Mr. Crosbie, with all the advantages of a pleasing exterior, possessed the more solid qualifications of a vigorous intellect, a refined taste, and an eloquence that has never since been equalled at the bar. His integrity as a counsel could only be surpassed by his abilities as a pleader. In the first capacity, his acute judgment and great legal knowledge had long placed him in the highest rank. In the second, his thorough and confident acquaintance with the law of his case, his beautiful style of language, all “the pomp and circumstance” of matchless eloquence, commanded the attention of the bench in no ordinary degree; and while his talents did all that could be done in respect of moving the court, the excelling beauty of his oratory attracted immense crowds of admirers, whose sole disinterested object was to hear him. It is recorded of him that he was one day particularly brilliant—so brilliant as even to surprise his usual audience, the imperturbable Lords themselves. What rendered the circumstance more wonderful was, that the case happened to be extremely dull, common-place and uninteresting. The secret history of the matter was to the following effect:—A facetious contemporary, and intimate friend of Mr. Crosbie, the celebrated Lord Gardenstone, in the course of a walk from Morningside, where he resided, fell into conversation with a farmer, who was going to Edinburgh in order to hear his cause pled that forenoon by Mr. Crosbie. The senator, who was a very homely and rather eccentric personage, on being made acquainted with the man’s business, directed him to procure a dozen or two farthings at a snuff-shop in the Grassmarket—to wrap them separately up in white paper, under the disguise of guineas—and to present them to his counsel as fees, when occasion served. The case was called: Mr. Crosbie rose; but his heart not happening to be particularly engaged, he did not by any means exert the utmost of his powers. The treacherous client, however, kept close behind his back, and ever and anon, as he perceived Mr. C. bringing his voice to a cadence, for the purpose of closing the argument, slipped the other farthing into his hand. The repeated application of this silent encouragement so far stimulated the advocate, that, in the end, he became truly eloquent—strained every nerve of his soul in grateful zeal for the interests of so good a client—and, precisely at the fourteenth farthing, gained the cause. The _denouement_ of the conspiracy took place immediately after, in John’s Coffee-house, over a bottle of wine, with which Mr. Crosbie treated Lord Gardenstone from the profits of his pleading; and the surprise and mortification of the barrister, when, on putting his hand into his pocket in order to pay the reckoning, he discovered the real extent of his fee, can only be imagined.