liest years of this century settled in New Haven. Here he enjoyed an active practice, and had an unusually valuable working library. As the same considerations which now influence a student in the choice of an office in which to "read" law must have been equally decisive in those days, it is not surprising to hear that Mr. Staples soon had several young men studying in his office. He seems to have soon found it advisable to adopt a regular system of instruction. Among those whose studies he directed was Samuel J. Hitchcock, a young graduate of the college, who held a tutorship there while he was reading law. Mr. Hitchcock, a careful and thorough student, was invited in 1822. by Mr. Staples, to assist him in the work of instruction. In 1824 Mr. Staples removed to New York to engage in practice, leaving his school, which must have become by this time an institution of importance, in the charge of Mr. Hitchcock and Judge Daggett.
The connection of the school with the college is reckoned from that year because then for the first time the names of the pupils were published in the College Catalogue. Two years later, in 1826, the connection was made more formal by the appointment of Judge Daggett, already at the head of the school, to be Kent Professor of Law in Yale College, upon a foundation established by the friends of Chancellor Kent. These two gentlemen, Judge Daggett and Judge Hitchcock, continued in charge of the school for over twenty years, and under their successful management it grew prosperous and celebrated.
Judge Hitchcock was not a public man. The only important public office held by him was that of Judge of the New Haven County Court. From the time of his first connection with the school until his death, in 1845, he devoted himself to the work of instruction, an occupation suited to his scholarly tastes and retiring disposition. A methodical and exact man, he never failed to make his students feel the value of diligent and accurate scholarship in the law, or to surprise and delight them by his intimacy with a wide field of reading, from which he drew many of his illustrations. He ranked with the most successful legal instructors of his time, and was frequently compared with Story and Greenleaf by those who had listened to them all. The acknowledged ability of Judge Hitchcock and the eminence of Judge Daggett brought large numbers of students to the school. It is, perhaps, not out of place to note a curious accident by which Judge Hitchcock's instruction has continued even after his death. His bequest in trust "for the support of indigent, pious young men preparing for the ministry in New Haven, Conn.," was adjudged by the Supreme Court void for uncertainty, and is each year cited in the class-room in illustration of the familiar rule.
Judge Daggett was considerably older than his associate, and came to his work of instruction with a broader and more active practical experience if with less scholarship. He held a ready pen, and had been the author of a number of political pamphlets of great local celebrity, in which force of argument was well set off by powers of sarcasm and invective, reminding one of Swift. The few years immediately preceding his connection with the school had been devoted exclusively to private practice, but previously he had for twenty-five years almost continuously held office. He had been elected several times to the State Assembly, being for three years Speaker of the House, had been for eleven years at different times a member of the "Governor's Council," a body with functions very similar to those now exercised by the State Senate and the Supreme Court of Errors. He had also been United States Senator from 1813 to 1819, being one of the last of the old-time federalists sent to Washington. At the bar he was an accomplished and celebrated "pleader," and one of the most successful practitioners of the State. During his professorship he sat for six years as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and for two years as its Chief-Justice, retir-
