antagonist armed like the ancient cavalier, cap a pe; and is alike prepared to wield the lance or to handle the sword as occasion may require. In cases which embrace all the complications and intricacies of law, where reason seems to be lost in the ocean of technical perplexity; and obscurity and darkness assume the dignified character of science, he displays an extent of research, a range of investigation, a lucidness of reasoning, and a fervor and brilliancy of thought, that excite our wonder, and elicit our admiration. On the driest, most abstract, and uninteresting questions of law, when no mind can anticipate such an occurrence, he occasionally blazes forth in all the enchanting exuberance of a chastened, but a rich and vivid imagination, and paints in a manner as classical as it is splendid, and as polished as it is brilliant. In the higher grades of eloquence, where the passions and feelings of our nature are roused to action or lulled to tranquillity, Mr. Pinkney is still the great magician whose power is resistless, and whose touch is fa cination. His eloquence becomes sublime and impassionate, majestic and overwhelming. In calmer moments, when these passions are hushed and the mellowness of feeling has assumed the place of agi tation and disorder, he weaves around you the fairy circles of fancy, and calls up the golden palaces and magnificent grottoes of enchantment. The imagina tion is fired, and you seem to stroll amidst bowers of roses and regions of eternal verdure, where you are fanned to repose by the breath of zyphers shedding "ambrosial sweets," and lulled to forgetfulness by the scraphic harmony of Elesian songsters. You listen with rapture as he rolls along; his defects vanish, and you are not conscious of any thing but what he pleases to infuse. From his tongue, like that of Nestor, "language more sweet than honey flows," and the attention is constantly rivetted by the successive operation of the different faculties of the mind. There are no awkward pauses, no hesitation for the want of words or of arguments; he moves forward with a pace sometimes magestic, sometimes graceful, but always captivating and elegant. His order is lucid, his reasoning logical, his diction select, magnificent and appropriate, and his style flowing, oratorical and beautiful. The most labored and finished composition could not he hotter than that which he seems to utter spontaneously, and without effort. His judgment, invention, memory and imagination. all conspire to furnish him at once with whatever he may require to enforce, embelish, or beautify what he says. On the dullest subject he is never dry, and no one leaves him without feeling an admiration at his powers, that borders on enthusiasm. His satire is keen but delicate; and his wit scintellating and brilliant. His treasure is exhaustless :-possessing the most extensive and varied information, he never feels at a loss, and he ornaments and illustrates every subject he touches. Nihil quod teteget non ornavit. He is never the same; he uses no common place artifice to excite a momentary thrill of admiration; he is not obliged to patch up and embellish a few ordinary thoughts, or set off a few meagre and uninteresting facts;-his resources seems to be as unlimited as those of nature, and fresh powers and new beauties are exhibited whenever his eloquence is employed. A singular copiousness and felicity of thought and expression, united to a magnificense of amplification, and a purity and chastity of ornament gives to his eloquence a sort of, enchantment which it is difficult to describe. Mr. Pinkney's mind is in a high degree poetical. It sometimes wantons in the luxurance of its own creations, but these creations never violate the purity of classical taste and elegance. He loves to paint when there is no occasion to reason, and addresses the imagination and passions when the judgment has been satisfied and enlightened. I speak of Mr. Pinkney at present as a forensic erator. His career as a legislator was too short to afford an opportunity of judging of his parliamentary eloquence; and, perhaps like Curran, he might have failed in a field in which it was anticipated he would excel, or at least retain his usual pre-eminence. Mr. Pinkney I think, bears a stronger resemblance to Burke, than to Pitt; but in some particulars he unites the excellencies of both. He has the fancy. and erudition of the former, and the point, rapidity and elocution of the latter. Compared with his countrymen, he wants the vigor and shadowy majesty of Clay, the originality and ingenuity of Calhoun ;→→ but as a rhetorician he surpasses both. In his action, Mr Pinkney has unfortunately acquired a manner (borrowed, no doubt, from some illustrious model) which is eminently uncouth and inelegant.—It consists in raising one leg on a bench or chair before him, and in thrusting his right arm in a horizontal line from his side, to its full length, in front. This action is uniform, and never varies or changes in the most tranquil flow of sentiment, or the grandest burst of impassioned eloquence. His voice, though not naturally good, has been disciplined to modulation by art, and if it is not always musical, it is never very harsh or offensive. Such is Mr. Pinkney as an orator; as a diplomatist, but little can be said that will add to his reputation. In his official notes there is too much of flippancy, and too great a diffuseness for beauty or elegance of composition. It is but seldom the orator possesses the requisites of the writer, and the fame which is acquired by the tongue sometimes evaporates through the pen. As a writer he is inferior to the present attorney general, who unites the pow ers of both in a high degree; and thus, in his own |