engaged in practice, it is impossible that any foundation of a scientific knowledge of the law can be laid, however desirable it may be; and, as a matter of fact, it is not." He then spoke of the law itself, in terms any thing but respectful. "There is no doubt," he said, "that the body of our law contains many most excellent things, yet it is, on the whole, a very unmethodical and undigested mass." He went further, and drew a distinction between "the technicalities of the English law, or that sort of law which people study in England and practice in the English Courts," and "the law as a system and a science." He thought that the simplification of the law depended upon its scientific teaching; and that such teaching and the formation of scientific and enlightened lawyers by it, were best to be secured by the establishment of a great legal University, with lectures and scholarships, and with examiners whose certificate should be essential to admission.

The project was opposed by no less distinguished a leader (among others) than the Attorney General, Sir John Coleridge. He professed to agree with the learned mover, in principle, but, as is usual in such case in our Craft, (if I may be permitted to say so,) he differed the more widely on that account, from Sir Roundell, in applying it. He said that "to teach English law by lectures was a pure delusion. It could be learned by practice only, and that "—he was irreverent enough to add-on account of its unscientific system." He hoped "to see the day when the scandal of unscientific law would be removed by a Code," but, without a Code, he insisted that "it is utterly impracticable to teach the law, as it stands, without practically demonstrating it in the Courts."

The resolutions were negatived by the House, though not altogether on grounds which preclude their principle from being, to some extent, hereafter adopted. I have referred to the debate, chiefly because it shows how much more sharply than perhaps you are aware, the line is drawn, among leading professional thinkers, between the advocates of office-routine and those who favor University-instruction. The conflict of these extreme opinions seems to justify to my own judgment the middle view which it has for many years approved. I mean the superiority of the double system, of which it has been our effort to give you the advantage, under the auspices of the University of Maryland. You have had, on the one hand, the benefit of a thoroughly practical office-education, with daily attendance on the Courts, and, upon the other, you have been carefully and systematically trained by your Professors in legal principles and reasoning. The tendency of the office to sharpen, contract and render technical, has been met and counteracted by that larger exercise of thought, which expands the intellect and weds analysis to generalization. The Regents of the University are pleased to be able, from the report of your teachers, to express their gratification at the diligence and success with which you have labored to improve the opportunities afforded you. It is but just for us to recognize the promise of usefulness and honor which your opening career has given.

You of course understand your present position, and know what lies before you, too well to be discouraged by the suggestion that your labors, thus far, have brought you but to the beginning of your fitness for the task you have undertaken. The future is to be for you not only an enduring struggle for

success, but a perpetual effort to deserve it. You not only cannot stand still where you now are in knowledge, but there will be no point in your career, protracted and fortunate as it may be, at which you can safely rest, in the conviction that you have learned enough and need labor no more. On the contrary, you will find the horizon expanding and receding as you advance; and, long as your day may be, the darkness will come on while it is yet far away from you. Experience of course gives confidence, and the long exercise of his powers enables every man of sense to form a reasonable calculation of his own strength and reasonably to trust it. So, too, increasing knowledge, and familiarity with the use of it, beget a proper and healthful self-reliance and self-possession as we grow older; but it is only fools who become self-sufficient with age. To the eye that has been trained in seeking after truth and wisdom, the distance that lies behind us is always less than that which is left to travel. With a life-long task then before you, it becomes you to consider well how you shall undertake it best. No man, of course, is able to make his life a logical process, and deduce results from his plans and calculations, like conclusions from premises; but it is still possible for us, in the main, to give a general direction to our course by following out some general ideas and principles. The greatest soldier, it is true, will often find that his campaign depends as much upon his enemy as on himself. His best plans quite as frequently will come to nought, but still, a campaign without a plan is not very apt to end in a Te Deum. If you would not find yourselves astray in a dark wood like Dante, when you are "midway upon the journey" of your lives, you must endeavor, now that the responsibilities

of manhood are opening upon you, to form some definite understanding of what you have to do, and what your own qualifications are for doing it. Concerning the latter branch of the subject, mistakes are, I fear, as natural and as inevitable to you as to the rest of us. With respect to the former, we are all in the habit of making a good many more than are necessary. We are much under the dominion of phrases, which appear to mean a good deal, but really mean very little, if any thing. We accept a great many things as axioms, which are only platitudes. We pin our faith to the traditions of "unlanterned nights," (as Lamb calls them,) the darkness of which, heaven be praised, has long since departed. In all this, I suppose we differ but little from the rest of the world, for it is sad to think-nay, what a bloody lining there is sometimes to the thought-how much the fate of individuals and the fortunes of society and nations are made to hang upon words, which are passionately taken to be things.

Assuredly there is no one who has less disposition than myself to undervalue the profession to which I am proud to belong. Least of all would I desire to lessen its attraction or its value in your eyes, at a moment when you are looking forward to its honors and rewards, in the first fulness of that generous enthusiasm which is the brightest and most winning of the traits of youth. But to understand what your calling really is to take the true measure of its importance and its dignity-is only to be just to yourselves and to it. There are many illusions which we ought never to part with so long as we can persuade them to linger, but those which distort to us the practical objects and purposes of our lives belong to a different class.

It is the fashion among us to speak of the law as a science, and I cannot tell how many clever and ingenious young men I have myself known, whose first experience of their profession, in its practical working and application, was made one of painful disappointment, and almost disgust, by this exaggeration. Jurisprudence is a science, certainly, and the noblest of all sciences, in so far as it applies to the regulation of human conduct that Eternal Law which "is laid up in the bosom of God." But, Gentlemen, I pray you consider the distance between jurisprudence, so understood, and the common law of England as patched from the civil law and supplemented by the Maryland Code! Doubtless, the common law, in some of its titles and divisions, may justly be regarded as eminently scientific. But to call it, as a whole and with all its modifications, a science, or the exposition of a science, is really to trifle and delude. The rhetoricians who liken it to a great river, which has brought down upon its bosom all the treasures of the realms of time through which it has rolled, seem to forget that great rivers bring down many things which are not treasures. They forget the waters, turbid with ooze and slime-the worthless spoil of devastated fields and homesteads ruined-the floating rottenness and waste of ancient forests and primeval plains-the rafts that cumber the surface, and the sands and stranded trunks that lie in wait beneath for shipwrecks. I fear that the simile, thus qualified, may be juster than it seemed at first; and I gave you, a moment ago, the exact language of some of the learned and able lawyers who participated in the recent debate in the House of Commons, in order that I might not seem to be speaking with presumption, or to be alone and