r schools of rhetoric, into the presence of the judges, and to the
real business of the bar [d]:

1. What figure will they make before that solemn judicature? Trained
up in chimerical exercises, strangers to the municipal laws,
unacquainted with the principles of natural justice and the rights of
nations, they will bring with them that false taste which they have
been for years acquiring, but nothing worthy of the public ear,
nothing useful to their clients. They have succeeded in nothing but
the art of making themselves ridiculous. The peculiar quality of the
teacher [a], whatever it be, is sure to transfuse itself into the
performance of the pupil. Is the master haughty, fierce, and arrogant;
the scholar swells with confidence; his eye threatens prodigious
things, and his harangue is an ostentatious display of the
common-places of school oratory, dressed up with dazzling splendour,
and thundered forth with emphasis. On the other hand, does the master
value himself for the delicacy of his taste, for the foppery of
glittering conceits and tinsel ornament; the youth who has been
educated under him, sets out with the same artificial prettiness, the
same foppery of style and manner. A simper plays on his countenance;
his elocution is soft and delicate; his action pathetic; his sentences
entangled in a maze of sweet perplexity; he plays off the whole of his
theatrical skill, and hopes to elevate and surprise.

2. This love of finery, this ambition to shine and glitter, has
destroyed all true eloquence. Oratory is not the child of hireling
teachers; it springs from another source, from a love of liberty, from
a mind replete with moral science, and a thorough knowledge of the
laws; from a due respect for the best examples, from profound
meditation [a], and a style formed by constant practice. While these
were thought essential requisites, eloquence flourished. But the true
beauties of language fell into disuse, and oratory went to ruin. The
spirit evaporated; I fear, to revive no more. I wish I may prove a
false prophet, but we know the progress of art in every age and
country. Rude at first, it rises from low beginnings, and goes on
improving, till it reaches the highest perfection in the kind. But at
that point it is never stationary: it soon declines, and from the
corruption of what is good, it is not in the nature of man, nor in the
power of human faculties, to rise again to the same degree of
excellence.

3. Me