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But it was not merely as a lawyer that this author was fitted for his work. As an essayist he ranked high, and as a novelist he was perhaps excelled by but one or two in England. As was to be expected, he produced a work which we believe is admitted to be the most readable law book ever printed. Written in an easy, pleasant style, it is filled with sound practical advice, just what the law student requires to direct him in the prosecution of his studies.

Some years subsequently, the first edition, although unusually large, having been exhausted, and a new edition being called for, the author re-wrote the entire work, altered its arrangement and added a large amount of new matter. The second edition was soon exhausted, and the work was, for some years, out of print, until Mr. Warren, at the urgent solicitation of the English bar, again revised the work, and a year or more ago a third edition, in two large volumes, was issued. Both the first and second editions were reprinted in the United States, but they have been for some years out of print.

The work before us is founded upon the three editions, selecting from each what appeared to the editor to be necessary for the American student. Which edition was followed, we confess ourselves unable to determine. We believe that the first (which is clearly the best) is almost wholly here. The second, in which the arrangement seems to be the principal improvement, is to some extent noticed. From the third, the production of the author's maturer years, we find many things reproduced here. The American editor, whose previous works have shown him to be competent to perform the task he has undertaken, has added numerous notes, some original, some selected, we think, from the sayings of such men as Webster, Choate and others. For the benefit of the American, as such a treatise would be of little use to the English, law student, there has been added a chapter on forensic eloquence. To those who desire to study the oratorical art we recommend the perusal of this chapter.

In order that those who have not met with Mr. Warren's writings may understand his style, we have selected at random some quotations from this work. To the English law student this would hardly be necessary, as this, his treatise, has become as familiar as "household words." To the general reader we need not recommend a production of the author of "The Diary of a Physician" and of "Ten Thousand a Year." We quote from page 68:

"Ambition! what shall be said of it? That the first fruits of a legitimate professional ambition will be the patience, sobriety and steadfastness of which so much has been already said. If we beget not these, it will be the mere willo'-the-wisp that has led thousands out of their way into the dreary bogs and marshes of failure, there to sink 'Unseen, unpitied, hopeless!'

True legal ambition is an eminently calculating and practical quality. It disposes the student to apportion his strength to his task; to set his eyes upon worthy objects, and go about the attaining them, worthily; to look before he leaps. It deals with matter of fact alone, utterly discarding reliance on chance-a word banished from its vocabulary. It sets a fool speculating on possibilities; a wise man calculating probabilities. The one thinks, with vain sighs and wishes, on the end alone; the other, having steadily fixed his eyes on it, resolutely sets about considering the means; the one it makes pas

sive, the other active. It is, in short, the balance-wheel in the well-regulated mental mechanism; a mere disturbing force in one ill-regulated. If the most eager and gifted of its votaries should deign to ask for a suggestion, it might be earnestly whispered in his ear: Be calm, calculating, long-sighted; think not of hop, step and jump, in the law, but rather gird up your loins for a long pilgrimage; for the prize is splendid, but distant. You cannot hasten the march of events, any more than the husbandman the course of vegetation. However anxious for his crops, however rich the soil, however propitious the weather, he must drop his seed into the ground and wait and watch till it makes its appearance in due season. So it is especially with the legal husbandman. Learn your profession thoroughly; do not attempt to become, as Lord Bacon has it, 'a lawyer in haste; the thing, be assured, is impossible; learn slowly, and well, that which will so enable you to acquit yourself brilliantly, when “the occasion sudden" shall have arrived. A contrary method will mar all your prospects, rendering you turgid with conceit and presumption, and inflaming foolish friends with fallacious expectations."

And again from page 282:

"The plan of study heretofore sketched out may be so disposed, as to secure at once the opportunity of cultivating practical and theoretical knowledge; it will enable the pupil to illustrate the principles of pleading and practice by daily examples, and, by early disposing of those studies which are always the most disheartening and disgusting to a beginner, leave him at leisure to pursue those other and more recondite researches, by which alone the whole theory and principles of the law can be thoroughly understood. A clear and connected view, early obtained, of the course of an action-of the relations and connections between the different branches of pleading, practice, and evidence, will interest the young lawyer the more in those matters which put in motion the secret machinery of the courts, with which he has already been familiarized. Let him, therefore, in the words of Lord Coke, diligently apply himself to a timely and orderly course of reading - that, by searching into the arguments and reasons of the law, he may so bring them home to his own natural reason, that he may perfectly understand them as his own.""

We have given these extracts not as an example of what the book contains, but merely to show the character of the author's composition.

What Blackstone is to the law of England, and Kent to the jurisprudence of America, Samuel Warren has, as we believe, by this, the crowning effort of his life, become to the study of the common law. To the young man entering the inns of court in England, we could give no better advice than to purchase and read thoroughly "Warren's Law Studies." To the young man here in our country anxious for civil honors, earnest in the pursuit of those distinctions, those favors, those rich rewards which surely follow him who has well trained himself for the profession of the law, we will likewise say that he will find here, certainly marked, the way through which he may pass to the country he is seeking. He will be led along no easy road, but taking this book as his guide and counselor, listening to and obeying its teachings, making it his constant companion and his preceptor, he will be certain to secure emolument and reputation and position.

Mrs. General Gaines has applied to the Legislature of Louisiana to pass an act enabling her to settle the New Orleans claims, which the courts have already decided in her favor.

LAW AND LAWYERS IN LITERATURE.*

XIV.
IRVING,

In the History of New York, records a wise judgment given in a lawsuit by Governor Wouter Von Twiller. Wandle Van Schoonhoven claimed a balance of

account against Barent Bleecker. The governor

despatched his constable for the defendant, armed with his jack-knife as summons, and his tobacco-box as warrant. The parties produced their books of account. "The sage Wouter took them one after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word," at length he gave it as his decision that, inasmuch as the books were of the same thickness and weight, the accounts were balanced, the parties should exchange receipts, and the constable pay the costs. This adjudication diffused general joy throughout New Amsterdam, and not another lawsuit took place during the whole of his administration.

The author records that the province was governed without laws, and recommends the example, on the ground that laws excite the obstinacy of men, and that, unless they were continually warned that certain things are wrong, they would do right out of pure ignorance, and because they knew no better.

CERVANTES.

by reading the chapter; it is too broad for quotation, without having first received the revisions of some such gentleman as Mr. Bowdler, who edited an expurgated Family Shakspeare. Peter Pindar has imitated this scene, but, as is not unusual in imitations, the humor is converted into deliberate vulgarity.

CHATTERTON,

I suspect, hints at the state of the law of libel under
Mansfield, and at Mansfield, when he says, in "The
Whore of Babylon:"

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Complaints are libels, as the present age
Are all instructed by a law-wise sage,
Who, happy in his eloquence and fees,
Advances to preferment by degrees;
Trembles to think of such a daring step

As from a tool to Chancellor to leap:

But, lest his prudence should the law disgrace,

He keeps a longing eye upon the mace.”

He, at any rate, referred to Mansfield in the following passage from the same poem:

"And who shall doubt and false conclusions draw
Against the inquisitions of the law,

With jailors, chains, and pillories must plead,
And Mansfield's conscience settle right his creed.
Is Mansfield's conscience, then, will Reason cry,
A standard block to dress our notions by?
Why, what a blunder has the fool let fall;-
That Mansfield has no conscience, none at all."

COLERIDGE

Must have been suffering from an under-dose of opium when he wrote "The Devil's Thoughts," in which he says:

"He saw a Lawyer killing a viper

On a dung-hill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother Abel."

There is some dispute as to whether Coleridge or

SOUTHEY

is entitled to the discredit of the foregoing. Southey was very fond of writing about the Devil, and of connecting him with lawyers. Thus, in "The Alderman's Funeral," in speaking of the dead man's donations to charity, he calls them

"Retaining fees against the Last Assizes,

When for the trusted talents, strict account,
Shall be required from all, and the old Arch-Lawyer,
Plead his own cause as plaintiff."

In this view Southey will have an easy term at the

for.

Right here is a good place to skip over to the Island of Barataria, and speak of that other wise governor, Sancho Panza, who made a very judicious decision on a criminal complaint, which will always stand as a model for succeeding judges. A woman haled a man before the governor, complaining that he had ravished her. She told the usual story, unexpected attack, unavailing resistance, and final triumph of superior force. The defense was that the complainant consented. There were no other witnesses. Under modern administration, where women have no rights, the defendant would have been mulcted and imprisoned in short order. But Sancho was not of the nineteenth century. He asked the man if he had any money about him, and, being answered that he had twenty silver pieces, day of judgment, for he had but few talents to account commanded him to give them to the woman, and ordered the latter to leave the court. She went, with thanks to this "second Daniel." Then Sancho directed the man to pursue her and take away the money from her. He went, and both soon returned into the governor's presence, the woman clamoring for fresh justice against the man for attempted robbery. "What, then," asked the governor, "did he take the money from you?" The woman replied that she was no such baby as to allow him to succeed, and the man confessed that he could not, with all his strength, accomplish the governor's purpose. Therefore the governor commanded the woman to return the silver, and banished her the realm, under pain of stripes; with the intimation that if she had been as careful of her chastity as of her money, she would never have lost it. The exquisite humor of this scene can be appreciated only

* Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York, in the year 1870, by IRVING BROWNE.

In "All for Love, or a Sinner well Saved," the poet represents Satan as claiming a human soul by virtue of a bond signed by the unhappy mortal:

"Mine is he by a bond,

Which holds him fast in law:

I drew it myself for certainty;

And sharper than me must the Lawyer be

Who in it can find a flaw."

But Basil the Bishop defeats him by showing that the bond was framed with fraudulent intent:

"This were enough; but more than this,
A maxim, as thou knowest, it is,

Whereof all laws partake,

That no one may of his own wrong
His own advantage make."

The Fiend gives up, beaten, and says to himself:
"The Law thy calling ought to have been,

With that wit so ready and tongue so free,
To prove by reason, in reason's despite,
That right is wrong, and wrong is right,
And white is black, and black is white,-
What a loss have I had in thee!"

There is something delightfully absurd in the idea of Southey, who has written so many dull and interminable poems, reprimanding the lawyers for their verbosity. But in "The Doctor" we find the following: "That crafty politician, who said the use of language is to conceal our thoughts, did not go further in his theory than the members of the legal profession in their practice; as every deed which comes from their hands may testify, and every court of law bears record. You employ them to express your meaning in a deed of conveyance, a marriage settlement, or a will; and they so smother it with words, so envelop it with technicalities, so bury it beneath redundancies of speech, that any meaning which is sought for may be picked out, to the confusion of that which you intended. Something, at length, comes to be contested; you go to a court of law to demand your right; or you are summoned into one to defend it. You ask for justice, and you receive a nice distinction forced construction, a verbal criticism. By such means you are defeated and plundered in a civil cause; and, in a criminal one, a slip of the pen in the indictment brings off the criminal scot free. As if slips of the pen in such cases were always accidental! But because judges are incorruptible (as, blessed be God, they still are, in this most corrupt nation), and because barristers are not to be suspected of ever intentionally betraying the cause which they are feed to defend, it is taken for granted that the same incorruptibility, and the same principled integrity, or gentlemanly sense of honor, which sometimes is its substitute, are to be found among all those persons who pass their miserable lives in quill-driving, day after day, from morning till night, at a scrivener's desk, or in an attorney's office!"

PEPYS.

- a

The diarist, good Mr. Pepys, records that he went "to the office, where Mr. Prin come to meet about the Chest business; and, till company come, did discourse with me a good while in the garden about the laws of England, telling me the main faults in them;" (of course, that took a good while;) "and, among others, their obscurity of long statutes, which he is about to abstract out of all of a sort; and as he lives and parliaments come, get them put into laws, and the other statutes repealed, and then it will be a short work to know the law." What a pity Mr. Prin couldn't have been immortal! By a singular collocation, the only other topic touched upon in this paragraph is the Plague, which, he blesses God, "is decreased sixteen this week." I suppose the Mr. Prin referred to was William Prynne, who lost his ears on account of some ungallant reflections on Queen Henrietta Maria, in his screed against play-actors, entitled "Histrio-Mastix;" if this supposition is correct, and Pepys correctly reports him above, he certainly could well spare something from his ears.

PUCKLE.

Of James Puckle little is known save that he wrote a curious book, first published in 1711, entitled "The Club: in a Dialogue between Father and Son," with the motto, in vino veritas, in which various characters are described, alphabetically, and with but one character to each letter, by the Son, who tells his Father

that he met them at the Club the night before, where they all got drunk; whereupon the father moralizes. The letter L affords an opportunity to describe a Lawyer. The other characters are Antiquary, Buffoon, Critic, Detractor, Envioso, Flatterer, Gamester, Hypocrite, Impertinent, Knave, Moroso, Newsmonger, Opiniator, Projector, Quack, Rake, Swearer, Traveler, Usurer, Wiseman, Xantippe, Youth, Zany. So we are placed among what cannot on the whole be called good company. The dialogue on Lawyer is as follows:

"Son: A wit of the law that made it as much his care and business to create feuds and animate differences, as the Vestal Virgins used to maintain the sacred fire, growing drunk, boasted himself an attorney. That he had a knack of improving trifles and frivolous contests into good fat causes, as he called them. That he could set man and wife at variance the first day of their marriage, and parents and children the last moment of their lives. That he seldom troubled his head with Coke upon Littleton; the law lay in a little compass; trials chiefly depended upon evidence, and let him alone to deal with witnesses."

The Father then tells the oyster story, better told by Boileau, and continues:

"Suppose it possible to fence against combination, subornation and false evidence; can any be certain the justice of his cause shall outweigh the subtilty of his adversary's counsel?

'Will not fear, favor, bribe and grudge,
The same cause several ways adjudge?
Do not some juries give their verdict,
As if they felt the cause, not heard it;
And witnesses, like watches, go

Just as they're set, too fast or slow?'

"The rich man that attempts at his charge to make all knaves honest will quickly see his error, or die a beggar; but the poor fool that rashly engages in a lawsuit, commits himself to the house of correction, where he must labor stoutly to pay his fees; in short, whoever flies to a knavish lawyer for succour, as the sheep to the bushes in a storm, must expect to leave a good part of his coat behind him. Yet, still it is the quacks in the law, like those in physic, make the remedy worse than the disease. According to the proverb, good right wants good assistance; and seeing Great Britain affords so many lawyers, whose learning and integrity render them the light and wonder of the age, he is doubly a fool, that to defend his right, applies himself to a scab."

The edition of Puckle's Club, from which I quote, is charmingly illustrated with wood-cuts, after designs by Thurston, and the passage cited is preceded by a vignette exhibiting "a limb of the law bribing a witness."

EARLE.

Another curious book is "Microcosmography; or, a Piece of the World Discovered, in Essays and Characters," by Doctor John Earle, Bishop of Salisbury, first published in 1628. Among the characters is "an Attorney:"

"His antient beginning was a blue coat, since a livery, and his hatching under a lawyer; whence, though but pen-feathered, he hath now nested for himself, and with his hoarded pence purchased an office. Two desks and a quire of paper set him up, where he now sits in state for all comers. We can call him no great author, yet he writes very much, and with the infamy

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of the court is maintained in his libels. He has some smatch of a scholar, and yet uses Latin very hardly; and, lest it should accuse him, cuts it off in the midst, and will not let it speak out. He is, contrary to great men, maintained by his followers that is, his poor country clients, that worship him more than their landlord, and be they never such churls, he looks for their courtesy. He first racks them soundly himself, and then delivers them to the lawyer for execution. His looks are very solicitous, importing much haste and dispatch, he is never without his hands full of business; that is- of paper. His skin becomes at last as dry as his parchment, and his face as intricate as the most winding cause. He talks statutes as fiercely as if he had mooted seven years in the inns of court, when all his skill is stuck in his girdle, or in his office window. Strife and wrangling have made him rich, and he is thankful to his benefactor, and nourishes it. If he live in a country village, he makes all his neighbors good subjects; for there shall be nothing done, but what there is law for. His business gives him not leave to think of his conscience, and when the time, or term of his life is going out, for dooms-day he is secure; for he hopes he has a trick to reverse judgment."

LA FONTAINE.

The twentieth Fable of the Second Book of La Fontaine contains a point of law derived, I infer, from Phædrus. The translation given below is Elizur Wright's, slightly modified:

"If what old story says of Æsop's true,
The oracle of Greece he was,
And more than Areopagus he knew,
With all its wisdom in the laws.
The following tale gives but a sample
Of what his fame has made so ample.
Three daughters shared a father's purse,
Of habits totally diverse.

The first, bewitched with drinks delicious,
The next, coquettish and capricious,

The third, supremely avaricious.

The sire, expectant of his fate,

Bequeathed his whole estate

In equal shares to them,

And to their mother just the same

To her made payable when (and not before)

Each daughter should possess her part no more.
The father died. The females three

Were much in haste the will to see.

They read and read, but still

Saw not the willer's will.

For could it well be understood

That each of this sweet sisterhood,

When she possessed her part no more,

Should to her mother pony it o'er?

'Twas surely not so easy saying

How lack of means would help the paying. What meant their honored father, then?

Th' affair was brought to legal men,

Who, after turning o'er the case,

Some hundred thousand different ways,

Threw down the learned bonnet,

Unable to decide upon it;

And then advised the heirs,

Without more thought, to adjust affairs.

As to the widow's share, the counsel say,

We hold it just the daughters each should pay
One-third to her upon demand,

Should she not choose to have it stand
Commuted as a life annuity,

Paid from her husband's death, with due congruity.
The thing thus ordered, the estate

Is duly cut in portions three,

And in the first they all agree,

To put the feasting lodges, plate,

Luxurious cooling mugs,

Enormous liquor jugs,

Rich cupboards,-built beneath the trellised vine,

The stores of ancient, sweet Malvoisian wine,

The slaves to serve it at a sign;

In short, whatever in a great house,

There is of feasting apparatus.

The second part is made

Of what might help the jilting trade,-
The city house and furniture,

Genteel and exquisite, be sure,
The eunuchs, milliners, and laces,
The jewels, shawls and costly dresses.
The third is made of household stuff,
More vulgar, rude and rough —
Farms, fences, flocks, and fodder,
And men and beasts to turn the sod o'er.
This done, since it was thought
To give the parts by lot
Might suit, or it might not,
Each paid her share of fees dear,
And took the part that pleased her.
'Twas in great Athens town
Such judgment gave the gown.
And then the public voice

Applauded both the judgment and the choice,
But Esop well was satisfied

The learned men had set aside,
In judging thus the testament,
The very gist of its intent.

The dead, quoth he, could he but know of it,
Would heap reproaches on such Attic wit.
What! men who proudly take their place
As sages of the human race,
Lack they the simple skill

To settle such a will?

This said, he undertook himself
The task of portioning the pelf;

And straightway gave each maid the part
The least according to her heart-
The gay coquette the drinking stuff;
The drinker next the farms and cattle;
And on the miser, rude and rough,
The robes and lace did Æsop settle;
For thus, he said, an early date
Would see the sisters alienate
Their several shares of the estate.
No motive now in maidenhood to tarry,
They all would seek, post haste, to marry;
And having each a splendid bait,
Each soon would find a fitting mate;
And leaving thus their father's goods intact,
Would to their mother pay them all in fact, -
Which of the testament

Was plainly the intent.

The people, who had thought a slave an ass, Much wondered how it came to pass,

That one alone should have more sense

Than all their men of most pretense."

Among La Fontaine's Tales is one entitled "Le Juge de Mesle," of which I propose the following paraphrase:

"Two advocates, unable to agree,

Perplexed a plain provincial magistrate;
They so enwrapped the case in mystery,

He could conjecture naught of its true state.
Two straws he did select, of length unequal,
And offered to the parties, with close grip;
Defendant drew the long, and as a sequel,
Acquitted, gaily from the court did trip.
The other members of the court deride,

But he replies, My blame you must divide;
My judgment is no novelty in law,

For you at hazard frequently decide,
And never pull, nor even care, a straw."

The story of the Oyster and the Litigants has been so spiritedly told by La Fontaine that, although it has been so often told, I will venture to present it in Wright's excellent version:

"Two pilgrims on the sand espied

An oyster thrown up by the tide;
In hope both swallowed ocean's fruit,
But ere the fact there came dispute.
While one stooped down to take the prey,
The other pushed him quite away.
Said he, 'twere rather meet

To settle which shall eat.
Why, he who first the oyster saw,
Should be its eater by the law;
The other should but see him do it.
Replied his mate, if thus you view it,
Thank God the lucky eye is mine.
But I've an eye not worse than thine,
The other cried, and will be cursed,
If, too, I didn't see it first.

You saw it, did you? Grant it true,

I saw it, then, and felt it too.

Amidst this very sweet affair,

Arrived a person very big,

Yclept Sir Nincom Periwig.

They made him judge- to set the matter square.

Sir Nincom, with a solemn face,

Took up the oyster and the case;

In opening both, the first he swallowed,

And in due time his judgment followed.

Attend; the court awards you each a shell.
Cost free; depart in peace and use them well.
Foot up the cost of suits at law,

The leavings reckon, and award,

The cash you'll see Sir Nincom draw,

And leave the parties — purse and cards."

READING OF REPORTS.

Whether a continuous perusal of the reports should be attempted at all-and if so, whether the pupil should commence with the old ones, or read from the latest up to the old ones-is a question which need not long occupy our attention. There is such a prodigious amount of intricate and obsolete law in all the old reports, including even Coke, Plowden and Saunders, as renders it eminently unadvisable for the student to attempt a continuous perusal of them. It would be calculated only to bewilder, mislead and distract him from those practical studies to which chamber tuition will incessantly call his attention. There is, besides, something proverbially repulsive in the form and structure of our early reports; which, to say nothing of their dreary black letter, Norman French, and Dog-Latin, are stuffed with all manner of obscure pedantries, scholastic as well as legal, involving the simplest points in endless circumlocutions and useless subtleties. "The ancient reporters," says Chancellor Kent, are going very fast, not only out of use, but out of date, and almost out of recollection, yet cannot be entirely neglected. The modern reports, and the latest of the modern, are the most useful, because they contain the last, and, it is to be presumed, most correct exposition of the law, and the most judicious application of abstract and eternal principles of right to the requirements of property. They are likewise accompanied by illustrations best adapted to the inquisitive and cultivated reason of the present age." Perhaps, therefore, the student, if desirous of a systematic study of the reports, cannot do better than adopt the suggestions of Mr. Raithby, and read from the latest reporters upward.

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"In reading the reports," he observes, "I cannot help thinking you will find it most convenient to begin with the latest, referring, as you read, to the earlier cases, as they are cited and commented upon in the judgments of the case you are reading, always making a note of reference from the earlier to the later cases.

"The first thing to attend to in this branch of your reading is, a comprehension of the facts of the case; and I think it may be stated, as a general rule, that any report that does not present a clear and succinct statement of the facts on which the point for decision arises may be passed over; in the next place, read attentively the judgments of the court; and, lastly, such parts of the arguments of counsel as are commented upon by the court, and no other, except in a few instances, perhaps, for the sake of elucidation; for you will soon find your reading so voluminous as to demand the greatest attention, not less to the expense of time than of money.

"You will never consider your reading of any particular case complete, until you have also read and understood, and noted in the proper place, not only that particular case, but the statutes and cases referred to by the court in the judgment; and I should think you would find it useful, if, after having made yourself thoroughly acquainted with the facts of any given case and before you proceeded to judgment, you were now and then to compose an argument, either extemporaneous or written, and compare it with the argu

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ments advanced by the counsel, but particularly with the judgment of the court. By this method you will have a chance of acquiring legal views, and a course of legal reasoning, which you will find in many instances to be essentially different from the common notions of mankind, and for want of which, many men of superior understanding have failed at the bar." Every case in the current number of the reports must, of course, be read over with care proportioned to its importance; and it would be highly advantageous if the student were to associate with himself, in his task, some steady, intelligent friend. Their mutual suggestions would be both interesting and instructive. It is of the utmost importance that he should thus become accurately acquainted with the new decisions, which often effect very serious alterations, and of which it might be very dangerous to remain ignorant. This observation is at present of particular consequence taken up as the courts are with the construction of many new statutes and rules, entirely remodeling the law of practice, pleading and evidence. If the student be pressed for time, let him content himself with reading over the statement of facts, the qustions arising out of it, and the leading judgment; but he must not lightly omit perusing the arguments of counsel. He must also cast a careful eye over the short abstract of the pleadings which is often prefixed to the report; and if he find in them any thing worthy of remembrance, let him make a note of it for future use. He will often, by these means, find most timely and valuable assistance in his own practice. One hint more may be offered on this part of the subject-that the student should guard against an implicit reliance upon the marginal abstracts of the reporters. Learned and experienced though they, many of them, be, it is not to be expected that, in the very difficult task of extracting the essence of a long and intricate case, often with very little time at their disposal, they should escape sometimes very serious errors. The student would find it an admirable exercise to endeavor to frame his own marginal abstract of a case, and then compare it with that of the reporter. A little practice of this kind would soon enable him to detect the points of a case, to seize upon its true bearings; and this, as we have already seen, is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of what may be termed a judicial mind. The student should, however, not only thus read the reports, but should frame exercises upon them. Let him take a particular case either in the older or more recent reports, and copy out the statement of facts with which it commences; carefully abstaining from reading the marginal abstract, the arguments of counsel, or the judgments. Let him consider this as a case prepared originally for his own examination, and do his best. Let him rely upon it that his case is admirably stated—not a word wanting or thrown away, not a fact redundant or deficient-in short, there is every thing necessary to conduct him to a correct conclusion. If he cannot master it-if he feel himself at sea-that he cannot, after due diligence, discover the authorities, let him, as it were, take the corks; that is, let him copy from the bottom of the page the references to the cases cited by counsel. Having consulted and carefully considered these, let him read the arguments of the

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