1 S2 7.] Trade and Prof end ion . 317 



might be styled the long-robed laity, must hold the tra-ding opinions of 

 the craft, or be looked upon in no other light than what Sir Pertinax Mao- 

 sycophant so appropriately calls '* a d d black sheep." 



Nor are things better managed in the other professions. What is know- 

 ledge of the law, skill in cross-examination, or eloqnence that could draw 

 tears from a judge or from a brother barrister (prceco, alter a vel mulier] if 

 unaccompanied by the trading slang of the gown, by the art of speaking 

 at attornies in court, and hugging them for briefs out of it ? What are 

 talents without a dusty set of murky chambers? and what is genius 

 without impudence? Nothing, it is true, can be done without a prelimi- 

 nary dancing attendance upon the courts of law, with an empty bag and 

 an aching heart : but this may be done for years in vain ; and. business 

 ilow in at last in a full tide, from one night's trading waltz with an 

 attorney's daughter. Here again, as in the church, politics are a good 

 item in the professional scheme. Bettor still are an acquaintance with 

 usurers, and a facility in the practice of borrowing arid mortgage. An 

 essential point in the trade of a barrister, is the sedulous concealment of 

 all tastes and acquirements foreign to the study of the law. Music is 

 discord in the ears of an attorney ; painting is impracticable ; and as for 

 poetry, Blackstone himself was forced 



-t_ from her to part, 



Gay queen of fancy and of art ! 

 Reluctant move, with doubtful mind;. 

 Oft stop, and often look behind." 1 



A lawyer who would live by the laws must be '* lotus in illis" If ho 

 quotes the classics, it must be merely as schoolboy-recollections; and if 

 he indulges in a well-applied passage from a play or a modern poem, he 

 must contrive to give it the air of a newspaper extract, or, by some studied 

 inaccuracy, prove that the shew-off is not the result of habits of literary 

 indulgence, hostile to the due study of term-reports. In general, it is 

 safer for junior barristers to " avoid them altogether." Hie nugce seria 

 ducunt in mala. For what, in a senior, is only a testimony of the 

 extent of capacity, is, in him who is not overladen with briefs, nothing 

 better than a positive proof of idleness. We constantly see barristers, it 

 is true, figuring in a thousand non-professional shapes as newspaper 

 editors, playwrights, reviewers, novel-writers, highwaymen, and the like : 

 but with these gentlemen the title of counsellor is purely honorary; for 

 they have usually *' long bid a last and a careless adieu " to the law, 

 with all its profits, emoluments, gains, advantages, or earnings whatsoever, 

 be the same more or less." In physics, matters are still worse; for 

 though a trading M. D. may do well to get himself elected F. R. S. or 

 F. S. A., or even to become a member of the Society of Arts ; yet he will 

 be ruined and undone as a practitioner, if he shews any strenuous pursuit 

 of the sciences discussed at such assemblies. Even to be a decided bota- 

 nist closely allied, as the study may seem, to the writing prescriptions 

 is deemed too great a distraction to be compatible with that concentration 

 of faculties, which is expected from a practising physician. A true and 

 genuine trader will never be seen out of his chariot, nor shew up as cogni- 

 zant of any thing in style more beautiful than a dog-latin recipe (( donee 

 ftlv. pleni respond, swnend" or in matter more deep than an eight-ounce 

 vial ; or with modesty be it spoken an urinal. His mind, must" be 



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