During the following period of the Repub lic down to the time of Cicero, we are told, "many of the ablest, best, and most learned citizens devoted themselves to the study of the law as a science and art. They formed a distinctive class, and were called juris consults and prudentes. They publicly in structed students; they were consulted by litigants, to whom they gave legal opinions. At this time they did not compose syste matic treatises upon the law. The answers to questions put to them were termed responsa prndentium, and when cited to the courts, would undoubtedly be used with much ef fect in determining the decision; and this effect depended upon the reputation of the person whose opinion was quoted. Soon after this came the class of legal writers who introduced the philosophic ele ment, and thence came Justinian and the Digest. From the Pandects of Justinian, the Institutes and Codes, down through the jus civili, corpus juris canonici, and jus gen tium, we find our way through early English history into the glorious Shakspearian age, when the versatile but classic Bacon, the acute Coke, and scholarly Blackstone were shining lights in legal literature in that most brilliant literary epoch the world has ever seen. At this time Coke says : — "Reason is the life of the law; nay, the Common law itself is nothing else but reason."
Precedent was at this time getting a firm hold; and books were beginning to multiply, although but slowly. We had passed the epoch in history when the people were con tent to accept the mere general assertion of such sentiment as expressed by Fronde, that "Our human laws are but copies, More or less imperfect, of the eternal laws. So far as we can read them :
and if the time had not come when " lawyers are made in a day," it might with truth be said that the time would soon arrive when law-writers would spring up in a day. Up to this time, certainly, it had been
deemed sufficient "to know the law;" and are we not to attribute to this same suffi ciency in the lawyer, rather than to any ability to act in the capacity of a search-war rant, such an appointment as that which the Princess of France gave to her counsellor Bоget, in the words of Shakspeare, — "Bold of your worthiness we single you As our best moving, fair solicitor;"
or was this all " love's labor lost"? What a time, a glorious time in the world's history this is! The age of Sentiment. Poe try, Art, Philosophy, "yet glowing with the sun's departed beams." "Quod satis est cui contigit, nihil amplius optet."
But the dogs of war and rebellion are again let loose, and Courage " stalks with Minerva's step where Mars might quake to tread." Kingdoms crumble like the potter's clay that has not been hardened with fire. Revolution is the order of the day. A fear ful time, when the heavens seem to meet the earth in awful strife, and then, like the stormcloud that obscures the vision of us poor mor tals at times, rolls aside, and we emerge into the beautiful sun-born morn of a new era. The beautiful creation from the ruins of the Past, the Republic, child of Destiny, born to out shine its parentage, and to shed the effulgent rays of its splendor upon the nations of the world. And it is right here where " it is not so much to know the law as to know where to find it," is first brought to our notice. That is, a lawyer may know the principle, the reason upon which such a principle is based, and yet he is not strong in his posi tion until he knows just where that book authority for his principle is to be found, and may be read to a sceptical court. The difficulty is not lack of ability on the part of the court, or erudition on the part of the counsellor; but the multiplied phases of cases, the vast increase of legislative acts, together with the many conflicting revised and overruled opinions of State and Federal Courts, have made the practice a veritable
