15. To reflect carefully, on the 1st of January in every year, on my past neglects, and to form all necessary resolutions.-16. To give due attention to my religious studies.-17. To give due attention to my classic studies.-18. To pay special attention to such necessary studies as I find myself particularly averse to.-19. To avoid useless knowledge, at the same time to be very sure that it is useless.-20. To avoid, at least during my novitiate, political disputations, religious polemics, all ephemeral causes of excitement, and all merely fashionable and light reading.-21. To dress fairly in the fashion, but never beyond my means, and studiously to shun foppery.-22. To avoid intimate association with young men of doubtful principles.-23. To pay cash for every thing, and rather to deny myself a present gratification than to be a debtor.-24. To regard as absurd and dangerous the opinion of some, that men of distinguished talents are never capable of much application. 25. To avoid all eccentricity, and to root out every idiosyncrasy.26. To cultivate practical knowledge, and a business tact; but to be sure that I am well grounded in the theory.-27. To subdue my imagination, if too wild, to strengthen my judgment, if apt to be false, and to improve my memory if naturally dull.—28. To rely mainly on my industry, however great may be my talents.-29. To take care of the unavoidable fragments of time, and to see that they are as few as possible.-30. To keep constantly in view the essential distinction between reading and studying, two things often confounded; and, that as to elementary books especially, the safest rule is 'multum legendum, non multa.'"-vol. i. pp. 51, 52.

Would it not be better for the student to resolve at once never to leave undone those things which he ought to do, nor to do those things which he ought not to do? The hints for the relief of mental exhaustion are to the best of our information original:

"The mental, and even the physical exhaustion to which laborious students are frequently subjected, may be greatly relieved by very simple means, the more simple indeed the better. In such cases we advise bathing, and more frequently partial ablutions, especially of the forehead, hands, and wrists; frequent brushing of the hair, gentle walking in the streets, musings on the most trivial subjects-and like the Jewish Socrates Mendelshon, even to seek amusement in counting the tiles or bricks of neighbouring houses; or with Bayle, to luxuriate in these walks on the music of the pedestrian organists and ballad-singers—and, boy-like, even to follow the idle crowd in their wanderings after mountebanks,

or other like wonders-to muse over the gaily decorated windows of the shops, and with Lord Orford or Mr. Pennant, to find recreation in the streets from sources which, in hours of renewed strength and literary leisure, he may ripen into materials of some utility. He may, for example, speculate on the probable etymology of the curious names so often presented on signs; ponder over the historical or other associations connected with the names of streets; the wonderful mutations they undergo in orthography and pronunciation, and the causes of the same; or with a rapid glance at the beauties and defects of the various structures around him, he may contrast the architecture before him with that of the Vitruviuses and the Palladios of former times; so that finally he may, for a short time, give himself up to a total abstraction from his legal studies, and all of their associations. How much refreshment may be brought to the wearied mind by thus breaking in upon its chain of thought, and for a moment dissolving its links, can be fully understood only by those who have often experienced it. It is an art, however, which is susceptible of much cultivation, possessed naturally by few, but attainable by all."-vol. i. pp. 41,

42.

Advice of this kind has always struck us to be founded on a radical misapprehension of the nature of the mind, which differs so widely in different persons, that to lay down any general rule of relaxation is preposterous; and to tell a man to go and amuse himself by investing ordinary objects with pleasing associations is about as reasonable as to tell him to acquire a ear for music, or a taste for poetry. It is all very well for Mr. Wordsworth to exclaim,

"To me the meanest things that live can give

Thoughts that will often lie too deep for tears."

The majority of hard readers are more likely to resemble Peter Bell

"A primrose on the river brim

A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."

or will find themselves in the condition of the Kentish Attorney who was gravely assured by Coleridge-probably from his own personal experience of the expansive effect of large objects on the mind-that the best mode of counteracting the cramping influence of his profession was to take a house in the Cathedral Close at Canterbury.

This mistake becomes much more important when it is extended from modes of relaxation to modes of study; and indeed the grand objection we should take to almost all published courses of reading-Mr. Warren's and Mr. Hoffman's amongst the rest-would be the singular neglect shown in them of the ever-varying characters, talents, dispositions, tastes and capacities of those for whose guidance they are framed. Perhaps no two men-certainly no two men above the common level-ever acquired their knowledge in the same order, or fixed it by the same method in their memories. One will read a book carefully through, and then form for himself a concise summary of its contents; another reads only the leading chapters, and leaves the facts and principles to amalgamate with his previously-acquired information as they may. One likes to begin with the simplest rules or elements, and clear away each difficulty as it occurs; another prefers plunging into a mass of apparently heterogeneous matter, for the pleasure of seeing new lights constantly breaking upon him, and in the firm confidence of eventually emerging somewhere, and being amply rewarded. for his adventurous exertions in the end. Now, to compare these several methods, or select any one of them for universal adoption, would be preposterous, for each is good with relation to the individual and the end; and for men of different intellectual calibre to change modes of study would be almost as unsatisfactory as for men of different sizes to change coats. When therefore Gibbon (as quoted by Mr. Hoffman) remarks, that "Salmasius had read as much as Grotius, perhaps more; but their different modes of reading made the one an enlightened philosopher and the other a pedant, puffed up with useless erudition"—he forgets the essential point of distinction between the two, which we take to have been not the mode of reading, but the power of digesting and (so to speak) assimilating what they read-a power possessed in a high degree of perfection by Grotius, who made the baldest facts and dates minister to the loftiest purposes of jurisprudence and philosophy, whilst Salmasius saw nothing in the finest production of genius but a new instrument of vanity or a new plaything for scholarship. To make Salmasius a Grotius, or vice versâ, it would have

been necessary to change not simply their modes of reading but their minds. There is another passage in Gibbon much more worthy of attention:-"Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations; the first from his teachers, the second, more personal and important, from himself." At the age when law studies are ordinarily commenced, the first has long been over, and we should hope little from any man who felt over-anxious for its recommencement, who required to be rocked, cradled and dandled into a practitioner, and could not proceed a step without a "competent tutor" by his side. Instead, therefore, of giving a long list of books, and prescribing the precise order in which they are to be read, we shall content ourselves with briefly indicating the most approved mode of beginning, and then leave the student to plan future courses for himself.

We have already suggested the expediency of beginning with conveyancing and real property law; for the obvious reason, that no class of practitioners can dispense with them. Even nisi prius advocates are frequently engaged in cases involving the abstrusest doctrines of this branch of learning, and could hardly get on at all without some general acquaintance with the parts and language of deeds, and the force of particular words in limiting the duration and quantity of estates. Now the first thing, if this plan be adopted, is to acquire a general knowledge of the ancient system of tenures, which so completely underlies the whole law of real property, that many of its simplest rules would be nearly unintelligible without reference to the now exploded refinements of the feudalists

"It would be no difficult undertaking (says Mr. Hoffman) to enumerate many hundred rules of law, as much in force at present as they ever were, which in the abstract appear unaccountable, if not absurd, until inquiry into their feudal origin dispels the difficulty, removes the aspersion, and imparts that life and dignity which philosophy and science never fail to afford to subjects apparently the most abstruse and arbitrary. The student, for instance, is informed that a freehold cannot commence in futuro; that it cannot be put in abeyance, but that the inheritance may; that a contingent remainder of freehold cannot be limited on a particular estate for years; that a particular estate and remainder must have a contemporaneous inception;

that an estate to A. for years, remainder to B. for life, remainder to the right heirs of C. is good; that an estate for life to the ancestor, and a limitation of the inheritance to his heirs, coalesce, and constitute him tenant in fee, &c.

These rules, which

are very numerous, can make but little useful impression, unless the principles in which they originated be well understood; and let not the student look for these principles out of the Liber Feudorum."-vol. i. pp. 138, 139.

If, therefore, the student is still unacquainted with the leading features of the feudal system, we recommend him to read the first volume of Robertson's History of Charles the Fifth, and (if he is not pressed for time) Sullivan's Lectures, with Wright's Tenures, Dalrymple's Feudal Property, or the first part of Baron Gilbert's Treatise of Tenures. We assume that he has already acquired a competent knowledge of English history-so much at all events as can be got from Hume and Hallam—and it is not taking too much for granted to suppose that a young man destined for the legal profession has long ago read Blackstone, if only to discover the extent, situation, and bearing of the country in which the best part of his future existence is to be passed. If not, let him lose no time in doing so, regardless of what Mr. Warren, Mr. Starkie, Mr. Amos, or other lecturers, may object on the score of undue compression, obsoleteness, or technicality. The main object of preliminary reading is not to supply precise practical knowledge adapted for immediate application, but to form what Blackstone himself terms "a legal apprehension," and acquire certain general notions of the language and principles of the law, and it is difficult to conceive a work better fitted for this purpose than the Commentaries. "Blackstone it was (says Bentham, no friendly critic or slavish admirer), who first, of all institutional writers, has taught jurisprudence to speak the language of the scholar and the gentleman, put a polish upon that rugged science, and cleansed her from the dust and cobwebs of the office; and if he has not enriched her with that precision which is drawn only from the sterling treasury of the sciences, has decked her out however to advantage from the toilet of classic erudition; enlivened her with metaphors and allusions, and sent her abroad, in some measure to instruct, and in still greater measure to entertain