but, what is of much more importance, how they are applied in the actual business of courts.
In arranging the studies of the school and completing the scheme of organization, the founders were singularly fortunate in being guided by men of great practical sagacity and unusual administrative skill. Foremost among them was the Hon. Charles Daniels, LL.D., the Dean of the Faculty, the head of the school, and its lecturer on Constitutional Law. Crowded as he is with causes from all parts of the State, submitted to him, as one of the judges of the General Term of the first department, and judge of the Eighth Judicial District, Judge Daniels always makes time for his duties as an officer of the faculty and for his lectures to the students. These last, nothing is permitted to interrupt. He will even adjourn court to give them. And to hear them is to hear such expositions as in past days might have been heard in other schools from James Kent or Joseph Story. From the days of his early studies in law at the shoemaker's bench to the time of his attaining a position at the New York State Bar, which few there have ever excelled, Judge Daniels has been what lawyers call a "hard worker." During all the time of his twenty-six years' judgeship he has never ceased to study law with the ardor of his youth. And now in his maturity he has a knowledge of legal principles and a ripened insight into the nature of law, that can only be described as marvellous. He seems equally well versed in all legal subjects, and is always ready to lecture on any subject when the instructor in it is absent. He speaks without notes, and it is one of the pleasures of the bar to hear him.
Side by side with Judge Daniels in the management and instruction of the school are his brethren of the bench,—the Hon. Charles Heckwith, Chief Judge of the Superior Court of Buffalo; the Hon. Loran L. Lewis, Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York; the Hon. Albion W. Tourgee, the legal author and ex-judge of North Carolina's courts; the Hon. Jacob Stern, the President of the Erie County Bar Association and the Probate Judge of Erie County; the Hon. L. N. Bangs, former Probate Judge of Genesee County, and the Hon. George S. Wardwell, senior Judge of the Municipal Court of Buffalo.
Unlike Judge Daniels's method of instruction, Judge Beckwith's lectures on Equity Jurisprudence are written out with the greatest care. With the members of the Buffalo Bar, who, as well as the school students, are his admiring listeners, they are spoken of as careful, thoughtful, scholarly expositions of the branch of the subject of which he treats. Indeed his character of mind is essentially that of an equity lawyer, as that of his colleague Judge Lewis is that of a skilful advocate. His subject, "The Trial of Cases in Court," is one of which Judge Lewis is peculiarly qualified to speak. Before his elevation to the Bench, he was conceded on all sides to be the best nisi-prius lawyer in the fifth department. No one understood as he did the secret which so many try in vain to learn,—the successful presentation of cases to juries. Always clear, always forcible, always logical, he seemed to the ordinary juryman to be always right. He added to an unusual knowledge of men an unusual power of eloquence, which never seemed to the listener to be oratory, but only quiet convincing conversation. This art he had learned through years of experience, as all rhetoricians must learn it, by close observation and careful conformity to the rules of tact; and the hints which he gives upon the conduct of cases are of great value.
The students have also peculiarly favorable opportunities for hearing the practical side of the law in the lectures of Judge Stern, on the subject upon which his practice and present position of a probate judge have made him an authority of much weight, "Wills and Estates of Deceased Persons," and of Judge Bangs upon the subject "The Law of Trusts." These gentlemen are specialists whose opin-
