have the conducting of the defence, but upon political grounds, as well as from that general aversion which men have to the sanguinary operations of the law, the feeling of the public is opposed to them, and in favour of their antagonists. There was nothing, indeed, with which I ever was better pleased, or in which I felt Old England so much inferior to her northern neighbour, as in the conducting of criminal trials. One who is in the habit of looking in at that great suttling-house for the gallows, the Old Bailey,--who sees the hurried manner in which the life of a man is, perhaps justly enough, sworn away,--who listens to the few seconds of advice, and the few trifling questions put by the counsel to whom the poor culprit has given the last shilling that he could beg from his weeping relations,--who marks the anxiety of the counsel till the case shall come to that point at which he may coldly abandon his miserable client--the very point at which an appeal to the jury might turn the scale,--cannot but feel, when he witnesses the slow and pathetic solemnity of the Scotch courts, that he is among pleaders of other powers. A case which brings even Theisseger to the bar, is one of no common importance, and one never by any chance finds the powers of Brougham, or the acuteness of Scarlett, come in to save a poor man from death. But when I was in the Athens, there was only one trial for a capital crime, and yet the legal sagacity of Moncrieff, and the burning eloquence of Jeffrey, were exerted for full two hours, on behalf of the prisoner; and exerted, too, in such a manner as convinced me that the fee must have been the very least part of their inducement. I never heard objections put with so perfect a knowledge both of the general principles of law, or the specialities of the particular case, or evidence so scientifically dissected, as were done by the former; and the appeal of Jeffrey to the feelings of the jury, and even to those of the judges, was one of the finest things I ever heard. There are many men far more learned in the law than this celebrated Scotchman; and many who can take a far more sweeping and comprehensive view of a subject; but all the little sallies of which his speech consisted, were as sharp as needles and as shining as diamonds. Their brilliancy made you open your bosom to receive them, and their keenness was such that they would have pierced their way in spite of you. Their effect upon the crowded spectators, and upon the jury, was tremendous; nor was the lord justice clerk himself, who seemed not only a very proud and consequential person in himself, but by no means a hearty admirer of the barrister, able to resist the influence. Whenever Jeffrey tore away a pillar of the evidence against his client, and clenched the advantage by an appeal to those passions which he seemed to know so well how to touch, there was a general hum of satisfaction in the crowd; the jurors looked up with eyes of new hope, as much as to say,