The Sun.
London, England, 1858-01-15 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

A Handy Book on Property Law.. In a series of
Letters. By Lord St. Leonards. Blackwood
and Sons.
Gratitude is our principal emotion on laying
down this wise and charming little volume from
the hand of the most profound lawyer now living,
and one of the greatest in the long and illustrious
line of England's Chancellors. The book is, strictly
speaking, nothing less than a pocket masterpiece.
It is as if Watt had carved a working model of the
steam-engine, of the size of a cherrystone. Or as if
Sir Isaac Newton had constructed, for the enter.
tainment of some unscientific guests, an extempore
orrery out of a circular dining table, and a desert
of plums and oranges. The lucidity of the produc-
tion, from first to last, upon a series of abstract
questions, is, in truth, something extraordinary.
When an unprofessional reader crosses the thres-
hold of the introductory page of any other literary
performance devoted to the elucidation of the
mysterious and complicated mechanism of the Pro-
perty Law of England, he may be tolerably certain
of this—that he will find himself forthwith in a
very maze of bewilderment. Lord St. Leonards,
however, has here in the very first sentence of the
very first paragraph placed in everybody's hand
who lists, a clue, the gossamer strands of which
are at once the most refined and the most tena-
cious, by the aid of which any one who cares
to follow the windings of the path may penetrate at
pleasure, and let us add too with pleasure, to the
very heart of the wondrous labyrinth. All this,
moreover, Lord St. Leonards has accomplished
with the perfect ease of one who is not merely en-
tirely master of his subject, but of one who com-
bines with that complete knowledge an exquisite
capacity for rendering it comprehensible to other's.
Turning over the leaves of this small volume—and
they scarcely number one hundred altogether—we
remember that it appears not ivapprepriately at
the very time when Professor Faraday is complet-
ing his masterly comae of lectures upon Electricity,
delivered before juvenile audiences at the Royal
Institution. It recalls to our recollection likewise
the dainty fascinsticn of style with which Sir
Walter Scott once upon a time invested for boy
readers the chivalrous annals of his fatherland. It
reminds one, this Handy Book on Property Law,
by Lord St. Leonards, of the graceful blending
of skill and precision with which Leonardo da
Vinci disdained not to define for after students in
the art his genius had so grandly illustrated and
advanced, its rudimentary precepts and elementary
principles—compiling at once its grammar and its
dictionary. The Letters here submitted to our
'consideration occopy relatively to the Laws of
Property the precise position assumed in
regard to the Laws of Chemistry by the
familiar Letters of Baron Liebig. We accept
the little volume, therefore, in the first place with
an unaffected sense of gratitude, and in the next
with unstinted words of admiration. How truth-
fully, and we cannot but think, also, how touchingly,
has the noble writer of this book remarked at its
commencement, " I have in my youth and
in my manhood written much for the learned
in the law ; why should I not at the close
of my career write somewhat for the unlearned ?"
And so—our author aspires now in the ripened
maturity of his reputation to produce a work such
as " whilst it imparts knowledge, may, perchance
beguile a few lours in a railway carriage !" It is a
rather renaarkalf_e circumstance, we take it, that
the profound and comprehensive intellect which in
early youth manifested its scope and its vigour
with such astonishing precocity by giving to the
world then a grand legal masterpiece like VENDORS
AND PURCHASERS, should now (more than half a
century afterwards) evidence so much visacity and
perspicuity in the Scries of Letters constituting
this " Handy Book on Property Law." Small as
the production is (considered merely in regard to
its superficial dimensions), we are very much mis-
taken, indeed, if it is not the crown of this vene-
rable and eminent reputation. Familiar though
its style, we doubt very much if it be not
the most signal proof yet given of the depth
of Sugden's legal erudition. Certain at any
rate we are, that in " design" the book is the
noblest emanation of this great mind; as it will
assuredly prove the most popalar of its author's
literary compositions. Anything like fragmentary
quotation from the work would be little less than
absurd, unless extended to limits that would be al-
most an infringement of copyright. A notion might
readily enough be conveyed, by extract, through
which the nature of the " materials" might be con-
jectured or even appreciated—but no idea whatever
could thereby be afforded of the " form" in which,
those materials are arranged, mach less of the syra-
metcyandcoinpletene9s of its propertions. It would
be scarcely less ridiculous than chipping a fragment
from some exquisite statue—by means of which any
one might see at a glance, of course, the character of
the marble, but from Which no one could possibly
1 surmi e either the manipulative skill or the artis-
tic genius of the sculptor. Bes;des, the book itself
is so brief—numbering in all no more than twenty-
five epistles, extending over 192 pages—that it
might be readily pi :used in a railway journey be-
tween London and Birmingham. The unprofes-
sional reader will scarcely understand, from the
simple wording of the title-pc3e, the ample range
of the sesvey taken in this series of leaers under
a heading:so terse, and in its tendency apparently so
restricted. Under that third Absolute Right inhe-
rent in every English citizen, viz., that of Property,
how many social relations are there not comprised
The relation not merely of vendor and purchaser,
but, among others, of tenant and landlord,
of heir and testator, even of parents and chil-
dren. Rapidly—and this, be it remembered not
drily but delightfully, because conveyed throughout
anecdotally and conversationally—a mass of infor-
mat-o s is peered forth as we turn the pages, in re-
ference to contracts, wills, leases, conveyances,
trusteeships, tenancies, rent-rolls, insurances, mort-
gages, advowsons, copyholds, dowries, divorces,
loans, deeds, devises, coveaauts, assignments, join-
tures, settlements, disabilities, easements, and so on
inexhaustibly. If " varie:iy be pleasing," here as-
suredly any one may feast to his heart's content
upon the enjoyment. Repulsive though many of
these motley themes may appear to be in them-
selves, they are invested by the manner of Lord St.
Leotards with a certain species of colloquial fasci-
nation. We read on amused—we close the book
instructed. But we lay it not aside by any means
permanently, when its perusal has been thus com-
pleted. We place it within reach as a vade mecum
worthy of perpetual consultation. A repertory of
well-digested and well-compacted information, it
constitutes, upon many of the most important, and
some of them hitherto most abstruse and bewilder-
ing questions, a veritable miniature cyclopmdia,
open to instant reference, and replete with lucid
1 explanations. It canhardly fail, we believe, to
diminish in time the general amount tef litigation.

THE WEEKLY INDIAN MAIL-THE SOUTH.
AMPTON PACKET STATION.

The weekly communication between Southamp-
ton and India will commence on the 11th proximo.
The packets will leave the former place on the 4th,
again about the 11th, then on the 20th, and agai*
about the 26th of the mouth. Only the packets
which leave on the 4th and 20th wilt be for the
present under mail contract. Whe❑ these arrange-
ments are in operation the Peninsular and Oriental
Company's packets will traverse 1,119,840 miles in
the course of a year, a distance the length of which
is equal to 50 times the circumference of the earth.
The amalgamated Royal Mail and European and
Australian Company's packets traverse 168,032
miles during the same period. After next month
there will be 26 arrivals and departures of foreign
packets at and from Southampton in the coarse of
a month, or 312 during the year. It is estimated
that 800 tons of letters and newspapers and nearly
20 millions sterling worth of the precious metals
are afloat in Southampton Docks during the space
of 12 months. It is singular that the pilots who go
out to meet the homeward-bound Southampton
packets have not to wait at the pilot station more
than an average of two days for each packet, al-
though some of the ships run a distance of 8,000
miles, and call at 20 or 30 places before they are
heard of. Upwards of 80 large steamers run in con-
nection with the packet port of Southampton ; and
although about a quarter of a million of persons,
consisting of passengers and crews, live on board
these steamers for different periods of time during
the year, the average annual number of deaths on
board of them all from maritime disasters does
not amount to 100. Notwithstanding the large
number of mail steam packets, and the immense
distance they travel every year, the average loss of
steamers is very little more than one a year. The
annual consumption of coals by the Southampton
packets is about half a million of ton 4. The foreign
coal depots a, e at St. Thomas, Havannab, Ja-
maica, and Grenada, M the West Indies, and at
Lisbon, Madeira, St. Vincent, Cape de Verde,
Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Malta, Calcutta, Madras,
Point de Grille, Aden, Bombay, Suez, Penang,
Singapore, Bong Kong, King George's Sound,
Sydney, Gibraltar, and New York. The English
mill packet system, notwithstanding some short-
comiegs, is a truly marvellous development a
human enterprise. Mail packet statistics thus
-ituve the vast extent t.f English commerce at d
the British empire. They L.iso show the progre 1
of the arts and scier,..s connected with ship-build•
ing, the ipiriovement of the steam engine, and the
~,,,.;patron of the great seas and oceans which art
now traversed with almost unerring regularity.