"I am sending you," he says in another letter, "a noticeable article on George Eliot's work. You will observe the tendency to criticise, and quotations of little things to sustain an adverse verdict. I remember only better things. Of course I must acknowledge the tinge of bitterness in all of George Eliot's writings, but the latter-day critic brings a railing accusation against the artistic features of her books. He thinks it was a dreadful thing for Dorothea to marry a second time, but how trifling is all this! I always feel when I have finished 'Adam Bede' and 'Middlemarch' like saying in reverence, 'Oh, Mistress! Oh, my Queen!' for she is the mistress and queen of her art, and ought to be mentioned with Carlyle and Hugo."
The "chance" for which General Pryor for nine years had worked and waited came at last. A New York correspondent of the St. Louis Republican thus comments upon the event: "General Pryor borrowed the law books which he needed to begin the study requisite to enable him to do justice to his clients, and he studied as he fought—bravely. No man has burned more midnight oil, and from being no lawyer ten years ago, he has grown to be a most accomplished and erudite member of the bar. In his late great speech in the trial of Tilton against Henry Ward Beecher, in resisting the attempt of William M. Evarts, of Beecher's counsel, to prevent the plaintiff from testifying, General Pryor hurled law at the head of Mr. Evarts which the latter in all of his delving had not reached, and Mr. Evarts complimented General Pryor, not only upon the brilliant presentation of the law, but upon his extended acquaintance with the authorities. His speech won the point for Tilton. He is known to be an indefatigable student. Seven hours a day he studies law as though he needs it all on the morrow. No man in New York has a more brilliant future; and when it comes, no man will have so completely carved out his own way and made his own fortune."
This trial against America's great preacher was famous at home and in England. The accusation of Theodore Tilton aroused a tremendous feeling throughout the United States and abroad wherever Mr. Beecher's great reputation had established itself. The trial lasted six months. Mr. Tilton's counsel were Mr. Beach, Hon. Sam Morris, Judge Fullerton, and General Pryor. Arrayed against them were Hon. William M. Evarts, Hon. Benjamin Tracy, Thomas Shearman, and Austin Abbott.
To General Pryor was intrusted all the delicate or obscure questions of law incident upon the case. The press of the day universally awarded him the highest praise for learning and thorough knowledge of his subject. He won a very great reputation, and from that time onward felt that his professional career was to be an active one. The impression the new advocate—the rebel politician and soldier turned lawyer—made upon the correspondents of the press never varied. A New York correspondent of an Ohio paper[7] thus describes him:—
"General Pryor's reply to Mr. Evarts's was, after all, the greatest surprise of the day. It was so remarkable in many respects, that I am at a loss where to begin the characterization. Not an exciting topic, one would say, for a fiery Southern orator, to analyze the statutes of the state of New York on the subject of evidence from married people. But it was evident from the very first, though formal, sentence, that exploded from General Pryor's lips that he needed no outward occasion to minister excitement to his surcharged batteries of personal electricity. A dry legal question was provocation enough; what he would do under the heat of an impassioned issue is inconceivable, if the proportions of occasion and effect were preserved. His execution, to borrow a musician's term, is prodigious, considered merely as a tour de force. It is a volcanic torrent of speech. To say the enunciation is rapid, is nothing: it is lightning-like. The most dexterous reporters could hardly follow him. Its nervous energy is equally remarkable, and seems to break out from every pore of his body, as well as out of his mouth, eyes, and finger ends. With the legal volume in his left hand, the eye-glass quivering in his right, and jumping to his nose and off again, with or without object, like a thing of life, or emphasizing the utterance with thrusting gestures of its own; his head thrown up, at every beginning his eyes shoot straight at the judge as if they would transfix him, and he drives onward like a Jehu rushing into battle. He has no moderate passages; but perhaps he will avail himself of these effects when he comes to address the jury. And yet, all this prodigious nervous expenditure, so far from drawing off the power of the brain, is only an index of its action; so far from jarring the self-possession and sequence of thought, or the precision of conception and expression, it only enhances and secures all these, as sheer impetus sustains the equilibrium of a wheel. The diction, with all its headlong speed, is perfect in precision and force, and no less in elegance; not an after word, not a word of surplusage, or a word to be bettered in revisal; and the like is true of the closely knit argument."
This picture, drawn with a bold hand, greatly amused the home circle in Willow Street. But then, we had not heard the speech!
Charlotte Cushman.