fund then becoming available to the Law School from a bequest of Benjamin Bussey, Esq. Like his colleague, Professor Parsons, Washburn soon became favorably known both as a lecturer and as a legal writer. Probably no instructor at the Law School was ever more generally loved by his students. While at the bar every client's cause had been his own; and as a professor he identified himself in the same manner with his pupils,—their hopes and successes were his; their fears he sought to dispel by warm words of encouragement. His works on the "American Law of Real Property" and on the "American Law of Easements," renewing their youth with each new edition by the aid of able annotators, are still the leading books of reference on those subjects in America.
During the twenty-five years following the death of Judge Story, the attendance at the school fluctuated considerably, owing partly to the war, partly to the competition of law schools which were organized elsewhere in large numbers, and partly, perhaps, to other causes. The highest number of students (one hundred and seventy-six) was reached in January, 1860; the lowest (sixty- nine), in July, 1862. In the year 1869—1870 the attendance at the school was one hundred and fifteen. The method of instruction during this period remained substantially the same as that which was practised under Judge Story and Professor Greenleaf; namely, oral lectures illustrating and explaining a previously prescribed text-reading, with more or less examination thereon.
On Jan. 6, 1870. Christopher Columbus Langdell became Dane Professor of Law,—an event which, like Story's appointment to the chair forty years before, marks an epoch in the history of the school and of legal education. In external conditions two men could hardly have differed more widely than Story and Langdell at the time each entered upon his duties as an instructor of law. Story had a national reputation; at the early age of thirty-two he had been appointed one of the judges of the highest court in the land; he had been tendered the Chief Justiceship of Massachusetts; his official position, his family connections, and his social qualities had secured for him the acquaintance of the most prominent men of this country; he was the pride of New England; the University was honored when he accepted the professorship at the Law School. Langdell, on the other hand, was almost unknown; he had held no public office; at the bar of New York, of which for more than fifteen years he had been a member, not many could be found who had even heard of him, he had rarely been seen in the courts; in Boston there were few to whom his name was known. But some of the leaders of the New York Bar had discovered his ability, and there were some other lawyers of prominence both there and in Boston who remembered that, nearly twenty years before, there
