The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-08 00:00:00

Article

ociety.

The third inauguration meeting of this society,
which was established two years ago, was held yes-
taartiay evening in the great hall, King's College.
Mr. COLERIDGE, M.P., occupied the chair, and,
after some formal business had been disposed of,
delivered the inaugural address. Having thanked
the meeting—which comprised several ladies—for
the warm reception they bad given him, he proceeded
to say that his professional life had been influenced
so much by chance, and that his professional success
—partial as it was—had been so unexpected by him-
self, that he had but little hopes of being able to
communicate to his audience anything which could
be of value to them as the result of his own experi-
ence. As to the professional education, indeed, of
those to whom his remarks were specially directed,
he could give them but little information, because
he did not pretend to understand the subject. He
had not, as was the case with many barristers, passed
any portion of his time in an attorney's office, and
he had not, therefore, save in so far as common
sense might be supposed to give it, any practical
knowledge of the details which were then to be mas-
tered. The only advice, then, which he had to offer
on the subject of purely professional education
was comprised in the obvious precept " make
yourselves thoroughly masters of your work. Do
not for a moment suppose that you are above it,
or feel that you condescend to do it as a matter
of grace —a feeling which is certain to end in
slovenliness and negligence." (Cheers.) What-
ever was worth doing at all was worth doing well,
and as the work of an attorney beyond that of
almost any other man was important, not only to
himself, but to other people, a sense of solemn re-
sponsibility ought to come in aid of the sense of
self-respect by which he should always be animated.
That poor pretender to gentility who affected to de-
precate and look down upon the profession by which
he had to live could excite, and
.ought to excite, in
every manly mind no sentiment but that of disdain-
ful pity. (Hear.) He was the truest gentleman, as
well as the best attorney, who thought no details too
small and no labour too great which might enable
him to become master of the profession which he had
adopted. With respect, therefore, to the purely pro-
fessional education of those young men whom he
saw around him he had little or nothing to say. He
of course assumed that they had done their best to
make themselves masters of the few great text writers,
that they had tried to present clearly to their minds
the outlines and the principles, at least, of law and
equity, of real property and equity as applied to pro-
perty, of assurance, of contracts, of easements, as
well as of the poor law and criminal law. That,
however, which he wished chiefly to insist on that
evening was the great importance to themselves and
to society at large that they should be something
more than mere well-intentioned and honourable
practitioners. It was important to themselves that
besides being all that they should be a great deal more
because it seldom happened that a man without wide
and general cultivation could attain the first place in
any liberal profession. If by force of mind or auda-
city or by means less credible, he did succeed in at-
taining the first place, there were but too many ex-
amples to show that he often discredited the emi-
nence which he had reached. He did not mean to
say that cultivation would do alone, but he did con-
tend that it made success greater ; that it gilded, as
it were, the laurels of the conqueror, and poured
some precious drops of consolation into the cup which
the vanquished had to drain. Most of us, he feared,
at some period of our time wasted invaluable time,
but no single moment could be regarded as wasted
which had been spent in the real, wide, and thorough
cultivation of one's mind. Those hours, they
might depend upon it, had been the best spent which
had been passed in the diligent study of the works of
the great men of our own and other countries which
had been passed with Homer, Aristotle, Cicero, Vir-
gil, Dante, Montaigne, Shakspere, Milton, Words-
worth, and Bishop Butler. From such men they
might learn that there were things better than pro-
fessional success, and worse than professional failure;
other objects in life than to win a verdict or reverse a
decree. (hear, hear.) From them we might learn
to arrive at a sound and sober judgment about our-
selves and other people, and to know what poor crea-
tures most of us were side by side with the great giants
of our race, and to avoid that vulgar vanity, that tire-
some egotism and self-display which lie was afraid
was sometimes so justly laid by men of the world
to the charge of the legal profession. It was not,
perhaps, unnatural that the great and successful
lawyer, knowing nothing outside his profession and
knowing that excellently well, achieving by its means
great worldly wealth and rank, should sometimes be
ridiculously vain. Let such a man be brought into the
presence of really great and noble minds ; let him be
made if he could to feel the grandeur and beauty of
such minds ; let him be shown the vast fields of
thought and knowledge, entirely new to him, which
the work of those minds, open to his view, and he
would begin to suspect that he was not after all quite
so great a person as he had been accustomed to think;
he would be rendered more humble, which would be
good for himself, and silenced, which would be good
for others. (A laugh.)
The cultivation which those
whom he saw before him would not fail to derive
from the course which he had pointed
out, they would
look for and value in other men, and it was of the
greatest importance to the Bar, and through the Bar
to the country, that they should act upon that view.
4' The interests of the Bar," a wise and high-minded
country gentleman, a friend of his, had once said to
him, " are the real interests of everybody who may
have occasion to employ one of its members—thatis,
they are the interests of almost every subject of the
Queen." In short, the higher, the purer, and the
more elevated they could make the character of the
Bar, the better would it be, not only for their com-
mon profession, but for the great country of which
they had the privilege of being citizens. (Hear,
hear.) But the members of the Bar looked to, and
were, as it were, upheld by the attorneys, and just
in proportion as the latter valued justness of thought,
largeness of view, refinement of mind, and elevation
of character, so would they seek out and appreciate
those very men in the other branch of the profession
who were distinguished by those great characteris.
tics. It was, he might add, a great mistake to sup-
pose that such men did not make the best practica:
advocates. In his opinion, they made the best ad-
vocates of all. But he would not base his argument
on considerations derived from mere worldly success.
In that of which he was speaking, as in all things, it
was their solemn duty to aim high and to do the best
they could to elevate not only their own characters,
but the characters of all those with whom they had
to deal.

"Rude, hospes, contemner° open, et to quoque dignum
" Finge Deo." 0

Thus said Virgil, and Aristotle wrote to the same
effect ; while in that sublime aspiration, Sursuni
Corda, we heard the voice of the Christian Church.
In proportion as they acted upon the responsibility
which these words implied would they purify and
elevate the character of their common profession ;
while in proportion as they forgot that responsibility
and poured out their favours on such specimens of
low-bred
vulgarity,
insolence, and ignorance as had
in his recollection from time to time flourished, like
bay-trees in our c
commonh
courts, would they degrade and dis-
honour the
profession to which they be-
longed. (clear, hear.) Let him not at the same time
be misunderstood
beLet it not be supposed that he
looked upon one as
uneducated because he did
not happen to know Greek orLatin, or had not passed
through one of our Universities. lie was aware that
men who had enjoyed the advantage of our public
schools and University education were extremely
which had
apt to overrate the benefitsthus been
,conferred upon them. Such an education
was true, certain positive advantages, and, had,
dylnigt
others, that it was, as it were, forced upon those
who were submitted to it, whether they wished it or
not. It was, at the same time, absurd to say that
other means of cultivating the mind were to be un-
dervalued. If it were otherwise, it would follow
that as such a public school and University training
as we possessed was known only in this country,
an Englishman alone could be looked upon as edu-
cated, whereas some persons, like his friend, Mr.
Matthew Arnold, were of opinion that we in Eng-
land were entirely devoid of what was termed geist.
But, to put the point more plainly, he supposed that