Some Virginia Lawyers of the Past and Present. ing of the marble bust of Mr. Minor at the University said : " Adopting the system of analysis which was delineated by Hale and amplified by Blackstone, he built upon it those expositions of common law principles and statutory alterations which reveal to the minds, as a topographical map of a coun try cast in bas-relief. ... To this analyt ical system he added his own lectures, as if a painter were to come along and turn the map into a picture, clothing the naked land scape with animation and verdure." In 1875 he published two volumes of the "Institutes of Common and Statute Laws," and in 1895 the whole was issued. In 1894 he published an " Exposition of the Law of Crimes and Punishments." Of his great work, the " Institutes," Senator Daniel said : "It cannot be surpassed as a vade mccum of the law. It is like a statue — solid, compact, clean cut. The Roman forum had an empty place lacking Cato's figure and a lawyer's library without this book has one also." He loved young men and he won their love in return. " Old John B." his students all affectionately called him. I can well re member the twinkle in his eye as he an swered when I told him, when I met him a few years before his death, that having known so many of his students and having invariably heard them call him something else, I found it very hard to say Professor Minor. "Old John P,., I suppose you mean," he said, " I have understood that is what my impertinent young men dub me behind my back." Mr. Lamb truly says: "He was their ideal of what a man should be, and his in fluence for good will last as long as man, helping mould future generations through the effects it had upon each and every man who felt it. In his dealings with his pupils, there was a frank but dignified cordiality which won at once their respect. Their re lations did not end with the formalities of the class-room, his study and his home were
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ever open to them and they were his wel come guests and his friends. In his lectureroom he was supreme. He loved truth, right and justice with an enthusiastic and unquenchable love, and when they were violated his righteous indignation scarcely knew bounds. His firm hold on the Chris tian faith was the master-chord of his life, the source of that rare union of sweetness with dignity, of gentleness with firmness that made his charming personality." It is estimated that he taught over 6,000 young men. One of his older pupils said : "Professor Minor, in the fifty years of his work in the law school of the University, has exerted and still exerts, a wider influ ence for good upon society in the United States than any man who has lived in this generation." His love for the University was deep. He was an Episcopalian and a vestry-man of Christ Church in Charlottes ville and for years, before the war, the sup erintendent of a Sunday school for slaves. After the war he began a Bible class of students, teaching until the last, in his study when he was unable to walk to the lectureroom. He was a splendid-looking man, six feet tall, snow-white hair and beard and clear grey eye. "I think that it would be better that you should not attempt to review my books," he once said to a former pupil, " your affec tion for the author would probably unfit you for the office of critic." In his last days, a life-sized bust of him was presented to the University by the law alumni in commemoration of the fiftieth an niversary of his professorship and it was unveiled six weeks before his death. The bust is mounted on a polished pedestal with the following inscription : 1845. HE TAUGHT THE LAW AND THE REASON THEREOF. .895.
