is inflicted upon a tribe of unworthy men, who infest and dishonour the bar. Let the practic volumes of attorneyship be thrown down-they have no charms for genius-they repel the scrutiny of erudition-and baffle the efforts of the legal tyro. Who ever envied the fame of the most expert attorney? What eminent lawyer does not confess his repugnance to the trammels of practice? Unlike other branches of science,-neither reason nor utility recommend the study of the arcana of legal tactics. Many men, who never were intended for physicians, are pleased with the study of medicine, laymen, skilled in polemic divinity, have become so from motives of curiosity or zeal ;--but who ever heard of the physician, divine, or private gentleman mustering courage to con the pages of folios invented, for the edification of practising attorneys in the courts of king's bench and common pleas? The absurd practice of our courts has created a distinct class of men, who rely wholly for subsistence upon the law's delay-who are grossly ignorant of every principle of jurisprudence, and, indeed, whose mode of professional business seldom requires the application of legal learning. Many have been admitted at the bar, to whom that honour was altogether unexpected at first, and whose original employment had been to run on errands, and keep free from dust the pleadings of their masters,-without, talents, education, or manners, they drew largely upon accident and impudence, and having got the knack of indenting a deed and affixing a seal,-all at once they rose buoyant to the sphere of eivilians and advocates. Seven years apprenticeship-by immemorial usage, is the term prescribed to acquire the knowledge of any mechanical art. A spruce attorney need serve but little more than half that time to become an adept in his trade. A tin ticket, with burnished letters, on his window,--the Attorney's Manual on his table, and a good stock of impudence to overbalance his ignorance, are the only requisites now a days to enable any one to commence the practice of the law. A friendly constable is enlisted to seek for business, and, if necessary, to make it. If a justice can be found who will dare to punish for contempt of court it is a great debut, if he can be committed for insolence, as he acquires by that, means the reputation of being a smart fellow. Constables, marshals, and their retainers, who dislike such harsh proceedings, cry him up on the instant, and he commences lawyer under their auspices.

He views with complacency the keen tricks of his elder brothers, and by degrees becomes versed in the knotty points of practice. He is ready to effect by "the worst means, the worst." Fools enough are to be found who will be his victims-villains enough will employ him to

"Feed contention in a lingering act." Is it surprising then, that the Jobsons and Halloways of the day, should be expert in that branch of the practice which able and fair men do not wish to know, which they learn only upon compulsion, and in their own defence? We admit that under the existing rules of our courts, an inferior class of professional men must be employed, but we object to investing them with the privileges which belong exclusively to able and well educated lawyers.

Two-fifths of the persons admitted to practice as attorneys, subsist upon the mountebank contrivances which arc tolerated to the manifest injury of highminded men. The thousand common say. ings in the mouth of the multitude, detracting from the honour of the profession en masse, and which are daily repeated by women and children as gospel truths, owe their currency to the confounding of the tricky trading attorney, with the legitimate lawyer. Unmerited obloquy is thus heaped upon the good men and true of the profession, who have ever proved a ball of fire against oppression,-who, in the darkest times, have vindicated public and private rights, at the hazard of life and fortune. Men in high stations too, have given currency to the charges preferred, by the illiterate and prejudiced, against the whole profession. A grave member of the Senate, in his place, has stated that poverty and ruin denote the presence and mark the ravages of attorneys in every county in the state. That this class of men are accumulating immense wealth wrung from the hard earnings of the yeomanry. This, in many instances, we doubt not is true-but in those flagrant cases, where great distress is brought upon the community-it is when the attorney is the instrument of a combination of men-of some monied aristocracy, whose object can not be accomplished without him. Here it is fair to inquire, why should the attorney, who labours in his vocation without trick or oppression, be branded with crime, and the men who employ him escape imputation? Is it because the hand which wields the dagger is concealed, and because the instrument of wrong alone is palpable to feeling and to sight? We have heard that

the honourable member referred to, is an advocate of banks and connives in their operations-else we should have concluded that he meant his striking picture for bank attorneys. That many of these latter gentlemen have made large sums of money, in the shape of costs-that every village in the state groans under the pressure of their acts, is undeniable;-that monstrous monied aristocracies, working ruin to thousands, subverting public confidence and private morals, employ attorneys, and profitably too-is known to every one;-that these mindless, heartless combinations, "these horse leaches of private oppression, and vultures of public robbery," under the name of banks, fling their outrageous arrows throughout the land, and that attorneys are their agents, is true;-but why "mince damnation with a phrase," and throw the burden of bank iniquity upon the shoulders of their attorneys.

Multiplicity of suits-inordinate costs, severest exactions on the part of the plaintiffs, swell the catalogue of wrongs; and deep and loud and awful is the warning voice now heard in this state. The thousands who have been enticed and ruined by banking facilities-and banking deceit, are, and will prove a host against this system. The feelings of the heart a sense of honour and justice-opposition to oppression are all arrayed against it. Let the bank debtor tell what appeal can be made to the stockholders of a chartered company-what cry of anguish can reach incorporeal ears? Melting as may be the tears of misfortune, do they not freeze as they fall within the chilling influence of such combinations? So enormous have been the costs received by attorneys prosecuting for banks, in the country particularly, that the legislature has been induced to strike off about one-third of the fees formerly allowed: and, thus, fair

men, who with a respectable private practice can hardly earn a living-must suffer for the enormities perpetrated by banks and their agents.

It is time, however, to speak of a subject more particularly the object of this paper. D. T. Blake, Esq. of the NewYork bar, has compiled with considerable labour, the Chancery Practice of this State. The forms and rules of the court are stated in the body of the work-and in such a manner as to refer to the principles of equity jurisdiction, and the decisions of the court-which accompany and elucidate each particular proceeding. A book of this description has been long sought for, and must prove a valuable aid to solicitors and counsellors of the court.

The arrangement is so judicious, that what may have appeared obscure, is made clear-and the many forms and rules of the English court, which do not obtain here, and which only embarrass and fatigue the practitioner, are rejected. It has been often remarked, that among the books of practice, published in England, very few have been written by men of liberal or cultivated minds-Mr. Blake is an exception to these remarks. He unites the rare qualifications of patient inquiry and practical knowledge-to good sense, extensive reading, and a well cultivated understanding. From this gentleman we had a right to expect a book, satisfactory and useful on any subject, to which he directed his attention. We have seen a large part of this work in print, although its publication has not yet been announced, and it meets the expectation we had formed. Mr. Blake may be assured that the profession will appreciate his labour, and extend such encouragement as may induce him to continue his literary exertions. M.

Letters from the hon. Horace Walpole, to George Montagu, Esq. from 1736 to 1770.

A NEW collection of the correspondence

of a person so celebrated as Horace Walpole, cannot fail to be a great treat to the public. These letters are addressed to the son of general Montagu, and nephew of the second earl of Halifax, who was the representative of Northampton, private secretary to lord North, when chancellor of the exchequer, and the holder of several other official situations. He seems also to have

been a man of refined mind, and elegant literary acquirements; an eminent and suitable friend for lord Orford.

The style, as might be anticipated, is easy and playful, and the epistles full of piquant anecdotes. Ex. gr.

"I remember a very admired sentence in one of my lord Chesterfield's speeches, when he was haranguing for this war; (anno 1745.) With a most rhetorical transition, he turned to the tapestry in the House of Lords, and said with a sigh, he feared there were no historical looms at work now!" p. 14.

"Now I have been talking of remarkable periods in our annals, I must tell you what my lord Baltimore thinks one :-he said to the prince t'other day, 'Sir, your royal highness's marriage will be an area in English history.'" Ibid.

"Of beauty I can tell you an admirable story-one Mrs. Comyns, an elderly gentlewoman, has lately taken a house in St. James's-street; some young gentlemen went there t'other night; Well Mrs. Comyns, I hope there won't be the same disturbances here, that were at your other house in Airstreet. Lord, sir, I never had any disturbances there: mine was as quiet a house as any in the neighbourhood, and a great deal of company came to me it was only the ladies of quality that envied me.'-Envied you! Why your house was pulled down about your ears.'-'Oh dear sir, don't you know how that happened?'-No, pray how? Why, dear sir, it was my lady who gave ten guineas to the mob to demolish my house, because her ladyship fancied I got women for colonel Conway.' p. 15.

:

"I have heard nothing of AT's (Augustus Townsend's) will; my lady, who you know hated him, came from the opera f'other night, and on pulling off her gloves, and finding her hands all black, said immediately, My hands are guilty, but my heart is free."" p. 26.

"Should I not condole with you upon the death of the head of the Cues (John duke of Montagu.) If you have not heard of his will, I will tell you. There are two codicils, one in favour of his servants, and the other of his dogs, cats, and creatures, which was a little unnecessary, for lady Cardigan has exactly his turn for sav ing every thing's life. As he was making the codicil, one of his cats jumped on his knee; What,' says he, have you a mind to be a witness too! You can't, for you are a party concerned." p. 66.

"I hear your friend, lord N-, is wedded; somebody said, it is very hot weather to marry so fat a bride; George Selwyn replied, "Oh, she was kept in ice three days before."" p. 78.

"I shall only tell you a bon mot of Keith's, the marriage-broker, and conclude. 'G-d d-n the bishops,' said he, (I beg Miss Montagu's pardon,) so they will hinder my marrying. Well, let 'em, but I'll be revenged: I'll buy two or three acres of ground, and by G-d I'll under-bury them all.' p. 103. "My lord D-h is going to marry a fortune, I forget her name; my lord Gasked him how long the honey-moon would last? He replied, 'Don't tell me of the honey-moon; it is harvest-moon with me.'"

"We have had a sort of debate, in the House of Commons, on the bill for fixing the augmentation of the salaries of the judges. Charles Townsend says, the book of Judges was saved by the book of Numbers."

"My lady Coventry showed George Sel

wyn her clothes; they are blue, with spots of silver of the size of a shilling, and a silver trimming, and cost-my lord will know what. She asked George how he liked them: he replied, 'Why, you will be change for a guinea." p. 181.

But this may suffice for the present, as a specimen of the Walpoliana. The whole book is full of bon-mots; many of them exceedingly scandalous, and others written in so free a style, that we cannot transcribe them. If ever there was a companion to Bubb Doddington's celebrated Diary, it is in this volume. There is the same license, the same acquaintance with the intrigues, &c. of the higher ranks; and there is infinitely more point and wit. It is to be regretted, that some of the passages, where libertinism is most nakedly exposed, have not been struck out. We say nothing of the way in which the court of king George II. is handled, nor of the unsparing severity with which all are treated, from the king upon his throne, to the lowest courtier. The satire is biting. Many anecdotes are told of the commencement of the reign of our present king, which exhibit his majesty in the most amiable point of view, and are now deeply interesting. Occasional notices of the arts and artists, add to the spirit of the work, and are at once curious and entertaining. These will supply us with matter for future extracts; and in the interim we shall copy a few affecting particulars of the trials and conduct of the Scotch lords, in

1746.

"Poor brave old Balmerino retracted his plea, asked pardon, and desired the lords to intercede for mercy. As he returned to the Tower, he stopped the coach at Charing Cross to buy honey-blobs, as the Scotch call gooseberries. He says he is extremely afraid lord Kilmarnock will not behave well. The duke (Cumberland) said publicly at his levee, that the latter proposed murdering the English prisoners.

"Lady Cromartie presented her petition to the king last Sunday. He was very civil to her, but would not at all give her any hopes. She swooned away as soon as he was gone. Lord Cornwallis told me, that her lord weeps every time any thing of his fate is mentioned to him. Old Balmerino keeps up his spirits to the saine pitch of gaiety. In the cell at Westminster he showed lord Kilmarnock how he must lay his head; bid him not wince, lest the stroke should cut his skull or his shoulders; and advised him to bite his lips. As they were to return, he begged they might have another bottle together, as they should never meet any more, till ing to his neck. At getting into the coach, he said to the jailer, Take care or you will break my shins with this damned axe.'

and then point

"I must tell you a bon-mot of George Selwyn's at the trial. He saw Bethel's sharp visage looking wistfully at the rebel lords: he said, 'What a shame it is to torn her

face to the prisoners till they are condemned.'

"If you have a mind for a true foreign idea, one of the foreign ministers said at the trial to another, Vraiment cela est auguste.' Oui,' replied the other, 'cela est vrai, mais cela n'est pass royale.'

"I um assured, that the old countess of Errol made her son, lord Kilmarnock, go into the rebellion on pain of disinheriting him. I don't know whether I told you that the man at the Tennis Court protests he has known him dine with the man that sells pamphlets at Story's Gate; and, says he, he would often have been glad if I would have taken him home to dinner. He was certainly so poor, that in one of his wife's intercepted letters, she tells him she has plagued their steward for a fortnight for money, and can get but three shillings. Can one help pitying such distress? I am vastly softened too about Balmerino's relapse, for his pardon was only granted him to engage his brother's vote at the election of Scotch Peers

August 16. I have been this morning at the Tower, and passed under the new heads at Temple Bar, where people make a trade of letting spying-glasses at a halfpenny a look. Old Lovat arrived last uight. I saw Murray, lord Derwentwater, lord Traquair, lord Cromartie and his son, and the lord provost, at their respective windows. The other two wretched lords are in dismal towers; and they have stopped up one of old Balmerino's windows, because he talked to the populace; and now he has only one that looks directly upon all the scaffolding. They brought in the deathwarrant at his dinner. His wife fainted. He said, Lieutenant, with your damned warrant you have spoiled my lady's stomach.' Lord Kilmarnock who has hitherto kept up his spirits, grows extremely terrified," We resume our application to this very amusing work, the vivacity and unbounded freedom of which, adds a charm to what would, without these graces, be highly interesting in many literary points of view, as well as in that of a descriptive and characteristic sketch of the higher classes of society and fashionable manners, in the era to which it belongs Walpole, almost as selfish as Fontenelle, reminds us constantly of that author. He is playful, satirical, humorous; his knowledge of life considerable, his perceptions acute, and his pursuits calculated always to entertain, and often to convey information on subjects of arts, literature, and science. His correspondence forms so complete a melange of politics, anecdote, scandal, intelligence, wit, and criticism, that we could not, if we would, digest it into any thing like a systematic analysis. Perhaps it will be fully as agreeable to follow the rambling course of the letters. The early days of Methodism are thus alluded to, after mentioning that the dake of Cumberland had arrived (1748.)

"Gumley, who you know has grown methodist, came to tell him, that as he was on duty, a tree in Hyde-park, near the powder magazine, had been set on fire; the duke replied, he hoped it was not by the new light. This nonsensical new light is extremely in fashion, and I shall not be surprised if we see a revival of all the folly and cant of the last age. Whitfield preaches continually at my lady Huntingdon's at Chelsea: my ford Chesterfield, my lord Bath, my lady Townshend, my lady Thanet, and others, have been to hear him. What will you lay that next winter he is not run after instead of Garrick?"

Garrick is no favourite with our author, and he rarely misses an opportunity of cutting at him. He is not astonished that he and Colman write badly together, since they write so ill separately. He allows him to be a good actor, but reviles the stuff he brings upon the stage, and the alterations he makes in pieces presented to him. The following specimen from Paris, Oct. 16, 1769, shows that there is no novelty in our present practices or severity of criticism.

"There is a total extinction of all taste: our authors are vulgar, gross, illiberal: the theatre swarms with wretched translations and ballad operas, and we have nothing new but improving abuse. I have blushed, at Paris, when the papers came over crammed with ribaldry, or with Garrick's insufferable nonsense about Shakespeare. As the man's writings will be preserved by his name, who will believe that he was a tolerable actor? Cibber wrote as bad odes; but then Cibber wrote the Careless Husband, and his own life, which both deserve immortality. Garrick's Prologues and Epilogues are as bad as his Pindarics and Pantomimes."

The opinions given of several distinguished writers of the day, are as biting as those touching plays and players: we select a few, without advocating their justice.

"Rigby and Peter Bathurst, t'other night carried a servant of the latter's, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding: who, to all his other vocations, has, by the grace of Mr. Lyttleton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them word he was at supper; that they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banqueting with a blind man, a wand three Irishmen, on some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred, nor asked them to sit. Rigby, who had so often seen him come to beg a guinea of sir C. Williams, and Bathurst, at whose father's he had lived for victuals, understood that dignity as little, and pulled themselves chairs, on which he civilized.

"Millar, the bookseller, has done very generously by him: finding Tom Jones, for which he had given him six hundred pounds, sell so greatly, he has since given him an