Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/418

 high rank in the profession. Through the generosity of Edward Austin, the second father of the School, a beautiful and commodious building arose to receive its growing numbers. The staff of instructors was augmented by men of the highest attainments, who refined upon the system to a point hitherto unimagined. Case-book after case-book appeared—not mere manuals of sailing directions for the voyager on the ocean of the law, but the buoys and beacons themselves, by which he may pick his way through the tortuous channels to a definite anchorage.

The case-system, at first a local matter, assumed national, and even international, legal importance. The reviews teemed with articles attacking and defending it. Law schools based upon it arose throughout the country. It was advocated by zealous supporters in England, both at the bar and in the universities. Its enthusiastic graduates, at a memorable gathering in 1886, organized the Harvard Law School Association. The “Harvard Law Review,” its “official organ,” came to the front rank among legal periodicals. Its students, in spite of a constantly rising standard, became so numerous that Austin Hall, though three times the size of Dane Hall, was completely outgrown. And long before the founder of the system retired from active participation in it, it stood an assured, approved success.