In his earliest novel Disraeli makes his hero, who is himself, speak very disparagingly of the life of a barrister. The best prospects it holds out to a man, he says, if I remember rightly, is port and bad jokes till fifty, and then a peerage. Such a career may certainly not be very attractive to a genius with the aspirations of a Disraeli, but to men of lesser brains or lesser ambitions it is not without its charm-a charm which has fascinated generation after generation of the flower of the universities, and led hundreds to adopt a profession which in its turn too often leads to a life, such as another of Disraeli's heroes described, in which youth proves a blunder, manhood & struggle, old age a regret.

Perhaps I have overstated the charm of the Bar as a career. What attracts the ablest men to the Bar is not so much the career at the Bar as what that career may lead to. It is said that the Bar leads to anything, and that is true if we include the workhouse. But most of the ablest men who come to it regard success at it as merely the first step on the ladder of ambition, and, as we know, some of them climb from it to the topmost rung. But many men as able as these never get beyond the

first step, and then they are as unhappy as those who have entirely failed. Many years ago I had a severe disappointment. One of my friends then was a man almost of genius, who had attained to the highest position but one in the legal world. He was dying, and from his deathbed he sent me a letter of sympathy. Life at the Bar, he said, even when apparently successful, was full of disappointments. "When I was your age," he added, "I never thought I was to die a mere lawyer."

Whatever the attraction that brings men to the Bar may be, it remains to-day as strong as ever it was. Before the war drove every young fellow worth his salt into the army, the number of candidates who presented themselves each year at the final examination for call came close on a thousand. Of this vast number about onehalf came from India and the Crown Colonies. Most of those coming from India intended to practise at any rate till they got an appointment. Most of those coming from the Crown Colonies already held appointments, and were getting called merely for the purpose of more effectively discharging duties of them, a grounding in practical law being found useful both as to their work and

the

And, strange as it may appear, at least half of the home students reading for the Bar have no intention of following the law as a profession. Thackeray, in 'Pendennis,' gives a description of the men who dined in Middle Temple Hall in his time. "Among the student class," he says, "there were gentlemen of all ages, from sixty to seventeen; stout grey-headed attornies who were proceeding to take the superior dignity,-dandies and men about town who wished for some reason to be barristers of seven years' stand ing-swarthy black-eyed natives of the Colonies, who came to be called here before practising in their own islands and many gentlemen of the Irish nation, who make a sojourn in Middle Temple Lane before they return to the green land of their birth." That description still applies, subject to one or two alterations. Gentlemen of the Irish nation now form a very small proportion of the students, and those there are have no intention of returning to the green land of their birth: the reason of this is that the rule which, in Thackeray's time, required men reading for the Irish Bar to keep four terms in England, has long been repealed. Again, the dandies and men about town who wish for some reason to be barristers of seven years' standing are no longer conspicuous among the students,

the compulsory examinations have pretty well put a stop to their ambitions. But the places of both of these classes have been more than taken by civil servants, army officers, and medical men, who, like the officials from the Crown Colonies, find practical grounding in law, and the evidence of that which is supplied by call to the Bar, very helpful both for practice and for promotion in their respective professions.

In England, till lately, law was the Cinderella of learning. The Universities neglected the teaching of it, and seemed to regard degrees in it as things to be given to deserving but uneducated persons. Thus, when a soap-boiler endowed a chair of something in stinks, the grateful University rewarded him with its LL.D. The authorities who did this would have been amazed if any one had proposed conferring a D.Lit. or D.Sc. on the benefactor, and, as for a D.D., they would have regarded the very suggestion to confer it as rank sacrilege; and yet the D.D. would seem the most appropriate, as these worthy people are usually regular churchgoers, and so the one learned subject they know something about is Divinity. This practice no doubt is due to the fact that the ancient Universities are situated far from the capital, which is the seat and centre of the living law; and even now the men who teach law at them are separated almost altogether

from its practice. The Inns of Court, when they were a school of law, were a school of practical law. That position they are trying now to regain; and that they are not trying in vain is shown by the fact that so many men in different professions, where a knowledge of practical law is useful, come to them to get it.

These, however, are not the gentlemen with whom we are at present concerned. We are dealing with those students who study with the object, as Thackeray says, of "mastering that enormous legend of the law, which they propose to gain their livelihood by expounding." If that legend of the law was enormous in Thackeray's time, it is still more enormous to-day. Every year the multitude of reports becomes more multitudinous; every year Parlia ment produces, as his royal patron told Gibbon he did, "another d-d big book"; and the unfortunate student who proposes to gain his livelihood by expounding the law must acquire some sort of a knowledge of all these. When Roman law had got into the same state, Justinian immortalised himself by making an orderly collection of excerpts from the legal treatises (which corresponded to our reports), and an orderly collection of constitutions (which oorresponded to our statutes), and then enacting that all the rest of the treatises and constitutions should be burnt. The sooner something of the same kind is done in England the better.

VOL. CCV.—NO. MCCXLI.

But the important thing is the burning. Without it all attempts to codify branches of law by consolidating statutes are worse than useless. No sooner does a case arise on a new statute than somebody or other is sure to raise the question whether the new statute was intended to alter the old law or not; and so the only effect of the codifying is that the lawyer must master not merely the law as stated in the statute, but the law as stated in the reports. Besides, it usually occurs that the statute is so badly drafted that it is the terror of students. It seems incredible, but still it is the commonest of occurrences, to find text-writers, in commenting on a new Act, stating that it is impossible to know its effect until it has been interpreted by the court. Sometimes the interpretation is beyond even the court's powers. It was, I think, Chief Baron O'Grady who had to confess to a jury that he could not understand a new Aot dealing with sheep-stealing. He had read it over and over again, he said dejectedly, and the only thing in it that was clear to him was that when a sheep was stolen somebody or something was to be hanged; but for the life of him he could not make out whether it was the man who stole the sheep or the man that owned the sheep or the sheep itself.

Assuming that the student has acquired sufficient knowledge of this enormous legend of the law to pass his callexamination, and so become

Y

entitled to try to gain his livelihood by expounding it, he has various courses open to him. He may join the Old Bailey mess and North or South London Sessions (as they are now called), and look out for criminal work; or he may try his fortune at the Common Law Bar, joining a circuit and "opening" as many sessions on it as he can work; or he may settle down to conveyancing and equity work. All three have their attraotions and their drawbacks. The criminal way is usually the quickest and always the cheapest road to practice, and now & commencement in it often leads to good civil work. A man going that way has not necessarily to read in chambers, nor has he the expenses of circuit life. Commencing at the common law is more pleasant, but also slower and more expensive. There the beginner must learn in chambers to master the practical use of what he has learned from his books, and is likely to have to bear heavy expenses going circuit before he gains any fees worth mentioning there. Chancery is to the beginner the hardest way of the law, but probably in the end the most certain. He has, even more necessarily than the common law man, to read in chambers; and the work he first gets is now the most wearisome and the worst paid of all legal work-conveyancing; but if he persists long enough he is pretty sure to get court work too, which is well paid, and of all legal

work the most clean and intellectual. Which course, then, a young man just called should choose depends partly on his purse and partly on his taste.

The common law, as might be expected, is the course which attracts most men who

can afford it. A youngster with a few hundreds a year to spend can pass his first half-dozen years at the common law bar very pleasantly, calling each morning at his business chambers, where he usually finds there is nothing to do, lounging over to the High Court, where he can occupy his time watching other men do cases, taking notes of the cases for them, or occasionally "devilling" a case for a friend who is too busy to attend to it himself, and sometimes doing doing a little work on his own account at account at a county court. This is his life in town. In the country it is as pleasant. He goes four times a year to the county and borough sessions, which he has opened, where he is sure to get from time to time a "soup"-that is, a brief for an official prosecution-such briefs being distributed in rotation among the members of the session's mess; and he goes three times 8 year on circuit, where, though he may get no work, he gets much play and a little experience, and where, if he is a sociable fellow, he is certain to make friendships which will last his life.

Over thirty years ago I joined the Midland Circuit. The Midland mess was then