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had an uncommon share." Had that worthy lived to-day I doubt not he would have had little difficulty in figuring before the world as a " briefless barrister." The light of nat ural understanding is not the light of juris prudence; and however sharp-witted and gifted a student of law may be, he quickly discovers that nothing else and nothing less than alert attention and painstaking dili gence will satisfy the demands of the text books and treatises he studies. This is an indispensable condition of legal study, and involves a course of mental discipline of the most thorough character. It trains the stu dent not to jump to conclusions, frequently reminding him, when he attempts to do so, that such mental gymnastics are leaps in the dark. It trains him at concentrate his atten tion upon the work before him. His time is misspent and his labor is in vain if he withdraws his attention for a moment and thus breaks the continuity of thought con tained in the section or chapter he is read ing. He will sometimes find that even after he has read a section with moderate care fulness he has failed to convey to his mind the correct sense intended by the author; and hence a re-reading and a particularly strict study of the paragraph is required. Close and careful reading, the exclusion of all foreign matters of thought, the closing of the cars of the mind to all other voices, and undivided attention to the voice of the author as it speaks in the book, this is a feature of the mental discipline the study of law ensures. 2. A second feature of mental discipline the study of law emphasizes is a drilling in the habit of systematic thought. It is a source of increasing gratification to the eager and interested student to note, as he proceeds from stage to stage in his legal studies, the perfectly reasonable and sensible relationship in principle which ex ists between different branches of the law; to trace the process of thinking exhibited in any distinct piece of legislation from its

inception to its perfection or present ap pearance; to remark the evolution of distinct rights, remedies and titles from judicial dicta and decisions; to observe how former decisions have been followed in some cases in their spirit rather than in their letter; while in other cases they have been over ruled, modified, or extended in their applica tion, not by reason of any arbitrary caprice, much less partiality, on the part of the court, but by reason of an attempt to bring them into conformity with fundamental general principles of law and equity. 3. A third feature of mental discipline the study of law presents is the facility of generalization it fosters. What are the sententious legal and equity maxims interspersed throughout law trea tises but made pieces, crystals, of generaliza tion, the essence of judicial administration for centuries past and the guide for judicial administration for centuries to come? Similarly might we refer to the established definitions of legal terms; and legal litera ture generally is largely illustrative of the same fact. Text-books, especially on sub jects not previously treated of, are of neces sity based upon the decisions of the courts which furnish the material out of which generalization of statement and treatment is constructed. 4. Another advantage in the way of men tal discipline arising from the study of law is that it trains the student to examine all sides of a question. It is the misfortune of not a few thinkers that by a partial mental development they are too apt to suppose that there is only one side to a question, and tluit the side they happen to perceive. Thinkers of this de scription remind one of the blinkers that form a part of a horse's harness in some places. These blinkers arc broad pieces of leather attached to a horse's headgear to prevent him from looking in any other di rection than the way in which his head is turned. Even so there are many who by