at least) on
the one hand, and Roman (to which, in this point, we may add British)
on the other. A Roman lawyer, senator, or demagogue, even, under
proper restrictions--a British member of parliament--or even a
candidate from the hustings--but, most assuredly, and by the evidence
of many a splendid example, an advocate addressing a jury--may
embellish his oration with a wide circuit of historical, or of
antiquarian, nay, even speculative discussion. Every Latin scholar
will remember the leisurely and most facetious, the good-natured and
respectful, yet keenly satiric, picture which the great Roman
barrister draws of the Stoic philosophy, by way of _rowing_ old Cato,
who professed that philosophy with too little indulgence for venial
human errors. The _judices_--that is, in effect, the jury--were
tickled to the soul by seeing the grave Marcus Cato badgered with
this fine razor-like raillery; and there can be no doubt that, by
flattering the self-respect of the jury, in presuming them susceptible
of so much wit from a liberal kind of knowledge, and by really
delighting them with such a display of adroit teasing applied to a man
of scenical gravity, this whole scene, though quite extrajudicial and
travelling out of the record, was highly useful in conciliating the
good-will of Cicero's audience. The same style of liberal _excursus_
from the more thorny path of the absolute business before the court,
has been often and memorably practised by great English
barristers--as, in the trial of Sacheverel, by many of the managers
for the Commons; by 'the fluent Murray,' on various occasions; in the
great cause of impeachment against our English Verres (or, at least,
our Verres as to the situation, though not the guilt), Mr. Hastings;
in many of Mr. Erskine's addresses to juries, where political rights
were at stake; in Sir James Mackintosh's defence of Peltier for a
libel upon Napoleon, when he went into a history of the press as
applied to politics--(a liberal inquiry, but which, except in the
remotest manner, could not possibly bear upon the mere question of
fact before the jury); and in many other splendid instances, which
have really made _our_ trials and the annals of _our_ criminal
jurisprudence one great fund of information and authority to the
historian. In the senate, I need not say how much farther, and more
frequently, this habit of large generalisation, and of liberal
excursion from perhaps a lifeless theme, has been c