whatever. "Now, I've knocked him," his opponent, "down"--he would say at such a moment to his junior--"don't let him get up again! I must go off to the House of Lords--and will come back if you want me! But mind, if he attempt to do so or so--to put in such and such a paper, on no account allow it; send for me, and fight till I come." He possessed, to an extraordinary degree, the power of rapidly transferring his undivided and undisturbed attention to every thing, great and small, which could be brought before it. A single glance of his eye penetrated the most obscure and perplexing parts of a case--a touch of his master-hand disentangled apparently inextricable complexities. He could apply, with beautiful promptitude and precision, some maxim or principle which had not occurred to those who had devoted long and anxious attention to the case, and which at once dissolved the difficulty. Whether acting on the offensive or defensive, he was equally characterised by the great qualities essential to successful advocacy; but perhaps, when acting on the offensive, he displayed more formidable powers. He tripped up the heels of the most wary and experienced antagonists, just when they imagined themselves in the very act of throwing him. It was almost useless to quote a "_case_" against him. Though the party doing so deemed it precisely in point in his favour, and on that ground was stopped by the court from proceeding further, Sir William Follett would ask for the case; and rising up, after a momentary glance at it, show that it was perfectly distinguishable from that before the court, and, in a few minutes' time, would be interrupted by the court, with--"We think, Mr ----, that you had better resume your argument!" If, on such occasions, Sir William's opponent were not a ready and dextrous legal logician, his client would wish that he had secured Sir William Follett. His power of drawing distinctions and detecting analogies--and that, too, on the spur of the moment--was almost unequalled. It was in vain for an opponent to _feel_ that the suggested distinction was without a difference--he could not _prove_ it to be so--he could not demonstrate the fallacy which had been imposed on even a strong court by that exquisite astuteness which, however sinister, was carried off by a charming air of frankness and confidence in the validity of the distinction. On such an occasion, directly the cause was over he would turn round and say, laughingly, to his discomfited opponent, "You haven't your wits about you this morning--why didn't you quote such and such case?" or "say so and so?" Such things were never said in an unpleasant manner--never truculently--never triumphantly--but simply with a good-humoured, cheerful air of _badinage_, which, so far from irritating you, took off the edge of vexation, and set you almost laughing at yourself for having suffered yourself to be so completely circumvented.