an easy and simple path, and then to pro ceed to details with a most careful and scru pulous exactness of interpretation. Other wise, if we begin by burdening the student's memory, as yet weak and untrained, with a multitude and variety of matters, one of two things will happen, — we shall either cause him wholly to desert the study of law, or else we shall bring him at last, after great labor, and often too distrustful of his own powers (the commonest cause among the young of ill-success), to a point which he might have reached earlier, without such labor and confident in himself, had he been led along a smoother path." These words seem wise and suited to the subject. Jus tinian's plan was that students should thoroughly master the Institutes; and this the name of his book imports. Though easily brought within a couple of hundred of printed pages, the Institutes have gained a legal immortality, and have been, and are still, the source of knowledge for students of the Roman law, as well as for lawyers in England and in the United States, few of whom resort to the great collection of cases in the Pandects, while such as do, en ter that wilderness through the gate of the Institutes. This work, as is well known, com prises the first elements of the science of law, arranged in four books. This arrange ment is apparently borrowed by Blackstone in his Commentaries, who first succeeded in treating the materials of the common law in an orderly manner, and who first relieved the student from fathoming the " laws of disor der " in Lord Coke's comments upon Little ton. So it happens that the methods and many of the rules of Justinian not only serve for education in the Roman law, but for dis cipline and thought in our own. Only one remark more needs to be made in justification of the course of study pur sued in the Columbia Law School. It lends itself readily to the purposes of a review. The great value of a review is not to be lost sight of. This statement will be sustained by all educators in collegiate courses. It is equally
applicable to legal study. It is highly impor tant that a student should go over a subject more than once. It is in this manner that early difficulties disappear. The materials for thought become permanently lodged in the mind. The pernicious habit of cram ming is avoided. The student's interest in his subject increases. The law may still be a labyrinth, but he has a clew which enables him to work himself through its mazes. More than all, the student gains that con fidence in his attainments which Justinian so justly declares, in the passage already quoted, to be a prime condition of success in legal pursuits. The methods of study outlined in this paper appear to have been adopted in England in the early period before law instruction fell into decay. There were no suitable treatises then at hand. The lecturers, then termed " read ers," discussed before an audience of stu dents a legal topic from a systematic point of view. The lectures of this kind that have come down to us are very satisfactory. Ref erence may be made to Lord Bacon's read ing on the Statute of Uses, or Sir Francis Moore's reading on the Statute of Charitable Uses. A number of a valuable character are still in existence, but unpublished, await ing exhumation by the Selden Society. This system, it is true, after a time failed. That failure was not due to any defect in method, but to more general causes. The lectures were but occasional; there were no regular instructors. Large sums of money were expected to be laid out by the lecturers in the way of entertainment of the students who had honored them with an invitation to "read." Such an assessment, for it was practically that, after a time became bur densome, and lawyers invited to lecture de clined the invitation. Add to this that the Inns of Court werej particularly during the period of the Stuarts, places for the cultiva tion of jollity and merriment. They were houses where the fun was "fast and furious," and where the sobriety of the law came to be out of place. Instruction in the principles
