Our experience would lead us to quite an opposite conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no test of truth; but warmth and earnestness are a proof at least of a mans own conviction of the rectitude that which he maintains. Coolness is as often the result of unprincipled indifference to truth or falsehood, as of a sober confidence in a mans own side in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting sometimes than the appearance of this philosophic temper. There is little Titubus, the stammering law-stationer in Lincolns Inn -- we have seldom known this shrewd little fellow engaged in argument where we were not convinced he had the best of it, if tongue would but fairly have seconded him. When he has been spluttering excellent broken sense for an hour together, writhing and labouring to be delivered of the point of dispute -- the very [p 257] gist of the controversy knocking at his teeth, which like some obstinate iron-grating still obstructed its deliverance -- his puny frame convulsed, and face reddening all over at an unfairness in the logic which he wanted articulation to expose, it has moved our gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an adversary, that cared not a button for the merits of the question, by merely laying his hand upon the head of the stationer, and desiring him to he calm (your tall disputants have always the advantage), with a provoking sneer carry the argument clean from him in the opinion of all the bystanders, who have gone away clearly convinced that Titubus must have been in the wrong, because he was in a passion; and that Mr. -----, meaning his opponent, is one of the fairest, and at the same time one of the most dispassionate arguers breathing.

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