A jury-trial is in itself dramatic; but mere eloquence is but a small part of what is demanded of a great advocate. Luther Martin and Jeremiah Mason were the most eminent American examples of the very many great jury-lawyers who were almost destitute of all that makes up popular eloquence. A jury-lawyer is of course greater with it, but he can do entirely without it. Almost all great trials appeal to the intellects rather than to the passions of jurors. What an advocate needs first is thorough knowledge of law, and that adaptiveness and readiness of faculty which are never surprised into forgetfulness or confusion, so that he can instantly see, meet, reason upon, and apply his legal learning to the unexpected as well as the expected points of law and evidence as they arise in a case. Secondly, he must have thorough knowledge of human nature: he must not only profoundly discuss motives in their relations to the laws of the human mind, and practically reconcile motives with conduct as they relate to the parties and witnesses in his cases, but he must prepare, present, develop, guide, and finally argue his case, within the rules of law, with strict reference to its effect upon the differing minds of twelve men. It would be difficult to name any other field of public mental effort which demands and gives scope for such variety of faculty and accomplishment. Whatever may have been Mr. Choate's defects of character or of style, no competent judge ever saw his management of any case in court, from its opening to its close, without recognizing that he was a man of genius. It mattered not whether the amount involved was little or great, whether the parties were rich or poor, wise or ignorant, whether the subject-matter was dry or fertile,--such were his imaginative insight, his knowledge of law and of human nature, his perfection of arrangement, under which every point was treated fully, but none unduly, his consummate tact and tactics, his command of language in all its richness and delicacy to express the fullest force and the nicest shades of his meaning, and his haggard beauty of person and grace of nature, that every case rose to dramatic dignity and to its largest relations to law, psychology, and poetry; and thus, while giving it artistic unity and completeness, he all the more enforced his arguments and insured his success. How widely different in method and surroundings from the poet's exercise of the creative faculty in the calm of thought and retirement, on a selected topic and in selected hours of inspiration, was his entering, with little notice or preparation, into a case involving complicated questions of law and fact, with only a partial knowledge of the case of his antagonist! met at point after point by unexpected evidence and rulings of law, often involving such instantaneous decisions as to change his whole combinations and method of attack; examining witnesses with unerring skill, whom he was at once too chivalrous and