The students who study law .at University College are lucky,
for they may do so under the auspices of Mr. Birrell. and this means that the proportion of jam to powder is unusually large. Mr. Birrell, in. the course of his intro- .ductory lecture delivered on -Monday last, declared that the best idea of life in the olden times at the Inns of Court was to be gained from the brief but lively reminiscences of Mr. Justice Shallow, formerly of Clement's Inn. Very happy was his description of the great English lawyers as not jurists or philosophers, but "advisers of particular men .in particular ,difficulties at particular fees." These were never prompted to take tc the law by the motives which often made men take to the Army, the sea, or the Chnroh,—the love of adventure or of glory or the fear of God. Men usually hated law when they began it. The poet Gray even went so far as to say that nobody was ° amused or even not disgusted at the beginning." This we doubt. We believe that men of a certain turn of mind are often hugely delighted at the nicety, the acuteness, and the fine edge of the points which they find discuseed in such books as "Smith's Leading Cases." When, too, they have the instinct for style, the problems of conveyancing are extremely attractive. To draft a clause which falls neither into the right-hand ditch of ambiguity nor the left-hand one of verbiage is a very pleasant exercise.
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