Nothing in anatomy is too deep--nothing in chemistry too subtle--no fact in botany too obscure--no point in metaphysics too difficult. Like Dogberry, these things are to him but the gift of God; and he knows them at his birth. Truly, the chancellor is a powerful magician; and the mystic words by which he calls a gentleman to the bar, must have some potent spell within them.
The youth you remember as if it were yesterday, the lounger at evening parties, or the chaperon of tiding damsels to the Phoenix, comes forth now a man of deep and consummate acquirement--he whose chemistry went no further than the composition of a "tumbler of punch," can now perform the most difficult experiments of Orfila or Davy, or explain the causes of failure in a test that has puzzled the scientific world for half a century. He knows the precise monetary value of a deserted maiden's affections--he can tell you the exact sum, in bank notes, that a widow will be knocked down for, when her heart has been subject to but a feint attack of Cupid.
With what consummate skill, too, he can show that an indictment is invalid, when stabbing is inserted for cutting; and when the crown prosecutor has been deficient in his descriptive anatomy, what a glorious field for display is opened to him. Then, to be sure, what droll fellows they are!--how they do quiz the witness as he sits trembling on the table--what funny allusions to his habits of life--his age--his station--turning the whole battery of their powers of ridicule against him--ready, if he venture to retort, to throw themselves on the protection of the court. And truly, if a little Latin suffice for a priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court. A joke is a universal blessing: the judge, who, after all, is only "an old lawyer," loves it from habit: the jury, generally speaking, are seldom in such good company, and they laugh from complaisance; and the bar joins in the mirth, on that great reciprocity principle, which enables them to bear each other's dulness, and dine together afterwards. People are insane enough to talk of absenteeism as one of the evils of Ireland, and regret that we have no resident aristocracy among us--rather let us rejoice that we have them not, so long as the lawyers prove their legitimate successors.