favour in the debating club or in the House of Commons.

Of each separately.

JURIES differ much in character, not merely in the various counties, in commercial or rural districts, in London and in the provinces, but even in the same locality, at the same assizes or sittings; and therefore your first care should be to study the character of your jury. I am referring now to the common jury; the special jury will be separately considered hereafter.

If you have accustomed yourself to read the character in the face, you will probably make a shrewd guess of your men at a glance. But it must be confessed that the countenance sometimes deceives, and we are often surprised to find a sound judgment under a stolid front and an intelligent aspect concealing a shallow mind. Your eye will give you a reading that will prove tolerably correct; but you should not rest upon that alone, but watch closely the twelve heads, when the case is launched, and especially when the witnesses are under examination. Then you will certainly discover who are the intelligent, who the impotent, who the sagacious, who the shallow, who the facile, who the obstinate. Knowing them, you know how to deal with them; you know who will lead the others, and therefore to whom you are mainly to address yourself; you learn whom you must endeavour to convince, whom to persuade, whom to bend to your will, and you must mould your speech to the measure of their capacities.

In the first place, it is essential that all of them should, if possible, understand what you are saying to them, and, as in a team, the slowest horse regulates the pace, so must you address yourself to the comprehension

of the lowest intelligence among the twelve, and I need not say that with a common jury this is too often very low indeed. But do not mistake my meaning in this. When I tell you that you must speak for the ignorant, I do not contemplate vulgar thoughts, or lowlife phrases, but your own ideas put into plain language, and enforced by familiar illustrations. The besetting sin of Advocates is that of talking over the heads of the jury-addressing to them words that are as strange to their ears, and therefore as unintelligible to their minds, as any foreign. tongue, and in throwing before them ideas comprehensible only to the cultivated intellect. I am perfectly conscious of the extreme difficulty of avoiding this error; how hard it is even to recognise the fact, that thoughts and words, which habit has made familiar to you, are incomprehensible to minds that have not enjoyed your training; how still more formidable is the task of translating, as you speak, the fine words that come naturally to your lips into the homely vernacular of the classes from whom the common juries are taken. But this is your business, and to this you must train yourself at any cost of time and labour, for it is a condition of success at the Common Law Bar, that will be excused only in rare and exceptional cases of extraordinary capacities securing sufficient business of the class that is addressed to Special Juries or to the Judge.

You will soon learn to know if you are making yourself to be understood by your jury, if you are holding not their ears only, but their minds. It is difficult to describe the signs of this: a certain steady gaze of attention and fixedness of feature, and commonly a slight bending forward of the head, are the usual outward manifestations. But more sure than these is that

secret sympathy which exists between minds with whom a communication is established. You feel that you are listened to and understood, just as you are painfully conscious when your audience are not heeding, though they be ever so silent and still. Keep your eyes upon the jurymen while you address them, for the eye is often as attractive as the tongue; watch them well, and, if you mark any that do not seem to listen, fix your eyes upon them, and you will talk to them, and they will feel as if you were addressing them individually, and open their ears accordingly. If they put on a puzzled look at any time, you may be sure that your argument is too subtle for them, or your language too fine: be warned; simplify your argument; introduce some homely illustration; win them to a laugh; repeat in other forms and phrases the substance of what you have wasted in unintelligible sentences. Above all, if you see them growing weary, restless in their seats, averting their eyes, yawning, looking at their watches, and other symptoms of having heard enough, accept the warning and bring your speech to a close, even if you may not have said all that you designed to say. When your jury has been brought to this pass, continued attempts to attract their attention are not merely failures in themselves, but they mar the good effect of that which has gone before. Come to a hasty, or even to an abrupt, conclusion and resume your seat. The art of sitting down is quite as useful at the Bar as in the other arenas of the orator.

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The style of an address to a Jury is peculiar. formal speech is rarely required, and when not required, is altogether out of place and unpleasing. It argues bad taste as well as an unsound judgment, and is sure to be

visited by a shower of ridicule. The occasions that call for oratory at the Bar are very rare, and when they offer you should not neglect them; but it is a mistake to suppose that, when they are turned to good account and a flourish has been made, success is achieved. It is not the orator, but the talker, who wins fame and fortune nowadays as an Advocate. A tendency to speechifying is rather a hindrance than a help in our courts, where there are a hundred commonplace disputes, in which it would be ludicrous to attempt eloquence, for one great case in which oratory is looked for. Imagine, if you can, a rhapsody in a running-down case, or a grand peroration in an action for goods sold.

Remember this, that you may win renown and fortune at the Bar without the capacity to make a speech; but you will certainly fail, though great in oratory, if you do nothing more than spout. Strive to accomplish both, and to know the fit occasions for each; but educate yourself to talk well, as your chiefest need.

An oration at the Bar does not differ much in its construction from an oration elsewhere. The rules I have already suggested for oratory generally are equally applicable to this form of it, and to them the reader is referred for further instructions.

Our present concern is with the ordinary business of an Advocate in the civil courts before a common jury. The examination and cross-examination of witnesses does not properly belong to the subject of these letters; and as I have already treated them at some length in The Advocate, I pass them by now, and invite you at once to the consideration of the address to the Jury.

Light, lively, pleasant talk is the most effective. Do not speak at them or to them, but with them. Lord

Abinger used to say that his great success as an advocate was due to his making himself the thirteenth juryman. There could not be a better illustration of the manner of dealing with juries. Therefore take a little trouble at first to put yourself on good terms with your Jury, not by flattering language, but by that more effective flattery which is shown, not said. If you meet a man in the street, and want to convince or to persuade him, how do you proceed? You take him by the button, you appeal to his intelligence, you explain the matter to him in the most familiar terms and with the most homely illustrations, and you do not let him go till you have made him understand you. Twelve jurymen are only a multiplication of such cases, to be treated in the

same manner.

Good temper goes a great way towards conciliating a jury. Command yourself; win with smiles; frowns repel them. Exhibit unflinching confidence in your cause, for any distrust betrayed by you is instantly imparted to them. If the subject is dry, enliven it with some timely jest, and the duller the theme the smaller the joke that suffices to relieve its dullness. Throw before them as much fact and as little argument as possible; you are not so likely to convince as to persuade. When you think what sort of minds you are seeking to sway, how entirely incompetent they are to follow an argument, you must make the most of facts, treating your audience as children, who are never tired of listening to that which paints a picture upon their minds, or evokes a sentiment, but whom abstractions and logic send to sleep. The majority of any common jury are in this respect only children. You may make them " see it," you may make them "feel it;" but I

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