there learn that he must have an imposing
presence, a graceful figure, and a smiling
face; that he must be modest in manner
and respectful in attitude, in dress neither
a dandy nor a sloven; that he must not
bite his lips while he is speaking, must use
appropriate action, and not talk too loud
or too low.

To recur to the advocates of Athens:
another important restriction imposed on
them at the same period was that which
limited the time for which the "good man
skilled in talking" was allowed to occupy
the court. This was the famous clepsydra,
or water-clock (or rather water-glass),
which ran its course in three hours, at the
close whereof, unless the speaker had
obtained a part of the water of another
pleader engaged in the cause (a permitted
practice), he was forced to conclude his
address, whether he had sufficiently
perorated or no.

Bearing in mind that all speeches in
those days were carefully prepared beforehand,
we may imagine with what anxiety
the orator would rehearse his speech in
his study at home, and "cut" it (to borrow
the language of the stage) to the prescribed
length by the aid of a private water-glass.
That the limitation was rather trying
sometimes, we know from Demosthenes,
who in one of his speeches complains of
the impossibility of going through the
whole of a heavy case "in the same water."
But it was found so useful, that the water-
clock was introduced at Rome so late as
the second consulship of Pompey: with
this improvement, however, that the amount
of time allotted to each speaker varied in
each case in proportion to its nature, and
was fixed beforehand by the judge. In
France, in 1413, an ordinance of Charles
the Sixth charged counsel on their oaths
and allegiance "to be brief in their statements,"
but we never find any special
limit assigned. The clergy here in England
at one time always took an hour-glass into
their pulpits — a very fair allowance, all
things considered — but the bar have never
hampered their eloquence with any salutary
restrictions of time. How often, at
Westminster or Guildhall, when a persistent
advocate will, to borrow a suggestive phrase
we have heard, "keep on keep-on-ing," for
hours in a case on which judge and jury and
everybody in court have made up their
minds long ago — partly because his own
voice is sweeter to him than that of others,
and partly, maybe, because of a mysterious
tradition which prevails that "the attorneys
like it" — does he who is to open the next
case look wearily at the clock, and wish
that it were of water. How fondly, worried
as he was almost out of his usual courteous
urbanity, must the Lord Chancellor have
thought of the "clepsydra" on the morning
of Miss Shedden's twenty-fifth day!

Professional advocacy in ancient Rome
had its beginnings in the perplexing
relation between the patron and the client,
which, as it puzzled Niebuhr himself, no
one else can be fairly expected to
understand. Such, at least, is the popular theory,
though M. le Berquier combats it on the
ground that the patron was a feudal
institution, that the bar was free in its essence,
and that nothing feudal ever produced
freedom in any form. Be this as it may,
one of the duties of the patron certainly
was to "appear for his clients in court, and
to expound the law to them, civil and
pontifical;" and we may easily imagine that
as the law became more complicated, the
latter duty was somewhat difficult for men
who only took advocacy in the Forum
as one of the accidents of a public life.
Hence arose the class of "jurisconsulti,"
who made a profession of the delivery
of legal opinions, like the Pundits of India,
and a class yet more scientific than they,
the "Prudentes," whose opinions had in
themselves the force of law. The
advocate, as in the pre-Antiphonic period
at Athens, received at first no money for
his labours; he would as soon have thought
of being paid for a speech in the Forum
as an M.P. would think of being paid
(directly) for a speech in the House. Nor
was he therein a loser, for a brilliant speech
in the Forum opened at once to a young
orator all the distinctions of the Senate
and of public life, the legitimate objects of
his ambition. But as clients became richer
and patrons more busy, presents from the
former to the latter, in order to give them
an interest in their cases, became the
fashion, and so the fee grew, as at Athens,
into a recognised institution. It was at
first regarded as an abuse, and produced
the first legislative interference with the
Roman bar in the shape of the Cincian law,
which forbade the taking of money for
advocacy, but with very little purpose.
More and more, as the intricacies of law
grew and multiplied, did the arguing of
cases, and the acquisition of the necessary
knowledge, so absorb the advocate's time,
that under the empire we find "the bar"
an established profession, and the advocate
an individual fact, though, it is to be feared,