man began at once to cast about for another unoccupied field, and a year later he had finished for the press his treatise on " Co tenancy and Partition," — the most intri cate and perplexing title of the law. This work is, and will remain, his masterpiece. Challenging at the outset the definitions of Littleton, Blackstone, Kent, Preston, and all others, showing in what they were incomplete or incorrect, by careful com parison, revision, elimination, and modi fication he formulated his own definitions, which are remarkably clear, simple, and complete. In 1876 his treatise on " Executions " was
published, and this was followed in 1877 by a work on " Void Judicial Sales." In 1879 the death of Mr. Proffatt led to the engagement of Mr. Freeman as editor of the "American Decisions," of which he reported and annotated eighty-nine volumes. Each one of these volumes contains a large num ber of carefully written notes, some of them reaching the dignity of monographs or trea tises upon the subjects discussed. He is now author or editor of one hundred and two volumes of the most approved law books. His works are recognized, cited, and re spected as authority by the highest courts in the land.
LAWYERS IN LITERATURE. By Wilbur Larremore. OF late there have been some significant atavism. In America, however, there has signs of the growth of a relation of been a prejudice against the " literary law mutual helpfulness between the professions yer." Probably this springs in part from the materialistic tendency in a comparatively of Law and Literature. The witty and tal ented editor of the " Albany Law Journal " new country. " Literary fellers " have been has demonstrated most conclusively that a I frowned upon also in political life, by s.tateslawyer may become a litterateur, and a littera men of the hayseed and log-cabin type. teur still remain a lawyer, without losing in But, more potent than this, has been the either capacity through his gain in the other. honest American antipathy to dilettanteism The appearance and success of the " Green in any form. The sentiment has been that Bag," devoted as it is to the literary phases the law is enough to absorb any man's at of the law, is another strong evidence of tention; and that if he dissipated part of his energy in writing for magazines, he developing reciprocity. It should be re membered that in England it has never been thereby became less reliable in the technical the custom to look askance at a barrister work of his calling. How many who uncon because occasionally he wrote an essay on sciously reason thus remember that at least a theme not strictly germane to "shop," or eighty per cent of the political work of the even rent his gown and tore his wig in country is done by lawyers in regular prac struggling with refractory rhymes. Barris tice? It is expected that the legal profession ters are all supposed to be University men; shall take the lead in public life, and it is and if the old inspiration of the cloisters never feared that a lawyer will be unfitted steals back upon them at times, the offence for his professional duties by attending con ventions and primaries. As matter of fact, is regarded — as all crime is to be consid ered in Mr. Bellamy's Boston of a. d. 2000 political activity is much more inimical to — a piece of unavoidable and pardonable systematic legal practice than occasional
