trine of Impeachment," Jacob's " Modern Justice," Kirkwood's " Grand Treatise of the Sea Law, " Wingate's " Sermon Law," "Actions for Slander," Godolphin's "Lex Testamentaria," and Sheppard's " Marrow of the Law." As wealth increased, so did Virginian li braries. Mr. George Davenport left a " large collection of law books," in 1766, and when the magnificent library of Col. William Byrd of Westover was sold in April, 1777, three hundred and fifty law books were found amongst its 4,000 volumes. So we see, from the records left in the county court houses, that the Virginians not only prized
the traditions and principles of English jurisprudence, but also owned the best legal works of their day, and from these so fitted themselves for legal and governmental posi tions that it is little wonder that, during the early years of the United States, their hold upon high Federal positions was of such long duration as to make other sections of the country grumble at the continuance of the "Virginia dynasty." The Virginia gentry had been preparing themselves, during more than a century, for rule in a constitutional State and, when this was founded, they were the men best fitted for the public service.
IRVING BROWNE AS A POET. WHEN Thomas Noon Talfourd — then only barrister, and unaware that he would soon become Q.C., then sergeant, wearing the consecrated coif, and finally judge, to expire on the bench suddenly while pronouncing to a grand jury majestic words of warning towards duty — wrote his dramatic poem of " Ion," which Macready placed upon the stage of Drury Lane, the benchers of his Inn shook their wigs re proachfully, and mourned that such a promising junior should imperil his chances at the bar by mixing his briefs with poetry, so fixed in their minds was the old notion that law was too jealous a mistress to put a side-saddle on Pegasus. Not even the illus trious precedent of Sir William Jones placing his treatise on bailments and his poetic translations from the Persians side by side in the library of the Middle Temple could break downthe prejudicesof benchers against having their disciples flirt with Erato or Calliope. American lawyers have never entertained
similar prejudices, so that their annals all over the Union have interwoven the laurels of the bar with the flowers of the poet when crowning the same individual. As witness the published poems of Joseph Story; the dramatic epic of his son who prepared also a treatise on the law of sales; or Recorder Vaux of Philadelphia; or Al bert Pike with his classic odes; or Richard Henry Wilde, a great Southern jurist, with his tender lyric beginning " My life is like a summer rose "; or Attorney-General Benja min F. Butler, who on one day would pen an opinion for a department, and on the next a poem for the " Democratic Review"; or his son, William Allen Butler. And now recently comes the monthly sitter in THE GREEN BAG'S Easy Chair, Irving Browne, with a daintily printed and daintily bound volume of poems well entitled " The House of the Heart," which his brother lawyers may place on their bookshelves beside the many bound volumes of that poet's " Albany Law Journal."
