LAWYERS. ' I "HE diversities of the legal profession in England and America are curious and suggestive. Already is the obligation mutual; for if in the old country there are more profound and elaborate resources, in the new the science has received brilliant eluci dations, and its forms and processes have been simplified. There routine is apt to dwarf, and here variety to dissipate the lawyer's ability; there he is too often a mere drudge, and here his vocation is regarded as the ves tibule only of political life. In England the advocate's knowledge is frequently limited to his special department; and in America, while it is less complete and accurate, he is versed in many other subjects, and apt at many vocations. There can be no more striking contrast than that between the lives of the English Chancellors and the American Chief-Justices : in the former, regal splendor, the vicissitudes of kingcraft and succession, of religious transition, of courts, war, — the people and the nobility, — lend a kind of feudal splendor or tragic interest or deep intrigue to the career of the minister of jus tice; he is surrounded with the insignia of his office; big wigs, scarlet robes, ermine mantles, the great seal, interviews with roy alty, the trappings and the awe of power in vest his person; his career is identified with the national annals; the lapse of time and historic associations lend a mysterious inter est to his name; in the background there is the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket, the speech of the fallen Wolsey, the scaffold of Sir Thomas More, the inductive system and low ambition of Bacon, and the literary fame of Clarendon. Yet in intellectual dignity our young republic need not shrink from the comparison. The Virginia stripling who drilled regulars in a hunting shirt is a high legal authority in both hemispheres. "Where," says one of Marshall's intelli gent eulogists, " in English history is the judge whose mind was at once so enlarged
and so systematic; who had so thoroughly reduced professional science to general rea son; in whose disciplined intellect learning had so completely passed into native sense?" And now that Kent's Commentaries have become the indispensable guide and refer ence of the entire profession, who remem bers, except with pride, that on his first circuit the court was often held in a barn, with the hay-loft for a bench, a stall for the bar, and the shade of a neighboring appletree for a jury-room? The majesty of jus tice, the intellectual superiority of law as a pursuit, is herein most evident; disrobed of al} external magnificence, with no lofty and venerable halls, imposing costume or array of officials, the law yet borrows from the learning, the fidelity, and the genius of its votaries, essential dignity and memorable triumphs. The most celebrated English lawyers have their American prototypes; thus, Marshall has been compared to Lord Mansfield^ Pinkney to Erskine, and Wirt to Sheridan; im perfect as are such analogies, they yet indicate, with truth, a similarity of endow ment, or style of advocacy. The diverse influence of the respective institutions of the two countries is, however, none the less apparent because of an occasional resem blance in the genius of eminent barristers. The genuine British lawyer is recognized by the technical cast of his expression and habit of mind, to a degree seldom obvious in this country. Indeed, no small portion of the graduates of our colleges who select the law as a pursuit, do so without any strong bias for the profession, but with a view to the facilities it affords for entrance into public life. Some of these aspirants thus become useful servants of the State, a few, statesmen, but the majority mere poli ticians, and from the predominance of the latter class originate half the errors of Ameri can legislation.
