The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-13 00:00:00

penning meanwhile, in rapid sticcession, though at
uncertain intervals, some of the most striking
papers that have appeared in Maga since the
Golden Age of the " Noctes Ambrosiatm." In.
stance this, his charming biographic commemoration
of men like Sir William Follett, in his time all but
Lord High Chancellor of England, and of that
wonderful John William Smith, who, had he lived,
might have been almost anything, in spite of his
ungainly ways and his singularly unprepos-
sessing appearance. Instance this—an enthral-
ling logical web to disentangle, a mysterious
literary nut to crack, call it what you
will, entitled interrogatively " Who was the
Murderer ?" Finally, instance this—in a lighter
vein, yet one that we should almost be tempted to
designate hisforte,that comical poking of fun at men
and things, after the fashion of Gresset, laughing out
radiantly at us among the motley " Tales from
Blackwood" under the fantastic title of " Ticttler
among the Thieves." Other miscellaneous writings
of Mr. Warren, there are, that—let us frankly con-
fess it—we don't in the least admire. Eccen-
tricities of authorship, for example, like " The
Lily and the Bee," , writings that aro for us
as if they had been penned in some unknown
tongue, that are about as comprehensible to
us, let us say, for that matter, as the signifi-
cation of the awful word abracadabra. As to the
merits of the work, now more particularly, how-
ever, under consideration, there could hardly, one
might suppose, be two opinions. The hinting of a
fault, or rather of a whole multitude of faults, in
regard to these " Law Studies"—perhaps we ought
rather to say in reference to the captious and snarl-
ing criticism we are about, just for one moment, in
passing, to particularise, the hesitation of a dislike,
of a bitter personal dislike, derived from some name-
less source, in regard to the learned author of these
pages, could alone be accounted for, very recently,
by the fact that the cynicism resulting in those two
amiable achievements, the hinting of those faults,
the hesitation of that dislike, caine to view in the
'columns of that clever, sneering, brilliant, offen-
sive, delightful, intolerable, weekly journal, dubbed
some time since by Mr. Thaokeray in a moment of
Grandisonian irritation the Superfine Review !
l'hat Mr. Warren's " Law Studies" are not perfect
—well, cela va sans dire. Errors of fact inevitably
creep into these widely ranging surveys of a
learned profession, a profession, moreover, which is
perpetually undergoing changes of all kinds in the
way of modification or development. All the time
that Mr. Warren, during these last six years, has
been laboriously occupied in writing these pages
and revising the proofsheets with an evidently
scrupulous and cautious exactitude, the laws of
the realm in respect to several most important
departments have been undergoing a series ot
remarkable transformations. The task here under-
taken to be accomplished by him has, therefore,
been all the while one of extraordinary difficulty
and delicacy. It has been something equivalent to
taking a photograph of a dissolving view. The
survey of every department of the legal profession
has, however, in this comprehensive " Introduction
to Law Studies" not only been steadily pursued
throughout those six years, but has at length at the
end of them been most happily accomplished. That
here and there, in exceptional cases, Mr. Warren's
revision of 1568 octavo pages has not been tho-
roughly completed, even in the leaf devoted
to the errata, is hardly to be wondered
ate Those oversights of the kind, however,
which have alone caught our attention, upon
a careful examination of the two volumes, are of
such microscopical minuteness, are of such utter in-
significance, intrinsically, that to particularise them
as substantial objections to the value of the work
would be the veriest inanity of hypercriticism.
Omissions of such vital importance, for example,
from that page already reverted to (xxxi.), set
apart for the corrigenda—as that Sir George
Bowyer is mentioned at p. 351 as Mr.
Bowyer, where allusion is made by the author
to the learned baronet's " Commentaries on the
Jonstitutional Law of England." Or, again, as that
Sir Edward Creasy, upon the very next page (p.
:352) is spoken of as Mr. Creasy, in reference
to that Indian Judge's book on the " Rise and Pro-
gress of the English Constitution." Objections
nave been raised—in the same petty spirit of fault-
finding for the mere love of that cynical
pastime—by reason of Mr. Warren's gravely
enforcing upon the attention of the more
youthful, and we will presume also more in-
differently-educated, law students, the enormity of
such vulgar slips of the tongue, as the ellision of
their U's, or the interchange of IT and W, or, direst
outrage of all, in this way, upon our sense of hear-
ing, the insertion of an at between a final and
initial vowel. Atrabilious, indeed, must have
been the temperament, or, at any rate, the mood, of
he reviewer who could seriously direct this pre-
posterous charge (viz, that of giving superfluous
advice) against Mr. Warren—seeing that at p. 226
there was ample reason under the critic's gaze,
for having his ill-humour laughed away by
a whimsical little illustration in respect
to the interpolated a—to wit " Amelia Anne,
masquerading as Amelia Ranne." Objections of so
very frivolous a kind, in truth, as those already
indicated, are as completely beneath the learned
author's consideration, as might be exceptions
taken in the hearing of a Gothic architect to
some casual flaw or stain upon the nose of a gur-
goyle. Fail to coincide with the conclusions ar-
rived at by Mr. Warren in the course of his elabo-
rate treatise, we cannot but do repeatedly, as is
but natural, indeed, in regard to a work so elaborate
and comprehensive in its character. His opinions,
for example, as to the absolute unans werableness
of Cbiliingworth's argument in that famous divine's
reply to Matthias Wilson, otherwise Edward Knott,
we take to be an utterly extravagant exaggeration.
Imagine yourself, (he says, to the Student Reader),
in the place of that unhappy opponent of Chilling-
worth—" Can you find an instant's opening ? Is
your opponent ever off his guard ? Does he ever
make a false thrust? Or fail of parrying the best
of his antagonists ? Can you discover, in a word,
a defect, or a redundancy, in either thought or ex-
pression ?" The mere extravagance, this, of ejacu-
.atory, we will even say, of adulatory and hyper-
bolical admiration ! Again, we cannot but deem it to
be, either a very reprehensible reticence, or a very
singular forgetfulness, the omission of any reference
whatever to William Cobbett's wonderful " History
of the Protestant Reformation," where reference is
made to the annals of that extraordinary move
meat : although due attention is directed to " the
Romish view of it" obtainable from Dr. Lingard's
History of England, and to "the Protestant, or
Church of England view of it," to be found in
" Palmer's Treatise on the Church of Christ."
Cobbett's masterpiece being in reality one of
the most powerful and notable histories—to our
thinking incomparably the most powerful and
notable history—of that period and that movement,
any where discoverable. Hardly, moreover (speaking
now upon a totally different subject), can we do
otherwise than avow our unwillingness to assent
to the accuracy and validity of the astounding con-
clusion arrived at by Mr. Warren, at the close of his
very able and remarkable definition of the differ-
ence between the strictly legal and the strictly con-
stitutional. It seems to us, in truth, little less than
/e7,i5 maieste to dream for one moment of averring
as an incontrovertible and irrefragable truth
that—lf the spirit of Englishmen had degene-
rated so far as to tolerate and approve an Act
abolishing trial by jury, prohibiting public
meetings, and repealing the Habeas Corpus Act,
the Bill of Rights, and the Great Charter,
then it would be both legal and constitutional.
Legal ?—Yes ! Constitutional ?—a thousand times
No! Constitutional?—why, the whole Constitution,
of any such act as that, would be, ipso
facto,the
passingswept out of existence, would be, utterly
annihilated. The application of the word to
any such Act, therefore, would be nothing less
than the most fantastic of misnomers. Fright-
fully legal such a proceeding would be on the part
of a degenerate Parliament, but never Consti-
tutional. Widely divergent at times, however,
though our opinions, our convictions, our sentiments
may be—" wide as the poles asunder"—nay, differ-
ing though we may do, Coto ccelo, upon one or two
vital matters of discussion—we cannot possibly, at
:any time or under any circumstances, do otherwise
than respect the arguments put, forth byMr,Warren,