ng of the barrister. His
generous trustfulness, his love of all that is good, his scorn for Vice,
his noble pity, and the withering sarcasm with which he scathes the
ill-doer, we know, can be had, in common cases, for ten pounds ten
shillings; and five times as much will enlist in our service the same
qualities in a less diluted form; while, by quadrupling the latter sum,
we arrive at a self-devotion before which brotherly love pales, and old
friendships seem a cold and selfish indifferentism. We had contracted
for this man's acuteness, his subtlety, his quick perception, and his
ready-wittedness; but he gives, besides these, his hearty trustfulness,
his faith in our honour, his conviction in our integrity: he knows our
motives; he has been inside our bosom, and comes out to declare that all
is pure and spotless there; and he does this with a trembling lip and a
swelling throat, the sweat on his brow and the tear in his eye, it being
all the while a matter of mere accident that he had not been engaged on
the opposite side, and all the love he bears us been "briefed" for the
defendant.

Look at the physician, too. Who is it, then, enters the sick-room with
the footfall of a cat, and draws our curtain as gently as a zephyr might
stir a rose-leaf, whose tender accents fall softly on our ear, and who
asks with the fondest anxiety how we have passed the night? Who is
it that cheers, consoles, encourages, and supports us? Who associates
himself with our sufferings, and winces under our pain, and as suddenly
rallies as we grow better, and joins in our little sickbed drolleries?
Who does all these?--a consummate actor, who takes from thirty to forty
daily "benefits," and whose performances are paid at a guinea a scene!

The candidate on the hustings, the Government commissioner on his tour
of inspection, the vicar-general of my lord bishop, the admiral on his
station, the minister at the grand-ducal Court, are all good specimens
of common acting--parts which can be filled with very ordinary
capacities, and not above the powers of everyday artists. They conjugate
but one verb, and on its moods and tenses they trade to the end of the
chapter. These men never soar into the heroic regions of the drama;
they infuse no imagination into their parts. They are as unpoetical as a
lord-in-waiting. There are but two stops on their organ. They are bland,
or they are overbearing; they are either beautifully gentle, or they are
terrible in t