AN HOUR OR TWO WITH BERRYER.*

WHAT a wonderful thing is eloquence! How it subdues animosities, excites admiration, leads on its willing captives to deeds of greatness and glory, transports the mind from reality to imagination, conjures up scenes which never existed, but yet the existence of which it is necessary to believe in for the moment, that the effect which is desired may be produced; how it rivets the attention of the most wandering-fixes the mind least habituated to reflection-warms the coldest hearts-and causes those the most sensitive to be almost mad with emotion. The Christian minister who is eloquent, arrests the attention of the indifferent, and subjugates him by the influence of his overpowering magic. The statesman who is eloquent, converts a hopeless minority into a victorious majority, and leads on his band of abettors from conquest to conquest. The popular orator who is eloquent, soon surrounds himself with a host of devoted men, who, at his bidding, are prepared to sacrifice their fortunes and their lives. The barrister who is eloquent makes even the law, stern and rigid as it is, pliant in his hands; commands the verdicts of juries; extorts compassion even from the statute-book; and compels judges to bend to his astounding and irresistible in

fluence.

Have

To the last class of eloquent men belongs BERRYER! you ever seen him? He is one of the handsomest men breathing. How noble his expression! How dignified his attitude! How winning his smile! How playful when he seizes the weak points of his adversary's argument, and shows him his error, or his folly! How wonderful when he discovers wickedness, insincerity, or dishonesty, and unmasks it to the contempt and execration of the world! Talk of statues and painting! Talk of marble and of bronze! show me such a statue, if you can, as the living Berryer, when in the integrity of his own mind, and the sincerity of his own conviction, he pleads the cause of innocence or of weakness, or defends a legal criminal against unjust or unprincipled prosecutors! Berryer is at once a legist and a statesman, and, when he speaks, it is eloquence itself which commands attention.

Berryer will not undertake every cause; he will not defend vice, he will not quibble about flaws in an indictment, he will not condescend to small and paltry tricks to ensure a verdict of acquittal for a real criminal. He begins, when he undertakes a case, by examining its morality. The wealth or the poverty of the parties are to him matters of comparative indifference. He will plead for the pauper against the crown, if the pauper be right and the crown wrong; but he will not defend the pauper because he is a

The spirit and evident truth which distinguish this communication, induce us for once to relax in our resolution that neither politics nor personalities shall appear in the pages of this Magazine; we have not had courage to reject this display- but it must be the last.-ED.

pauper, in order to attack the crown-nor will he lend his mighty powers, however large may be the bribe offered to him, to secure the triumph of might over right.

"Let us have less of law and more of justice," said Justice Bayley, on one occasion, to a well-known special pleader; and this is the principle which guides M. Berryer in his conduct at the bar. I am not about discussing what would be the result in England, if barristers always acted on the same principle; but I am convinced of one thing, and that is, that in our own country special pleading and cross-examining, technical objections and inattention to the morality of the cause, have too much influence, and are carried to extraordinary and even dangerous lengths.

Berryer is of middling stature, rather inclined to embonpoint, about fifty years of age, has a large head, is bald, has a full face, with perfectly beautiful and expressive features, in which goodness would seem to predominate over greatness, though both are most happily combined. His chest is broad and expansive; his eye is the most expressive I ever remember to have seen; his attitude is classical, yet full of fire, whilst it is graceful, manly, and sedate. There he stands, pleading the cause of a political offender. His client is a legitimist; he was attached to the old French dynasty; lived in the departments; expressed too warmly his love for the eldest branch of the House of Bourbon; measured not his words; has been drawn into imprudent expressions in public has been arrested, and is now brought to trial for having insulted, by such expressions, the Royal House of Orleans.

"Honour to whom honour is due!" cries Berryer; " and tribute to whom tribute! This is the golden rule of a royalist's life, and the magnificent motto both of himself and of his party! The powers that be, are ordained of God! Yes, for good or for evil; for the encouragement and support-or for the punishment and defeat of a people! Still they are ordained, and in ordinary cases he who neglects to observe this rule, is not only a bad citizen, but a bad man. But if the powers that be should descend from the high rank and position in which Providence has placed them, to the arena of popular and of less exalted life, and either themselves, or by their agents, should seek to injure and destroy a political party, by exciting its members to revolt, only that it may gratify their vengeance and animosity; if, as in the case of my client, the powers that be, instead of seeking to raise society by their moral influence and national grandeur, shall condescend to seek by low tricks and artful cunning to entrap the unwary into false steps, imprudent cries, and thoughtless and inconsiderate expressions, then the powers that be lose all title to respect or homage and disgrace and obloquy will attend the acts and iniquities of such a government.'

Berryer had a firm conviction that his client had been the dupe of police manœuvres and hostile tricks; and that he had been waylayed in his speech and conversation by the foes of the former dynasty, who had excited him to speak unadvisedly, in order afterwards to arrest and punish him. Right or wrong, this was his conviction.

"It is not my client, but his party, his political friends and associates, the partizans of a banished royalty, who are attacked by this prosecution. You, gentlemen of the jury, yes you are required to be

lieve that not only he, but they also are the enemies of France! Enemies of France indeed! was my client an enemy of France when he emigrated in the Reign of Terror, and left a land dyed with blood, to return to it in happier times, and under more favourable auspices? Was my client an enemy of France when he brought back with him the symbols of peace and of prosperity? or when he defended the Charta against the cries of faction, and the demands of anarchists? Was he an enemy of France when in 1830 he refused to raise an armed band in the west, though he could have done so without difficulty or personal danger, preferring obedience to opposition, and quietness and submission to civil war and insurrection? His affections indeed he could not control. They accompanied into exile the descendants of St. Louis; but never until provoked by those who sought with Judas' treachery to betray him with a kiss, did he allow those affections to display themselves in words or in looks hostile to the government of the country."

Berryer's client was acquitted. He compelled the jury to acquit. He made them sympathise with the man who appeared before them as a criminal. He taught them to see in him a martyr, and not a traitor; a lover of fixed principles, and not a preacher of sedition; a man faithful to his political engagements and party, but yet devoted to his country. He brought before them, one after the other, all the incidents of his life: showed him as a son, a husband, a father, a master, and a friend; passed in review his minor as his major acts; and then asked if such a man could be the systematic and determined enemy of France? Then he deplored that at best, however, his client was but a man; that in some moments of excitement his reason had been kept in abeyance by his affections; and that taunted for his sympathies by those who were paid to denounce him, he had expressed them more warmly than the law could tolerate, or than even his own principles would approve. But was such a man, for some disrespectful phrases and hasty replies, to be sentenced to prison and to shame? The jury said "No," and, as we have just said, Berryer's client was acquitted.

Your's is a noble mission," said Berryer, as he summed up his splendid appeal to a French jury. "You are charged by Heaven to liberate this man, this citizen, this gentleman, this nobleman, this true and virtuous patriot."

"NON COUPABLE," said the chief of the jury about two minutes afterwards.

"You have fulfilled your mission nobly," replied Berryer to the verdict of the jury, and he looked brilliant and beaming with joy. The court rang with applause, and the judges smiled, whilst the criers called in vain for silence. This was their homage to his eloquence.

As I left the court arm-in-arm with one of his friends, he invited me to accompany him that evening to Berryer's weekly soirée.

"There will be a crowd this evening," he said; "for all our party will hasten to felicitate our Demosthenes; and besides our own friends, you will see some chiefs of other sections of the national opposition."

I accepted, with joy the invitation, and now we are in Berryer's

almost-suffocating apartment in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs! There was Chateaubriand, with the genius of christianity in his heart, though weighed down rather by infirmities than by years.

"What three little men have been three of the greatest men during the last fifty years?" observed the Count L——

"Your Wilberforce, and our Villele, and Chateaubriand."

Chateaubriand loves Berryer, i. e. he loves his childishness, his almost infantine sincerity, his sweetness of manner, his amiability of character, his never-failing bonhomie, his delicious conversation, and his fund of anecdote, wit, and gaiety.

"You cannot rely upon Berryer," said Monsieur H-to Chateaubriand. "Why not?" asked the Viscount.

"Because he flies off in a tangent from one thing to another, and has no stability about him," replied M. H-

"That is to say, Berryer is a poet, and soars instead of grovels," retorted Chateaubriand. "You cannot cut his wings; if you could, you would reduce him to a mere cage-bird, a tamed nightingale, but who would not sing."

Chateaubriand has just complimented Berryer on the success which has attended his exertions to-day, and on the acquittal of his client.

"It was not myself, but our principles," replied Berryer, "that gained the victory. It was not my client who was at the bar, but the royalism you have defended, M. le Vicomte, with such talent and virtue during a long and precious life; and the jury acquitted that royalism of intentional wickedness. The verdict was this, that true royalists are true patriots."

That Priest is the Abbé de Genoude, the accomplished, learned, profound, and eloquent proprietor, editor, and every thing else, of the Gazette de France. How warmly he shakes Berryer by the hand! How heartily he laughs! De Genoude was a layman until a few years ago, and has only entered the church since the death of his beautiful and adored wife.

"The world, as a world, hath no longer any charms for me," said De Genoude to his most intimate friend, the day after became a widower. "The world looked green, flowery, gay, smiling, sun-shiny, and I loved it. My heart was bound up with it. But the sun hath gone down at mid-day, and I find that the world is cold, desert, frowning, sorrowing, and sinful. I must henceforth devote myself to Him who can warm me with a purer and more fervent heat, lighten me by a sun that shall never set, and after guiding me by his counsel, shall receive me to his glory."

A few days afterwards he bade adieu to social or domestic joys, and became in due time a priest.

A great deal has been said, and that most deservedly, of the eloquence of Coleridge in his conversations; but of De Genoude it may with truth be affirmed, that his ordinary conversations are models, perfect models, of eloquence. I met him frequently, when his wife was yet alive, soon after the revolution of 1830. He was full of indignation, of deep excitement, and of party zeal; but apart from his opinions, it was a rich treat to listen to his declamations, his predictions, and his satires.

The Gazette de France established the system now so popular among the legitimist party, and which consists of two points: First, that legitimists should vote at all elections, whether parliamentary or municipal, always voting for the enemies of the present government; and second, that the States General must be convoked, and eventually decide who shall be king, and what shall be the constitution and institutions of France.

The Polignac, Blacas, Duc d'Angoulême, and Villele party was always opposed to this sort of notion of forming a popular monarchy in France; and at a recent convocation of the royalists of divers sections held at Paris, there were more than one who expressed themselves averse to De Genoude's and Berryer's system.

That pale-faced, thin, small man, with a broken voice, but good and expressive eyes, is the Duc de Valmy. He has succeeded his father within the last few years to his title and estates. When Marquis of Valmy, he supported himself by his pen, wrote in the Quotidienne, and distinguished himself by his knowledge of all questions of foreign policy.

The Quotidienne is the morning newspaper of the legitimist party, as the Gazette de France is the evening journal of that political section of the country. Although now raised to the title of Duke, he is nearly as indefatigable as in former times with his pen, but of course accepts no emolument. As by the Charta of 1830, the peerage is not hereditary, the young Duke of Valmy is not a member of the upper house, but he has become a deputy, and is most attentive to his legislative duties. The Duke is one of Berryer's most ardent admirers. He supports him in all his plans, backs him in all his measures, and opens wide his well-filled purse to forward the schemes of the legitimist party. Berryer says to him,

Well, my dear Duke, I know you are delighted. This is a great triumph for our cause. France is beginning to open her eyes. It is just what we have always said, persevere-persevere-persevere, and futurity is ours."

"It is the doctrine of truth, and not of necessity," said De Genoude; "truth must prevail. Look at the history of man. From the moment when Satan was defeated by the promise of a future Saviour, to the moment in which we live, truth has been steadily advancing. Errors, gigantic in their size, and fearful in their character, have sprung up from age to age, but one after another has disappeared, and where are now the heresies of bygone centuries? Men do not love truth-but truth loves men; and though men fight against truth, yet truth smites them down, and they must yield. This has been wonderfully the case in France. The reaction has been sure to arrive after the delusion, and the greater the delusion, the more violent or resolute the reaction. Every page of our history is fraught with this fact, which is at once cheering and instructive.'

It was the turn of Berryer to speak-and with what pathos and sublimity did he describe the revolution as confirmatory of the opinion of De Genoude. He commenced with Louis the Well-beloved, and followed public opinion during the paper age, the Parliament of Paris, the States General, and the Third Estate, to the cry of "Let us make