ls selected to take the lead in the
offices of the day, were freely handled, though still with great deference
to the established reputations of the distinguished parties most
concerned. It was every where conceded that the prayers, which had been in
truth a little conversational and historical, were faultless and searching
exercises; and, on the whole, (though to this opinion there were some
clients of an advocate adverse to the orator, who were moderate
dissenters) it was established, that a more eloquent oration had never
issued from the mouth of man, than had that day been delivered in their
presence. Precisely in the same temper was the subject discussed by the
workmen on a ship, which was then building in the harbour, and which, in
the same spirit of provincial admiration that has since immortalized so
many edifices, bridges, and even individuals, within their several
precincts, was confidently affirmed to be the rarest specimen then extant
of the nice proportions of naval architecture!

Of the orator himself it may be necessary to say a word, in order that so
remarkable an intellectual prodigy should fill his proper place in our
frail and short-lived catalogue of the worthies of that day. He was the
usual oracle of his neighbourhood, when a condensation of its ideas on any
great event, like the one just mentioned, became necessary. His learning
was justly computed, by comparison, to be of the most profound and erudite
character; and it was very truly affirmed to have astonished more than one
European scholar, who had been tempted, by a fame which, like heat, was
only the more intense from its being so confined, to grapple with him on
the arena of ancient literature. He was a man who knew how to improve
these high gifts to his exclusive advantage. In but one instance had he
ever been thrown enough off his guard to commit an act that had a tendency
to depress the reputation he had gained in this manner; and that was, in
permitting one of his laboured flights of eloquence to be printed; or, as
his more witty though less successful rival, the only other lawyer in the
place, expressed it, in suffering one of his _fugitive_ essays to be
_caught._ But even this experiment, whatever might have been its effects
abroad, served to confirm his renown at home. He now stood before his
admirers in all the dignity of types; and it was in vain for that
miserable tribe of "animalculae, who live by feeding on the body of
genius," to