sinners, would be seen scared and scampering from their holes and hiding-places;just as even now the inmates of some single abode of iniquity or infamy are sometimes seen flying from the sudden irruption of an earthly police, or from the startling terrors of some self-constituted vigilance committee! Christianity, neither Sectarian_nor Sectional, the Great Remedy for Social and Political Evils: An Address delivered before the Young Men's Christian Association, Boston, April 7, 1859. Repeated before the Young Men's Christian Association of Richmond, Virginia, May 5, 1859. Republished in Addresses and Speeches, Boston, 1867, r. 8vo, 408450. FORBES WINSLOW, M.D., D.C.L. OXON., born 1810, died 1874, was author of a number of valuable medical works upon insanity and other subjects, of which the most important is On Obscure Diseases of the Brain, and Disorders of the Mind, Lond., 1860, 8vo; Phila., 1860, 8vo; 4th ed., Lond., 1868, p. 8vo. "The future British text-book on mental and cerebral pathology.. What an amount of bodily suffering and hopeless mental imbecility might be prevented if the practical and scientific views propounded in Dr. Winslow's book were generally diffused."-Lond. Lancet. "The master effort of a great philosopher."Dub. Quar. Med. Jour., 1860. NEGLECT OF INCIPIENT SYMPTOMS OF IN SANITY. Upon investigating the history of the diseases of the brain, how frequently does the medical man discover that positive and unequivocal cerebral symptoms have existed, and perhaps, during the early stage, even been observed for months, and in some cases for years, without exciting any apprehension on the part of the patient, his family, or friends! In many of such instances, clearly manifested head symptoms were entirely overlooked. If noticed, no right estimation was made of their value. My attention has been called to cases in which serious mischief to the delicate structure of the brain and its investing membranes has thus been permitted by the patient's friends to proceed uninterruptedly for years, no treatment being adopted to arrest the progress of the fatal disorganization! The brain, that most important, and exquisitely organized, of all the structures of the human body, the physical instrument of intelligence, centre of sensation, and source of volition, is permitted, in many cases, to be in a state of undoubted disorder, without exciting any attention until some frightfully urgent, alarming, and dangerous symptoms have been manifested, and then, and not till then, has the actual extent of the mischief been appreciated, the condition of the patient recognized, and advice obtained for his relief! Other deviations from organic conditions of health do not, as a general rule, meet with similar systematic neglect. In affections of the stomach, liver, bowels, lungs, and skin, &c., the first symptoms of approaching disease are immediately observed, and the patient, without loss of time, seeks the aid of his physician. But when the brain is affected, and the patient troubled with persistent headache, associated with some slight derangement of the intelligence, disorder of the sensibility, illusions of the senses, depression of spirits, loss of mental power, or modification of motility, his condition is, in many cases, entirely overlooked, or studiously ignored, as if such abnormal symptoms were signs of robust health, instead of being, as they undoubtedly are, indications of cerebral disorder requiring the most grave and serious attention, prompt, energetic, and skilful treatment! One reason of the neglect to which the brain is subjected when under the influence of disease, is a notion, too generally entertained, that many of the more fatal forms of cerebral diseases are suddenly developed affections, presenting no evidence of any antecedent encephalic organic change, and unaccompanied by a premonitory stage, or incipient symptoms. It is indeed natural that such an iden should be entertained, even by an educated professional man whose attention has not been specially directed to a study of this class of disease, or whose opportunities of watching the progress of such affections have been limited and circumscribed. A man apparently in vigorous health, mixing daily with his family, going to his counting-house, engaging in the active pursuits of commerce, or occupying his attention in professional or literary duties, whilst stepping into his carriage, or when entertaining his friends at the festive board, falls down either at his door in a state of unconsciousness, or quietly bows his head on his plate at the dinner-table and dies, surrounded by his family, in a fit of cerebral hemorrhage!. A gentleman during dinner complains suddenly of giddiness and sickness. He retires to another room, where he is found a minute afterwards supporting by a bed-post, con tend successfully in its many battles, strug Before concluding this subject, I would briefly address myself to the consideration of two important questions intimately connected with the interesting facts previously discussed, viz.: fused and pale. Being put to bed he soon be- On Obscure Diseases of the Brain. THE MEMORY. 1. At what particular period of iife does the intellect begin to decline, and when, as a genrule, is first observed the commencement of an insenescence of the intellectual principle? 2. Is great strength of memory often associated with limited powers of judgment and reasoning, and conjoined with a low order of intelligence? "the "In old persons," says Cabanis, feebleness of the brain, and of those functions which originate therein, give to their determination the same mobility, the same characteristic uncertainty, which they possess during childhood; in fact, the two conditions closely resemble each other." The Professor of Physiology at the University of Montpellier, Dr. Lordat, denies the truth of this aphorism, and terms it a "popular delusion." This able physiologist and philosopher maintains that it is the cital, not the intellectual, principle that is seen to wane as age throws its autumnal tinge over the green foliage of life. "It is not true," he says, "that the intellect becomes weaker after the vital force has passed its culminating point. The understanding acquires more strength during the first half of that period which is designated as old age. It is impossible," he says, "to assign any period of existence at which the reasoning powers suffer deterioration." Numerous illustrations are adduced to establish that senescence of the intelligence is not isochronous with that of the vital force. I should regret if, in the preceding observations, I were to convey the impression that I estimated lightly the benefit to be derived from a steady and persevering cultivation of the memory in early life. It is, in every point of view, most essential that this faculty should be carefully developed, dis-old ciplined, and invigorated during the scholastic training which most boys intended for the universities, and subsequently for political and professional life, have to undergo. The knowledge then acquired is seldom if ever obliterated from the mind, except by disease. How much of the pure, refined, and elevated mental enjoyment in which men of education luxuriously revel in afteryears is to be traced to that period when they were compelled to commit to memory, often as a task, but more frequently as a part of the regular curriculum of the schools, long and brilliant passages from illustrious classical authors? Do we ever regret, when our bark is being tossed upon the noisy and tempestuous ocean of life, having had to go through such an intellectual ordeal? Is not the mind thus stored with an imperishable knowledge of passages from the poets, orators, and historians of antiquity full of elevated thoughts, profound wisdom, exquisite imagery, noble and magnanimous sentiments? It would be absurd to undervalue a system of educational discipline productive of such obvious advantages. My animadversions are directed against the too exclusive cultivation and undue straining of the memory. We are disposed to forget that there are higher and more exalted mental faculties that require to be carefully expanded and fortified before the mind is fitted to enter into the great arena of life, and qualified to con The conversation of the celebrated composer, Cherubini, at the age of eighty, is said to have been as brilliant as during the meridian of his existence. Gossec composed a Te Deum when at the age of seventy-eight. Corneille, when seventy years of age, exhibited no decay of intellect, judging from his poetic address to the king. M. des Quensounnières, the accomplished poet, at the advanced age of one hundred and sixteen, was full of vivacity, and fully capable of sustaining a lively and intelligent conversation. M. Leroy, of Rambouillet, at the age of one hundred, composed a remarkably beautiful and spirited poem. Abbé Taublet, when speaking of the intellect of Fontenelle when far advanced in life, says, "His intellectual faculties, with the exception of a slight defect of memory, had preserved their integrity in spite of corporeal debility. His thoughts were elevated, his expressions finished, his answers quick and to the point his reasoning powers accurate and profound." Cardinal de Fleury was Prime Minister of France from the age of seventy to ninety. At the age of eighty Fontenelle asked permission, on the ground of physical infirmity, to retire from the post of perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences. The prime minister refused the request. Three years subsequently Fontenelle again expressed a wish to resign office. "You are an indolent, lazy fellow," writes the Cardinal; "but I suppose we must occasionally indulge such characters." Voltaire, when at the age of eighty-four, came to Paris, agreeably to his own language, "to seek a triumph and to find a tomb." Richelieu died at the age of ninety-three, full of mental vigour. A few minutes before his death, his daughter-in-law, wishing to encourage him, said, "You are not so ill as you would wish us to believe; your countenance is charming." "What!" said he, with the utmost vivacity, and full of wit and humour, "has my face been converted into a mirror?" On Obscure Diseases of the Brain. GEORGE SHARSWOOD, LL.D., born in Philadelphia, 1810, graduated at the University of Pennsylvania, 1828, admitted to the Philadelphia bar, 1831, Judge of the District Court of Penna., 1845, and President Judge from 1851 until Dec. 1867, when he took his seat as an Associate Justice in the Supreme Court of the State; Professor of Law in the University of Penna., 1850 et seq.; for three years a member of the Penna. Legislature. Professional Ethics, Phila., 1854, 8vo, 3d edit., 1869, 12mo; Popular Lectures on Common Law, 1856, 12mo. Edited: Blackstone's Commentaries, Byles on Bills of Exchange, Coote on Mortgages, English Common Law Reports, Laws of the United States, vols. iv. and v. (in continuation of Story), Leigh's Nisi Prius, Roscoe on Criminal Evidence, Russell on Crimes, Smith (J. W.) on Contracts, Starkie on Evidence, Stephens's Nisi Prius. LAW STUDIES. It is proposed to present a few considerations upon the proper mode of training for the practice of the profession of the law in this country. They will be altogether of a practical character. The bar in the United States is open to all who wish to enter it. It is mostly under the regulation of the various courts, and their rules have been framed upon the most liberal principles. Generally a certain period of study has been prescribed, never, it is believed, exceeding three years. In some States, however, even this restriction is not found. The applicant for admission is examined, as to his knowledge and qualifications, either by the courts or by a committee of members of the bar. The profession is the avenue to political honours and influence. Those who attain eminence in it are largely rewarded, and, with ordinary prudence, cannot fail to accumulate a handsome competence. Hence the young and ambitious are found crowding into it. There is a great-perhaps an overduehaste in American youth to enter upon the active and stirring scenes of life. Hence it is undoubtedly true that many men are to be found in the ranks of the profession without adequate preparation. Very often the difficulties presented by the want of a suitable education are overcome by native energy, application, and perseverance; but more commonly they prevent permanent success, and confine the unlettered advocate to the lower walks of the profession, which promise neither profit nor honour. Unless in cases of extraordinary enthusiasm and where there are evident marks of bright, natural talents, a young man without the advantages of education should be discouraged from commencing the study of the law. Not that a collegiate or classical course of training should be insisted on as essential,although it is doubtless of the highest importance. Classical studies are especially calculated to exercise the mental faculties in habits of close investigation and searching analysis, as well as to form the taste upon models of the purest eloquence. The orators and historians of Greece and of Rome are a school in which exalted patriotism, high-toned moral feeling, and a generous enthusiasm can be most successfully cultivated. With a good English education, however, many a man has made a respectable figure at the bar. Lord Campbell has said that "he who is not a good lawyer before he comes to the bar will never be a good one after it." It is, no doubt, highly necessary that the years of preparation should be years of earnest, diligent study; but it is entirely too much to say, with us, that a course of three years' reading, at so early a stage, will make a good lawyer. In truth, the most important part of every lawyer's education begins with his admission to practice. He that ceases then to follow a close and systematical course of reading, although he may succeed in acquiring a considerable amount of practical knowledge, from the necessity he will be under of investigating different questions, yet it will not be of that deep-laid character necessary to sustain him in every emergency. It may be safe, then, to divide the period of a lawyer's preparation into first, a course of two or three years' reading before his admission, and, second, one of five or seven years' close and continued application after that event. At the commencement of his studies in the office of his legal preceptor, the cardinal maxim by which he should be governed in his reading should be non multa, sed multum. Indeed, it was an observation of Lord Mansfield, that the quantity of professional reading absolutely necessary, or even useful, to a lawyer, was not so great as was usually imagined. The Commentaries of Blackstone and of Chancellor Kent should be read, and read again and again. The elementary principles so well and elegantly presented and illustrated in these two justly-celebrated works should be rendered familiar. They form, too, a general plan or outline of the science, by which the student will be able to arrange and systematize all his subsequent acquisitions. To these may be added a few books of a more practical cast; such as Tidd's Practice, Stephen on Pleading, Greenleaf's Evidence, Stephens's or Leigh's Nisi Prius, Mitford's or Story's Equity Pleading, which, with such reading of the local law of the State in which he purposes to settle as may be necessary to make up the best part of office-reading. It will be better to have well mastered thus much than to have run over three times as many books hastily and superficially. Let the student often stop and examine himself upon what he has read. It would be an excellent mode of proceeding for him, after having read a lecture or chapter, to lay aside the book and endeavour to commit the substance of it to writing, trusting entirely to his memory for the matter, and using his own language. After having done this, let him reperuse the section, by which he will not only discern what parts have escaped his memory, but the whole will be more certainly impressed upon his mind, and become incorporated with it as if it had been originally his own work. Let him cultivate intercourse with others pursuing the same studies, and converse frequently upon the subject of their reading. The biographer of Lord Keeper North has recorded of him that "he fell into the way of putting cases (as they call it), which much improved him, and he was most sensible of the benefit of discourse: for I have observed him often say that (after his day's reading) at his night's congress with his professional friends, whatever the subject was, he made it the subject of discourse in the company; for, said he, I read many things which I am sensible I forget; but I found, withal, that if I had once | talked over what I had read, I never forgot that." Much, of course, will depend upon what may be termed the mental temperament of the student himself, which no one can so well observe as his immediate preceptor; and he will be governed accordingly in the selection of the works to be placed in his hands and his general course of training. No lawyer does his duty who does not frequently examine his student,—not merely as an important means of exciting him to attention and application, but in order to acquire such an acquaintance with the character of his pupil's mind-its quickness or slowness, its concentrativeness or discursiveness-as to be able to form a judgment as to whether he requires the curb or the spur. It is an inestimable advantage to a young man to have a judicious and experienced friend watching anxiously his progress, and competent to direct him when, if he is left to himself, he will most probably wander in darkness and danger. In regard to the more thorough and extended course of reading which may and ought to be prosecuted after admission to the bar, the remarks of one of the most distinguished men who have ever graced the American bar, whose own example has enforced and illustrated their value, may be commended to the serious consideration of the student. "There are two very different methods of acquiring a knowledge of the laws of England," says Horace Binney (art. Edward Tilghman, Encyclopedia Americana, vol. xiv.), and by each of them men have succeeded in public estimation to an almost equal extent. One of them, which may be called the old way, is a methodical study of the general system of law, and of its grounds and reasons, beginning with the fundamental law of estates and tenures, and pursuing the derivative branches in logical succession, and the collateral subjects in due order, by which the student acquires a knowledge of principles that rule in all departments of the science, and learns to feel, as much as to know, what is in harmony with the system and what not. The other is to get an outline of the system by the aid of commentaries, and to fill it up by desultory reading of treatises and reports, according to the bent of the student, without much shape or certainty in the knowledge so acquired, until it is given by investigation in the courts of practice. A good deal of law may be put together by a facile or flexible man in the second of these modes, and the public are often satisfied; but the profession itself knows the first, by its fruits, to be the most effectual way of making a great lawyer." 44. Justinian's Institutes. Taylor's EleMackeldy's Compendium. Colquhoun's Summary. Domat's Civil Law. Savigny's Histoire du Droit Romain. Savigny's Traité du Droit Romain. Under this view, the following course of reading may be pursued. The whole sub-ments. jeet is divided into heads, and the order of proceeding is suggested." All the books named may not be within the student's reach some may be omitted, or others may be substituted. It may, however, be what irksome to pursue any one branch for too long a period unvaried. When that is found to be the case, the last five heads may be adopted as collateral studies, and pursued simultaneously with the first three. VII. PERSONS AND PERSONAL PROPERTY. some-Reeves on Domestic Relations. Bingham on Infancy and Coverture. Roper on Husband and Wife. Angell and Ames on Corporations. Pothier's Works. Smith on Contracts. Jones on Bailments. Story on Bailments. Story on Partnerships. Byles on Bills. Abbot on Shipping. Duer on Insurance. Emerigon Traité des Assurances. Boulay-Paty Cours de Droit Commercial. Story on the Conflict of Laws. VIII. EXECUTORS AND ADMINISTRATORS. I. REAL ESTATE AND EQUITY.--Hale's History of the Common Law. Reeves's History of the English Law. Robertson's Charles V. Hallam's Middle Ages. Dalrymple on Feudal Property. Wright on Tenures. Finch's Law. Doctor and Student. Little-Roper on Legacies. Toller on Executors. ton's Tenures. Coke upon Littleton. Pres- Williams on Executors. Lovelass's Law ton on Estates. Fearne on Contingent Re- Disposal. mainders. Sheppard's Touchstone. Preston on Abstracts. Preston on Conveyancing. Jeremy on Equity. Story's Equity Jurisprudence. Powell on Mortgages. Bacon on Uses. Sanders on Uses and Trusts. Sugden on Powers. Sugden on Vendors and Pur-mented upon by his authors. In this way chasers. Powell on Devises. Jarman on Wills. III. CRIMES AND FORFEITURES.-Hale's Pleas of the Crown. Foster's Crown Law. Yorke on Forfeiture. Coke's Institutes, Part III. Russell on Crimes and Misdemeanors. Roscoe on Criminal Evidence. Chitty on Criminal Law. IV. NATURAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAW. -Burlamaqui's Natural and Political Law. Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis. Rutherforth's Institutes. Vattel's Law of Nations. Bynkershoeck's Questiones Publici Juris. Wicquefort's Ambassador. Bynkershoeck de Foro Legatorum. Mackintosh's Discourse. Wheaton's History of International Law. Robinson's Admiralty Reports. Cases in the Supreme Court U. S. 'Dunlap's Admiralty Practice. V. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW.-Coke's Institutes, Part II. Hallam's Constitutional History. Wynne's Eunomus. De Lolme, with Stephens's Introduction. The Federalist. Rawle on the Constitution. Story on the Constitution. Baldwin's Constitutional Views. Upshur's Brief Enquiry. Calhoun's Works, vol. i. All the Cases on the Subject in the S. C. U. S. VI. CIVIL LAW.-Butler's Horæ Juridicæ. Gibbon's History of the Rise and Fall, chap. Very few Report books are set down in this list as to be read in course. In his regular reading, the student should constantly, where it is in his power, resort to and examine the leading cases referred to and com he will read them more intelligently, and they will be better impressed upon his memory. It is believed that the course thus sketched, if steadily and laboriously pursued, will make a very thorough lawyer. There is certainly nothing in the plan beyond the reach of any young man with industry and application, in a period of from five to seven years, with a considerable allowance for the interruptions of business and relaxation. He must have, however, certain fixed and regular hours for his law-studies, and he must not suffer the charms of a light literature to allure him aside. The fruits of study cannot be gathered without its toil. In the law, a young man must be the architect of his own character, as well as of his fortune. "The profession of the law," says Mr. Ritso, "is that, of all others, which imposes the most extensive obligations upon those who have had the confidence to make choice of it; and, indeed, there is no other path of life in which the unassumed superiority of individual merit is more conspicuously distinguished according to the respective abilities of the parties. The laurels that grow within these precincts are to be gathered with no vulgar hands: they resist the unhallowed grasp, like the golden branch with which the hero of the Eneid threw open the adamantine gates that led to Elysium." Sharswood's edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, Vol. i., Introd., Sect. I., On the Study of the Law, p. 37, Phila., 1859. |