We are told that the speech of Serjeant Snubbin was long and emphatic, but at any rate it was ineffective, and that learned gentleman committed a grave error in entrusting the cross-examination of Mr. Winkle to Mr. Phunky. Now it does sometimes happen, in the course of a case, that owing to the absence of the leading counsel, which sometimes occurs, the cross-examination of a witness, perchance an important one, is left to some junior; but this excuse did not exist in this case. Serjeant Snubbin was there in Court, because we hear that he winked at Mr. Phunky to intimate to him that he had better sit down; and this, as we know, from what I have told you just now, was the first brief that Mr. Phunky had ever had. No, Serjeant Snubbin was over-matched throughout by Serjeant Buzfuz, and Mr. Phunky was no match even for the scheming junior on the other side, and Perker was no match for Dodson and Fogg. The law, as we are told in one of George Eliot's books, is a kind of cock-fight, in which it is the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs; and I venture to think that the combined pluck of Buzfuz and Skimpin by far outweighed any of that commodity possessed by Snubbin and Phunky. No wonder Mr. Pickwick lost his case; but his case never recovered the effect of the speech which I now propose to read to you. Serjeant Buzfuz began by saying that never, in the whole course of his professional experience--never, from the very first moment of his applying himself to the study and practice of the law--had he approached a case with feelings of such deep emotion, or with such a heavy sense of the responsibility imposed upon him--a responsibility, he would say, which he could never have supported, were he not buoyed up and sustained by a conviction so strong, that it amounted to positive certainty that the cause of truth and justice, or, in other words, the cause of his much injured and most oppressed client, must prevail with the high-minded and intelligent dozen of men whom he now saw in that box before him. Counsel usually begin in this way, because it puts the jury on the very best terms with themselves, and makes them think what sharp fellows they must be. A visible effect was produced immediately; several jurymen beginning to take voluminous notes with the utmost eagerness.