crowded house,-"I will, your honor," said a voice from the crowd outside of the bar. Something in the tones with which those words were spoken thrilled me like an electric shock, and with a sudden start I turned toward the speaker.

10. He stood there, facing the judge, a pale, thin-visaged man, of, seemingly, about thirty years, with eyes intensely black, but of the mildest dreamy expression, and with a countenance as calm as if it had never been ruffled by a breath of passion. There was something in his appearance that seemed to stir up in my bosom vague memories of the past, as if I had seen him before; but I could not recall him. His clothes looked so poor, covered as they were with the dust of travel, that the judge hesitated to let the case proceed under his management.

11. "Has your name been entered on the rolls of the State?" demanded the judge. "It has not been," mildly answered the stranger; "but perhaps this license from the highest tribunal in America will be deemed a sufficient guarantee for my legal standing;" and he handed the judge a broad parchment, bearing on it the seal of the Supreme Court of the United States.

12. The trial went on. The volunteer counsel suffered the witnesses to tell their own story; and, in the brief crossexamination which he gave them, a novice would have supposed that he aimed to get greater explicitness in their statements, rather than to educe anything new; yet I noticed that Barry, the senior counsel of the defendant, seemed to be growing alarmed at the apparently simple, but really searching, character of the questioning.

13. The defence, as is customary, then led off. Barry spoke first, followed by Frazer and Perkins. The latter, abounding in wit and sarcasm, brought down the house in cheers, in which the jury joined,—an exhibition that was followed by a severe reproof from the judge.

14. It was now the stranger's turn. He arose in front of the legal array opposed to him, and so near the wonder

ing jury that he could almost touch the foreman with his long, bony finger. If the pale face, which seemed to wear an unearthly calmness, impressed every beholder with something like awe, the low and sweetly musical tones that fell from his lips charmed every ear into the deepest

attention.

15. But the calm was of short duration. After a brief exordium, in which he portrayed the character and the demands of JUSTICE, as the bond that holds civilized beings and civilized communities together, and a gentle rebuke of the timidity of the Clarksville bar, which had left the defence of female innocence to a stranger,-he proceeded, with gradually increasing warmth, to tear in pieces the arguments of Barry and Frazer, which melted away at his touch like frost before a sunbeam. Every one looked surprised at the boldness and eloquence of the stranger.

16. Anon he came to the dazzling wit of the petted New Orleans lawyer, Perkins. Then the curl of his lip grew sharper, his pale face began to kindle up, his eyes to open, dim and dreamy no longer, but vivid as lightning, and glowing with the intensity of emotion. The whole heart beamed from his face; the whole soul was in his eyes. Then, without any allusion to the argument of Perkins, he turned short round on the perjured witnesses of Warner, tore their testimony into shreds, and hurled into their faces such terrible invectives that all trembled like aspens, and two of them fled from the court-house.

17. The excitement of the crowd was becoming tremendous. Pressing forward from every part of the house, filling the windows from the outside, and breathless with attention, they hung upon the burning words of the stranger, who had inspired them with all the power of his own passion. He seemed to have stolen nature's long-hidden secret of attraction. But his greatest triumph was to come.

18. His eyes began to glance at the assassin Warner, who was already nervous with apprehension as the lean

taper fingers of the speaker assumed the same direction. He enclosed the wretch within a wall of strong evidence and impregnable argument, cutting off all hope of escape. He dug beneath the murderer's feet ditches of dilemmas, and held up the slanderer to the contempt and scorn of all. Having thus girt him about, as with a circle of fire, he seemed to be preparing himself for the massacre of his victim.

19. Oh! then it was a vision both glorious and dreadful, to behold the orator. His actions, too, became as impetuous as the motions of an oak in a hurricane. His voice became a trumpet filled with whirlpools, deafening the ears with crashes of power, and yet intermingled all the while with an undersong of sweetest cadence. His forehead glowed like a heated furnace; his countenance was haggard with the intensity of emotion; and ever and anon he flung his arms on high, as if grasping after a thunder-bolt.

20. He drew a picture of murder in the most appalling colors; he painted the slanderer so black that the sun. seemed dark at noonday when shining on such a monster. And then, fixing both portraits on the shrinking, trembling culprit, he fastened them there forever. The agitation of the audience amounted almost to madness.

21. All at once the speaker descended from his lofty height. His voice wailed out to the murdered dead in an agony of grief; and then it melted into tones of the most touching sorrow for the living-the beautiful Mary, more beautiful every moment as her tears flowed faster and faster-till men wept and sobbed like children.

22. He closed with a strong exhortation to the jury, and through them to the bystanders, beseeching the panel, after they should bring in a verdict for the plaintiff, not to offer violence to the defendant, however richly he might deserve it ;-in other words, not to lynch the villain, but to leave his punishment to God.

23. The charge of the judge was brief, and strongly against the accused; and the jury promptly returned a

verdict of fifty thousand dollars for the plaintiff.—The night afterward, Warner was taken out of his bed by the indignant citizens, and beaten almost to death. As the court adjourned, the stranger arose and said, "Ralph Duncan will preach here at early candle-light."

24. At this unexpected announcement I sprung to my feet, as if a mine had exploded beneath me. It was, indeed, my old friend and schoolmate,-my volunteer counsel in the first case that he ever defended, and whom I had failed to recognize, though at the very first the tones of his voice had thrilled me with their never-to-be-forgotten melody.

25. Making my way to him through the pressing crowd, that would almost have borne him off in triumph on their shoulders, I grasped his hand with emotion too deep for utterance; but he knew me, and arm in arm we walked to the hotel together. He had been called all the way from Philadelphia to Austin, the capital of the State, to argue an important case under the patent laws, and was passing through Clarksville on his return, when the excitement there led him, through curiosity, to enter the court-house.

26. Ralph Duncan did preach that evening, and the house was crowded, while hundreds could not obtain entrance. Said an intelligent old gentleman to me, "I have listened to Clay, Webster, Finney, and Maffitt, but I never heard anything in the form of sublime words that so impressed me as the moving, native eloquence of Ralph Duncan, massive as a mountain, and wildly rushing as a cataract of fire."

27. Make what allowance you will to boyhood's pleasant memories, yet there is enough of substantial merit in Ralph Duncan to meet my noblest ideas of a truly great and good man;—and on recalling that sermon I am not certain but that, after striking the balance of judgment, the able and brilliant lawyer will yield the palm to the profound and eloquent divine.

APPENDIX:

CONTAINING BRIEF SKETCHES OF THE AUTHORS TO WHOM PROMINENT REFERENCE IS MADE, OR FROM WHOSE WORKS THERE ARE SELECTIONS OR ADAPTATIONS, IN THE FOREGOING PAGES.