expounders usually appear. Homer eclipsed all his Grecian successors; Eschylus and Sophocles Sophocles are incomparably superior to Euripides. Our own Shakespeare has not found "his like” as yet. Nor have Adam Smith and Ricardo been hitherto surpassed in their politico-economic career. There appears thus to be much ground for Mr. Buckle's surmise that circumstances make great men. Certainly, after a study has been for some time cultivated, all its best points appear to become monopolized, and little beyond mere details left to future explorers. After the succeeding prosaic age, however, has flourished its due period, there then arises a fresh craving for originality, to satisfy which the world is content to see received rules set at defiance, prescriptive unities become obsolete, while the highest expression of poetic feeling is sought for in a return to symbolic language.

Art and rule, however, long hold their own even in the regions of pure fancy. In the practical arts, of course, method and order are the last, as well as the first, conditions of success. In law, for instance, without a good method of study, no one could hope to become a sound lawyer. The compass of human life is too short to admit of desultory reading as a means for acquiring a solid and practical knowledge of law. On the other hand, a very brief course of study, if properly directed, may be very well substituted for the authorised viginti annorum lucubrationes prescribed by Lord Coke as the due period of legal apprenticeship.

The Law Digest Commission seems to have considered that the forthcoming digest will, to a certain extent, bring a knowledge of law home to the door of every man. We fear that this object can be but to a very slight extent attained. It is also doubtful whether a little law, like a little learning, may not be a dangerous thing for general and unrestricted use. However, laymen ought to be so well aware of this that possibly the labours of the Commission will not diminish the number of applications for

professional advice in cases where there is any real legal difficulty.

The design of diffusing a knowledge of law generally amongst the public seems, therefore, somewhat impracticable. But the digest, we think, will not very much diminish the labours even of the professional lawyer. Indeed, it may even increase them. Nutriment without bulk is as deleterious as the converse regimen. The digest, therefore, must, as to its more recondite principles, be itself digested by aid of the farrago which it is the main object of the Commission to expunge from the existing authorities. Were there not textbooks on law, a digest would be a matter of the first necessity. As matters are, it will be for some time, in numerous respects, an experiment rather than a positive boon.

Another proposition stated by the Commission is of an equally disputable nature. The Commission think that as every one is bound to obey the law, so it is the duty of the State to extend as widely as possible the advantages of a legal education. It is indeed the duty of the State to impart to its subjects as much information as possible of every kind. But this function of the State seems to some extent precluded by the fact that, at least as regards crimes, law being not more, but less, extensive than morals, the ethics of law are in fact comprised under that particular head of morality which relates to duties to one's neighbour. As no one is ignorant of this or indeed of any department of right and wrong, the moral teachings of the State are so far unnecessary. But, if it needs must teach moral duties, that purpose will be best subserved by religious instruction.

With respect to technical law, except where it relates to the observance of the Lord's day, other well known customs, or fiscal burdens, it can hardly be the duty of the State to seek to indoctrinate the general public with any knowledge of legal mysteries. Such paternal attention on the part of the Government might increase vastly the amount of litigated cases, and so operate for the berefit of the pro

A digest of law, however, need not be considered the ne plus ultra of the particular jurisprudence of these realms. The digest may be made the basis of further reforms reaching even to principle, and so give way to a code not tied down to existing rules. A digest can thus, doubtless, be rendered of the utmost use to the speculative jurist in aiding his suggestive faculty, confining it also to the routes most in request, and at the same time enabling him to take a comprehensive survey of the province through which he is going to travel. It is in its relations to ulterior particular reforms that a digest appears to us to be chiefly valuable. It certainly will not much abridge professional labours for some time to come.

The chief legal reforms contemplated of late years have been the fusion of law and equity, a general registry system of titles to land, and a logical digest of our whole law. The first of these reforms is now almost a fait accompli, owing to the numerous mutual points of contact between law and equity under the Common Law Procedure and Chancery Regulation Acts. When the legal Thespis shall have taken up his present fixtures in Lincoln's Inn, and exchanged a nomadic life for a quiet settlement upon the Thames Embankment, the consolidation of the jural elements, which have so long fought in blind and chaotic rage, will be very soon afterwards completed. That this is a consummation most devoutly to be wished," few at the present day are disposed to question. No one is found to exclaim either against the necessity or utility of any kind of simplification of our complicated legal machine. Or if there are any such inveterate admirers of the legal world as it is, they pour forth their complacent minimum of satisfaction in so subdued a tone as to be undiscernible amid the general uproarious demand for a wholesale system of legal consolidation.

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The project of a public registration of landed estates underwent a great amount of discussion prior to its partial

settlement by the Land Registry Acts of 1862. The advocates for a registration comprised three different classes of persons. One section of law reformers recommended a registration of the estate or deeds pur et simple; another class preferred a registration of the legal effect and incidents of the title; while a more refined body of reforming jurists would accept only a registry confined to the registration of the evidence of titles. At last, the rival disputants, despairing to convince one another, seemed resolved to accept any modicum of reform in the direction of their common desires. The prudence of this mutual compromise cannot be questioned. Improvement, even though it be short of perfection, is never to be despised. Certainly, a general registry system would greatly tend to simplify the law, as it would render a mere legal estate valueless.

Similar to the agitation (if any mere legal controversy deserves the name), that so long prevailed respecting a general registry of titles, there has been an equally important controversy as to the relative superiority of a code or digest of law.

Let us carefully consider, then, what sort of consolidation is best calculated to simplify practical jurisprudence, and whether this concrete question can, in the case of voluminous laws, be resolved according to any general rules applicable to every condition of civil society?

The latter question is, we think, easily answered. Law, like politics, is a science, but of a much more exact nature. The former relates to active powers or rights: the latter to duties or passive obedience. The degree of political power which may be entrusted to a nation or class in a low rank in the scale of civilization may be open to some doubt. But no one can imagine that laws, if free from the taint of tyranny, cannot be as easily obeyed by the newly emancipated negro of South Carolina as by the lineal descendants of Emilius Paulus. Indeed, the habits of subjection taught to the former by his servile condition