When fully engaged in argument, he saw nothing and thought of nothing but his cause; and, in that, would sometimes rise to the fervor and energy of a sibyl.

He was about six feet in height as he stood, and would have been more if he had been bent back to a perpendicular from the curve,-not a stoop of the shoulders,-in which he habitually inclined forward. At the same time he was very spare of flesh, and destitute of almost all dimensions but length.

His countenance was intellectual, but its general effect was hurt by his spectacles, and by the altitude and length of his nose, of which, nevertheless, he was immensely proud. The nose so entirely absorbed the expression of his eyes and the rest of his features, that most of the young gentlemen at the Bar, in his time, could draw a striking likeness of Mr. Lewis, by a simple outline of his nose. When the spectacles were entirely removed from his eyes, to see or read near at hand, you perceived that their expression was kindly and gentle; but when he looked through his glasses at the Court or jury, they assumed the expression that belonged to the sentiment or passion that moved him, and sometimes it was a rather truculent one.

He abominated the Gallican invention, as he called it, of pantaloons, and stuck to knee breeches all his life; and, under the same prejudice, he adhered to hair powder and a cue, because the French revolutionists had first rejected them from their armies. When he presented himself, in what he deemed the only forensic dress, a full suit of black and powdered head, even a stranger would expect to hear something worth hearing from that animated and imposing figure; and by the first sentences of his speech, usually addressed, with a self-confident sweep of the head, and in a deep barytone voice, to the Court, and, if necessary, to the jury, the attention of every one would be arrested.

His first attitude was always as erect as he could make it, with one hand insinuated between his waiscoat and his shirt, and the other lying loose upon his loin; and in this position, without any action but that movement of the head,

he would utter two or three of his first sentences, generally well-prepared to introduce some notice of the position and solicitude of his client, or some special characteristic of the case, and almost universally, some general principle or truth that he held to underlie his client's cause, and to bespeak the favor of the Court and jury. Then, with a quick movement, and sometimes with a little jerk of the body, he would bring both his hands to his sides, and begin the action. And it was pretty vehement action from that time to the conclusion; his head dropping or rising, his body bending or straightening up, and his arms singly or together relieving his head, and doing their part of a rather animated duty, but without a vestige of grace or preparation in any of his movements, all of them, however, sympathizing with the temper or expression of the moment. His voice never failed him. It was deep, sonorous, and clear to the last; and his pronunciation, without the least monotony or affectation, always conformed to the best standards in the language.

He had one, and I think only one, peculiarity, which never deserted him in solemn speaking, though it was not observable in conversation. It was not, strictly speaking, an accent, nor a pronunciation, but rather had the air of an impediment,—a lingering upon a few unemphatic words, as if he could not get them out. It was no impediment, however; but he dwelt upon them with the purpose of making them more emphatic. Clear and plain were two of these words. He was sometimes faulty in his taste, even in a grave harangue; and one of the recollections of this which remains the most distinctly with me, reminds me of this peculiarity, and at the same time of his sleepless antigallicanism.

He was arguing a very grave cause in the Supreme Court of the United States on a morning which had brought the news of some fresh atrocity in the French Revolution; and, after laying down a position of law, and proving or defending it with great strength and skill, having no relation however to France, or to the Revolution, or to anything associ

ated with either, he exclaimed, "And this, may it please your Honors, is as cul-lear and as pul-lain as that the Devil is in Paris, and that nobody can doubt." Plain was always pul-lain, and clear cul-lear, in Mr. Lewis's solemn arguments. There were two or three other words of one syllable, with an l as the turning letter, that he clung to in the same manner in his harangues.

It may be perceived, from this account of him, that Mr. Lewis never dozed in his speeches, nor let any one else doze, who was within hearing. Yet he was never vociferous. His voice was not sweet, but it was a fine working voice for a court-room. He was animated, sonorous, and continuous or sustained to the end, without break or pause, except to lift his spectacles, and cast his eye upon his sheet of notes; and he brought all his arguments to a close within a reasonable compass of time.

It would be regarded by every one who knew him, as a defect in this description of Mr. Lewis, if two or three of his macula, perhaps nebula, were painted out, or left without notice, since he was as well known by them as by his better parts, and he took as little pains to cover them up. The spots or clouds were in the outward man, and the deepest of them not so deep perhaps as he inclined to have it thought. They did not touch his professional integrity, nor his fidelity to the law.

He smoked cigars incessantly. He smoked at the fireplace in Court. He smoked in the Court Library. He smoked in his office. He smoked in the street. He smoked in bed; and he would have smoked in church, like Knockdunder, in the Heart of Mid Lothian, if he had ever gone there. The servitude was unremitting, as to a most imperious master. It did not look like an accommodation to health or to taste, but like submission to a conquest by external power.

The smoking in bed was, in one instance, literally verified by myself and my venerable master, upon a winter journey to the Supreme Court at Washington, in the year 1809, when, in the days of coaching, we passed our first night at

Head of Elk; and I called Mr. Ingersoll's attention to it, after we had got into our respective beds in the same large room, and the last candle had been extinguished. The cigar was then seen firing up from Mr. Lewis's pillow, and disappearing in darkness, like a revolving light on the coast. He was once ordered into the custody of the Marshal, by Judge Chase, who affected to believe that the audacity was in some interloper at the chimney corner of the court-room; but Judge Peters explained, sotto voce, and it passed. The cigar did not reappear in that presence. In the Supreme Court of the State it was winked at before the time of Chief-Justice Tilghman; but soon after he came to the Bench, it was relegated to the Library. It had been tolerated the longer because no one imitated the example, and it had the asserted apology of weak health.

Mr. Lewis sometimes exhibited a stain of an antecedent day, in indelicate allusions at the side Bar, and in the presence of younger men, as well as of his contemporaries, with all of whom he did not seem to be unwilling to have it pass, that he led a careless, convivial, and half-libertine life, much beyond the reality. This, however, was while he was a widower, having no young children about him, and before his second marriage to a most pleasing lady who survived him. The influence of the sex, as much perhaps as better moral perceptions and taste, has, in later times, expelled such opprobia from the presence of gentlemen everywhere.

But the spots most annoying to the Bar, were discernible in his practice there, in the later years of his life, without, however, committing his professional honor, or bringing any serious inconvenience upon his clients. They were, it is true, not constantly seen, but still not unfrequently. He was singularly chary of his reputation for skill and efficiency in the trial of causes; and if he was not well prepared at the necessary moment, as sometimes happened when he grew older, he would baffle the Bench and the Bar in their efforts to bring him into action. In such an emergency he would show a great fertility of device in eluding the trial or argument for the time, and when every other failed, he

would be inimitably indisposed in health. His great resort, if compelled to go on, and he had the conclusion of the argument, was to study his cause while it was in progress before the Court, as he could do, intensely, and bring out new points, after his adversaries had closed upon all that had been advanced in the opening. The Court was compelled to meet this practice by a general rule prohibiting new points by the concluding counsel. The rule was general, but the aim of it was exclusively directed at Mr. Lewis. He was never uncandid, except from some such necessity,— which a better use of that part of his time, which belonged to his clients, would have obviated. There seemed to be no native taint in him; his heart was kind and true, his principles in general were manly, and his friendship sincere and constant. He looked upon this practice, unfortunately, I think, as a license of professional strategy in the service of his clients. A little less confidence in his intellectual powers, and a little more prudence in the economy of time, Iwould have saved him from a distrust on such occasions by the older men of the Bar, which might sometimes be seen when they were opposed to him in the trial of a

cause.

These were spots in the sun, you may say; but from the time I first knew him, they were observable and observed; so much so, that to have omitted all notice of them, would have impaired the truth of the description, personal and professional, that I have endeavored to give of him.

The last cause he tried was Willing v. Tilghman, in the spring of 1819; where, on behalf of the late Chief Justice, the defendant, I opposed him. I well remember that the Chief Justice, who had been his contemporary at the Bar, and who was urgent for the trial, expected that I should have to meet Mr. Lewis's now very usual effort for procrastination, and stood near me to affirm my opposition, until the jury was sworn, when he retired from the court-room. In the course of Mr. Lewis's reply, he became faint, and sat down. But soon recovered himself and went on. On this occasion his indisposition was certainly unfeigned. He never