and his
ability was equal to his ambition. Bold by nature, and rendered bolder by
the constant success of his career, he would have been a matchless
minister in a despotic government. Living under the old regime of France,
the laurels of a Richelieu or a Mazarin might have found a formidable
competitor in this man of daring and decision. He wanted but their scale
of action, to have exhibited all their virtues, and perhaps all their
vices.

At the bar, his career had been one of unexampled rapidity. He had
scarcely appeared, when he burst through the crowd, and took the stand to
which all the dignities of the profession seem the natural inheritance. He
had scarcely set his foot on the floor, before he overtopped the bench.
But the courts of justice were too narrow for him. It was in Parliament
that he found the true atmosphere for his loftiness of flight, and
keenness of vision. At that time the study of public speaking had become a
fashion, and the genius of the country, singularly excitable, always
ardent, and always making its noblest efforts under the spell of public
display, exhibited the most brilliant proofs of its title to popularity.
But in the very blaze of those triumphs, the Attorney-general showed that
there were other weapons of public warfare, not less original and not less
triumphant. No orator, and even no rhetorician, he seemed to despise alike
the lustre of imagination and the graces of language. But he substituted a
force, that often obtained the victory over both. Abrupt, bold, and
scornful, his words struck home. He had all the power of plain things. He
brought down no lightning from the heaven of invention, he summoned no
flame from below; but the torch in his hand burned with withering power,
and he wielded it without fear of man. By constitution haughty, his pride
actually gave him power in debate. Men, and those able men too, often
shrank from the conflict with one whose very look seemed to warn them of
their temerity. But to this natural faculty of overthrow he added
remarkable knowledge of public life, high legal repute, and the
incomparable advantage of his early training in a profession which opens
out the recesses of the soul, habitually forces imposture into light, and
cross-examines the villain into reluctant veracity. There never was in
Parliament a more remorseless or more effectual hand, in stripping off the
tinsel of political pretension. His logic was contemptuous, and his
contempt