crimination, as well as a temperance of judgment and a considerateness of temper which rendered him a just and useful magistrate — not perhaps of the very highest rank, but eminent in the second class. He was also a brilliant wit, we infer; at least, consider ing the solemn and insincere formality of the meet ings of lawyers in memory of recently deceased brethren, nothing wittier was ever uttered than his sotto voce aspiration, at a late assembly of this kind : "Let there be no moaning of the Bar when I go out to sea." That ought to be capable of making even Tennyson laugh, although he probably regarded parody of his verses as little less than sacrilegious. Judging from the tone of the London legal press, Lord Justice Bowen must have been very highly esteemed at home as a man, a lawyer, and a judge, and certainly in this country he has been regarded with the highest respect and admiration.
A New Tool for Lawyers. — So long as the curse of case-law rests on our profession, so long it will be necessary to provide new and constantly im proving tools for digging it out. Every year brings re port of twenty-five or thirty thousand new cases, and these must be presented and arrayed, from time to time, in some accessible form and convenient man ner. The very latest endeavor toward this end is a series of English "Ruling Cases" (we should here call them Leading Cases), arranged topically, and annotated with English notes by Mr. R. Campbell, a well-known associate editor of the new Revised Re ports conducted by Sir Frederick Pollock, and with American notes by Irving Browne. This great under taking will begin with "Abatement" and end, we suppose, with "Witness." There are manifest and essential advantages in the topical over a chronologi cal arrangement. It dispenses with the constant tedious " harking back " and a tiresome handling of many volumes, and down to the date of issue presents one consecutive and comprehensible view of the law on the particular subject. The annotation in question will be specific rather than excursive and monographic, as it should be under this form of arrangement. The dimensions of the work will allow this, inasmuch as leading judgments on every general legal doctrine will be furnished; and repetition of annotation will be avoided. This we have always believed to be the right theory of annotation. Notes cannot usefully take the place of text-books. There is something speciously attractive in the sound of "monographic notes," but our practical experience leads us to be rather impatient with them when we are busily and hastily in search of the doctrine on a subordinate point of a somewhat exten
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sive branch. For imperious family reasons it is not permitted us to comment on the notes of the Ameri can editor in the present series, but we may without offense be allowed to speak well of those of the English editor, which seem to us models of this kind of writing. The work is from the press of Messrs. Stevens & Sons, of London, and is internationally copyrighted; the first volume is nearly ready for market, and the Boston Book Company are the agents in this countrv.
Queer Cases. — To our recollection there never before were so many strange and novel lawsuits waged as during the last year, both in England and America. A good many of these we have commented on in these columns last month and in the present number. The offensive anc demoralizing action of Pollard v. Breckenridge, recently concluded at Washington, may perhaps not properly be termed a queer case, for there is nothing queer in the unsavory disclosure of human nature made in it, but it is cer tainly a very remarkable case of the stripping off the disguising robes of piety and respectability from a sensual old humbug. It must be " nuts " to Profes sor Briggs to witness this exposure of his prosecutor and persecutor in the recent great heresy trial, whose Calvinism was so much better than the Professor's, but whose morality is apparently so much lower. But the very queerest case of all ever waged in courts of justice is that of Russell Sage, sued by the gentleman whom he interposed as a shield between himself and the dynamiter's bomb, under the guise of a friendly hand-shake. Since this was chronicled in these columns the new trial has taken place and re sulted in a verdict of $25,000 for the plaintiff. It may be that it was a question of fact whether the de fendant's act was designed for the purpose of his own protection, or whether it was involuntary, nervous, and hysterical, so to speak. At all events, it has thus far proved a very expensive "put" for Mr. Russell Sage, and is a loud " call " from the plaintiff. Sage should economize enough to make it up. in that building-gift which he is bestowing on the Troy Female Seminary.
The South Carolina Liquor Law seems to have come to sudden grief in the courts. Nothing remains but for the governor and the temperance party to contrive a new law which shall avoid the un constitutional features of this. Such a law however would apparently prove very much less efficient and much more readily evaded. It has thus far seemed impracticable to devise and enforce any law which shall defeat the appetite for strong drink with which one half the community are afflicted, at least, one
