grown too prosaic to tolerate much declamation:
without which the eloquence of oratory
can scarcely exist in its fulness. "Continuous
eloquence, says Pascal, " is a bore."

While on the subject of contrasts of
style, it may be amusing to note the difference
between the advocacy of the present
day and that which was in favour
during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The speakers of that day, notably
in France, delighted in pressing all the
authors of antiquity into the service of the
most everyday cause. Let us listen to
Pousset de Montauban pleading for a client
who denied the paternity of a child. "If
formerly," he says, "husbands have been
believed when they have denied children
attributed to them; if Demeratus, as Herodotus
tells us, was driven from his kingdom,
only because Ariston, his putative father,
cried, 'He is not my son!' if the Lacedæmonians
preferred Agesilaus to Leotychides, in
the succession, because Agis had often said
that the latter was the child of Alcibiades,
and not his; shall not, then, my client be
believed when he says that this is not his
son?"  In the same speech are cited as
further authorities, Horace, the Bible, St.
Augustin, Plato, Tertullian, Seneca, and
the Jews.  It is this style of advocacy that
Racine severely satirises in the Plaideurs:

Quand je vois les Césars, quand je vois leur fortune:
Quand je vois le soleil, et quand je vois la lune:
Quand je vois les états des Babiloniens
Transférés des serpens aux Macédoniens, &c. &c.

Out of such strange vicissitudes of style
grew the modern barrister. Now-a-days,
if he meddle with the classics, he is not
always so much at home. De Montauban
would scarcely have talked as we have
heard a queen's counsel talking of the
opima spolia of an adversary.

During the early middle ages, as far as
we can pierce their darkness, the professional
advocate rarely existed. We find
traces of him among the Lombards and the
German tribes; but " it is natural to
suppose," as a French writer has said,
"that at a time when justice itself had no
existence, the work of the advocate was
almost a nullity." To those ingenious
days we must refer the origin of the
stupidest and most monstrous of systems,
the " trial by battle," which was not
abolished in France till 1566, while, in this
wonderful country of ours, the " wager of
battle" had a legal existence some fifty
years ago. Mr. Forsyth has extracted
this account from an old French author of
the manner of the proceedings in a battle
trial at the close of the thirteenth century:
"The counsel for the appellant,
having par les plus belles paroles et mieux
ordonnées qu'il peuvoit, stated the case of
his client, called upon his opponent to
confess or deny the charge against him,
saying, that if it was denied, his client was
ready to prove it by witnesses or otherwise.
He then added, 'but he will prove
it in his own person, or by his champion,
in the lists like a gentleman, on horseback,
with arms and all other things suitable,
in wager of battle, and in such case in
manner conformable to his rank, and here
he offers his gage.' At these words, like a
fearless cavalier, he threw a glove down
upon the floor. Upon this the counsel on
the other side rose, and after having
argued vigorously against the motion for
a duel, he concluded by stoutly declaring
that if the court should decide in favour of
a single combat, ' my client denies what is
alleged against him, and says, on the
contrary, that he who has authorised the
charge to be brought forward LIES; and
this he is ready to maintain either in
person or by champion, and thereto he
pledges his gage.' The appellee then
stepped forward himself; after a short
address to the court, in which he said that
the plaintiff lied like a villain, 'sauf l'honneur
de la cour,' and that he himself
adopted all that his advocate had stated
in his behalf, and was ready to fight if the
court should so determine, he threw down
his glove also beside the other."

One would think that the advocate had
little to do on these occasions but look on;
but his berth was not altogether pleasant.
If he were not careful of his language, but
identified himself too warmly with his client,
he might be called upon to fight himself,
as happened to one De Fabrefort, in the
fourteenth century. Having demanded
battle, without saying in express words
that he demanded it for his client, he had
the greatest difficulty in escaping personal
encounter; whereat the people in the court
laughed consumedly.

It is amusing to think of our sergeants-at-law,
in England, "giving a knee" to
their clients in a trial by battle. But such
was the arrangement in the old days; and
we may find in Blackstone and other old
authorities, accounts of the manner in which
the combat was waged, after the same
fashion as in France. Whether or no a
case should be settled by fighting, was
a preliminary point for argument; and it
is an absolute fact that judgment was given