in the House of Lords-- "Because the Catholics would not rise, In spite of his prayers and his prophecies." For a moment Horne Tooke, who persisted in regarding all the circumstances of his perilous position as farcical, smiled at the lawyer's outburst in silent amusement; but as soon as he saw a sympathetic brightness in the eyes of one of the jury, the dexterous demagogue with characteristic humor and effrontery accused Sir John Mitford, the Solicitor General, of needless sympathy with the sentimental disturbance of his colleague. "Do you know what Sir John Mitford is crying about?" the prisoner inquired of the jury. "He is thinking of the destitute condition of Sir John Scott's children, and the _little patrimony_ they are likely to divide among them." The jury and all present were not more tickled by the satire upon the Attorney General than by the indignant surprise which enlivened the face of Sir John Mitford, who was not at all prone to tears, and had certainly manifested no pity for John Scott's forlorn condition. CHAPTER XXIX. "THE PLAY'S THE THING."