And this brings me to another point of some delicacy, and which nothing but a conscientious devotion to abstract justice would induce me to touch upon. What law, or what precedent, can be cited to authorize a woman to appear as an advocate in a court of justice and usurp the offices and prerogatives of a man? I will not dwell upon the impropriety of such conduct; but on my honor, as a member of the bar, the behavior of Portia was outrageous. This young female, not content with 'cavorting' around the country in a loose and perspicuous style, actually practises a gross swindle on the court. She assumes to be a man when she is only a woman, dons the breeches when she is only entitled to the skirts, and imposes herself upon the Duke of Venice as a learned young advocate from Rome, when in fact she is only a young damsel of Belmont, with half a dozen lovers on hand, on her own showing. And yet this young baggage, whose own father would not trust her to choose a husband, whose brains are addled by her own love affairs, and who had no more business in court than the deacon would have in Chancellor Whiting's suit in the Lowber claim, not only came into court under a fraudulent disguise, argued the case under false pretences, but actually took the words from the judge's own mouth, and decided her case on her own responsibility. I venture to say that such unparalleled impudence was never witnessed out of the court of a justice of the peace, and that even Judge ---- (unless the editor of the ---- had interfered) would have marched this false pretender out of court, or have deposited her in the Tombs on an attachment of contempt. But these preliminary points appear of small moment when we come to consider the plea, if it be worthy of that name, which the counsel for the defendant opposed to the suit of the plaintiff. The bond is admitted, the penalty is confessed, the pound of flesh is forfeited, the bosom of Antonio is bared to the knife--when this brief but brief-less barrister, this skylarking young judge of Belmont steps jauntily forward, with a most preposterous quibble on her lips, and manages by an adroit subtlety to defeat the judgment to which the plaintiff is legally entitled. She awards the flesh, fibres, nerves, adipose matter, in controversy, to Shylock; but declares his life and fortune confiscate if he sheds a drop of blood, or takes more or less than the exact pound.