Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/205

177 UNIVERSITY TEACHING OF ENGLISH LAW. i77 nected things he may ; and every man who proposes really to understand any topic, to put himself in a position to explain it to others, or to restate it with exactness, must search out that one topic through all its development. Such an investigation calls for much time, patience, and labor, but it brings an abundant har- vest in the illumination of every corner of the subject. Another thing is to be noticed. Not all our law runs back through all this period. This great living trunk of the common law sends out shoots all along its length. Some subjects, like the law of real property, crimes, pleading, and the jury go very far back ; others, like the learning of Perpetuities or the Statute of Frauds, not so very far ; and others still, like our American Constitutional Law, the learning of the Factors' Acts, of injuries to fellow-ser- vants and other parts of the law of torts, are modern, and perhaps very recent. But be the subject old or new, or much or little, every man in his own field of study must explore this mass of material, — viz., all the decided cases relating to it, — if he would thoroughly understand his subject. Before I pass on, let me say, as if in a parenthesis, a word or two more about the Year-Books. These great repositories of our mediaeval law have been the subject of many cheap and foolish observations, as to their mustiness and mouldiness ; but never, so far as I know, from persons who had any considerable acquaintance with them. It has dwarfed and hurt our law that research has usually stopped short about three centuries back ; as to what went before, it has been the fashion to accept Coke as the epitome, or to take the summaries in the Abridgments. Back of Coke, these ill-printed, unedited, untranslated folios, the Year-Books,have stood like a wall, repelling for most men any further search. But not all scholars have been deterred ; and those who have gone through these volumes have found a rich reward. Amidst their quaint and antiquated learning is found the key to many a modern anom- aly ; and the reader observes with delight the vigorous growth of the law from age to age by just the same processes which work in it to-day in our latest reports. There, as well as here, together with much that is petty and narrow, one remarks not only well- digested learning and thoughtful conservatism giving its reasons, but also growth, the vigor of original thought, liberal ideas, and the breaking out of what we call the modern spirit. Coming back to the task of the student of our law, it spreads far beyond what I have yet set forth ; it has been wisely said that 24