nary practice. "Talk; if you can, to the point, but anyhow
talk," has been the motto of Advocacy from time immemorial. Heneage
Finch, who, like every member of his silver-tongued family, was an
authority on matters pertaining to eloquence, is said to have advised a
young student "to study all the morning and talk all the afternoon."
Sergeant Maynard used to express his opinion of the importance of
eloquence to a lawyer by calling law the "ars bablativa." Roger North
observes--"He whose trade is speaking must not, whatever comes out, fail
to speak, for that is a fault in the main much worse than impertinence."
And at a recent address to the students of the London University, Lord
Brougham urged those of his auditors, who intended to adopt the
profession of the bar, to habituate themselves to talk about everything.

In past times law-students were proverbial for their talkativeness; and
though the present writer has never seen any records of a Carolinian
law-debating society, it is matter of certainty that in the seventeenth
century the young students and barristers formed themselves into
coteries, or clubs, for the practice of elocution and for legal
discussions. The continual debates on 'mootable days,' and the incessant
wranglings of the Temple cloisters, encouraged them to pay especial
attention to such exercises. In Charles II.'s reign Pool's company, was
a coterie of students and young barristers, who used to meet
periodically for congenial conversation and debate. "There is seldom a
time," says Roger North, speaking of this coterie, "but in every Inn of
Court there is a studious, sober company that are select to each other,
and keep company at meals and refreshments. Such a company did Mr. Pool
find out, whereof Sergeant Wild was one, and every one of them proved
eminent, and most of them are now preferred in the law; and Mr. Pool, at
the latter end of his life, took such a pride in his company that he
affected to furnish his chambers with their pictures." Amongst the
benefits to be derived from such a club as that of which Mr. Pool was
president, Roger North mentions "Aptness to speak;" adding: "for a man
may be possessed of a book-case, and think he has it _ad unguem_
throughout, and when he offers at it shall find himself at a loss, and
his words will not be right and proper, or perhaps too many, and his
expressions confused: _when he has once talked his case over, and, his
company have tossed it a little to and