Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/9

Rh law. He professed that he could not reconcile it with his ideas of morality to become indiscriminately the defender of right or wrong; thereby intimating, if not asserting, that a man must, in the practice of the law, not only deviate from morality, but become the champion of injustice. He would demand, 'What must be the feelings of a lawyer if he had become an auxiliary in the cause of wrong and rapine? If the widow and the orphan were thus by a legal robbery deprived of their just and righteous claims, through the superior artifice or eloquence of the advocate, was he not as criminal as the man who committed such felony without the sanction of a court of justice, and for which the same court would pronounce the severest punishment?' He endeavoured to persuade himself and his hearers, that unless a lawyer could reconcile his mind to the practice of all this iniquity, there was little prospect of his succeeding in his profession, and of course that the acquisition of fame and fortune were only to be considered as proofs of the wrongs done, and the miseries inflicted upon his fellow-men."

The disposition of Brown to investigate and turn to account the infirmities incident to human nature, was manifested in very early life. In a letter to one of his youthful friends, he says he had discovered that he was afflicted with myopism, by having accidentally put on spectacles accommodated to such a vision. Subsequent attention to this condition of sight enabled him to ascertain that he had a vision which, though in some respects imperfect, possessed rare privileges.

"He had only to apply to his eyes, what Dr. Rush calls the aid of declining vision, and he is ushered into a new and beautiful creation. He observes, that it is