Year: 1859

man are forever to struggle with all the mex plicable absurdity with which the combines ingenuity of statesmen. judges and lawyers have incumbered them and which for so many centuries have made market for the best tai ent and most vigorous industry of the ablest men.

 As long as we have spun out this essay, We are willing to leave the subject without word to those who. if our views be correct, are most concerned in it's bearings, we refer to young candidates for the bar. It is for them to con sider whether the prospects of the legal pro fession are equal to it's hopes. Lawyers have for so long a period of the worlds history. been distinguished with the highest public trusts, enjoyed the most exalted honors and possessed the most eminent ability, that 1t IS almost impossible to convince the careless ob- server that these results are not incident to the vocation. Tempted by the hopes of such re- cords, hundreds abandon more fitting calling for chance in the game that has yielded such extraordinary success. Butfo the rea- sons we have already indicated, we submit that this is a 6elusion, and is fast becoming snare, and that before the student of to-day shall have lived to reach the elevation where his ex. pected honors grow, the tree will be found nearly barren.

 In addition to this there is no other literary profession in which so much fruitless study is necessary for success. The lawyers toll and research, (we speak of those labors which are necessarily professional,) are not the ac- quisition of science, the mastery of any great phenomenon of nature, the develop ment of some new power by which the whole mind of the human race is to be moved for ward, and the comforts of men are to be null tiplied. His brain does not weary with argn- ments to establish great truths, which, when established, increase the wisdom of mankind. It is scarcely too much to say that the great mass of his law learning might be erased from his mind without materially impairing his in terest as companion, or his value as citi- zen; and yet, we are we'll satisfied, that the members of no other literaay profession under- go the same amonnt of severe intellectual la Dor, as the same number of lawyers. It is not the business of the lawyer to seek or maintain the abstract right. He is to readan arbitrary, and to him, immutable law, and to apply 1t to the case that is submitted to him--he has noth- ing to do with the right, but with the law, and when he finds what he esteems to be the law of his case to maintain his position. To learn his law and sustain his Interpretation, he does not explore the vast domain of morals and knowledge, to learn what is just andtrue, but he burrows through volume upon volume of reports, to find what had been the opinion of Judges of from one to thousand years before in similar case.

 We speak in the common interest of human ity when we say, that this is too serious al loss of intellectual service to be patiently tolera- ted. The same degree of labor and capacity which is necessary to make distinguished lawyer, would achieve worldwide reputa- ton, if bestowed upon any of the natural sci ences or useful arts. The preliminary study and thought which are necessary to qualify a young lawyer to hold his first brief, would sui fee to master the learning of almost any of the practical sciences, and then he would have the best of his mature life to widen the circle. His labors too would then be sustained by the consciousness that he was enlarging the sphere of human intelligence, that his industry, and perhaps his name, would go down to posterity associated with the causes, or instruments of some of it's most substantial enjoyments.

 young men would sufficiently consider these things, we are satisfied, they would spare themselves much of the anxiety and mor- tifcation that always pursue defeated hopes.

 IVANHOE.