533) infers that Skipwith meant to show his contempt by the words "in ceux parola contra inhibitionem novi operis n'y ad pas entendement." He apparently overlooked the fact that Skipwith's own client was the one who had appealed to the foreign law first by citing the prior to the pope's court at Avignon, for building an oratory contra inhibitionem, etc., and Skipwith certainly did not show common tact if he took pains to throw contempt on that law as Selden supposes. Besides it only needs a reference to other passages of the Y. B. to see that this was the usual and proper form of pleading in the case where an objection was made for false Latin or any similar mistake. (See similar phrases in Lib. Assis. ann. 5, pl. 9; ann. 9, pl. 12, etc.) In Buckley v. Thomas, Plow. 118, 122, a case is cited of 9 Hen. VI., where defendant pleaded a deed containing the words "renunciavit toti communiæ (a right of common) and l'exception fut prise al fait pur ceo que les parols n'avaient entendement, et non allocatur," on the ground that the dative after renunciavit was good Latin. In the Modus Intrandi (part second, London, 1703, p. 17) we have the very same form in Latin. Defendant asks that the writ and narration be quashed for the words quinq; genta "Quæ quidam duo verba nullam in s significationem habent de aliqua summa certa." Skipwith therefore, instead of making a blunder in regard to the civil law, is taking advantage of one made by the other party in regard to the title of the proceeding in the ecclesiastical court. The judge's reply is even less capable of the interpretation put upon it. It is not the civil law of which he says 66 a ce n'avoumus regard," but the pleader's error. The phrase itself is another of the usual expressions found in the Y. B. with a definite meaning, and is equivalent to a modern judge's saying: "That is mere surplusage; wherefore answer, or plead over whether you have sued in the ecclesiastical court against the prohibition." In fine, so far from showing any contempt or ill-will for the foreign law, this little fragment of mediæval practice preserved for us by Selden shows that both court and counsel were familiar enough with its terms and doctrines to need nothing more than a passing reference, such as might have been made under the same circumstances to any like term of our own law. (8) Subsequent history of the Vinerian professorship, page 30. It can hardly be said that the Vinerian professorship was successful in carrying out the purpose of its generous founder, or the plan of its first and most celebrated professor. Blackstone himself resigned it in 1763, the same year in which he was appointed solicitor-general to the queen, resigning at the same time the principalship of New Inn, and removing his residence from Oxford. He had by the statutes of the foundation leave to read his lectures by deputy, but there is no record of his having done so. His immediate successor, Sir Robert Chambers, did so little that even his name has been almost entirely forgotten in this connection. In 1824, a small volume, containing the substance of his short course of lectures, was published by a relative, in the preface to which Sir Robert is stated to have been the second Vinerian professor. (Hoffman's Legal Study, vol. 1, p. 161.) The third professor, Dr. Richard Wood deson, began his lectures in 1777, and in 1792 printed a Systematical View of the laws of England, as delivered in a course of lectures read at the university of Oxford during a series of years, commencing in Michælmas term, 1777. This filled three volumes royal octavo, and is a work of very great merit, although it has been overshadowed by its famous predecessor. Dr. Wooddeson was a lawyer of very profound and accurate reading, alike in the common law and the principles of general jurisprudence. He made it his object, while giving a general view of the entire system, to dwell particularly upon those parts of it, respecting which Blackstone had been more brief, and his work is, therefore, an excellent supplement to the Commentaries; so valuable in this respect that it is remarkable that it has never been reprinted in America, and even in England it did not reach a second edition until 1834, when it was edited with notes and additions in three. volumes duodecimo by W. R. Williams, D. C. L. Vinerian Fellow, and thus directly connected with Mr. Viner's institution. Professor Hoffman's statement that there have been "several other editions, one of which is in four volumes" (Legal Study, 1, 161), is evidently a mistake. Williams' edition is termed the second on its title page, and the same is implied in its preface. Professor Hoffman was doubtless misled by the fact that the introduction was first published in a single volume, and followed by the entire work in three volumes. Since Dr. Wooddeson's day, the Vinerian professors have made no mark at all upon English law It was a professor in the rival university of Cambridge by whom Blackstone's Commentaries were edited in 1793-1795, the twelfth edition and subsequent ones, see Bibliography. At the time of the report from the select committee on legal education to the House of Commons in 1846, the Vinerian professorship was held by J. R. Kenyon, LL. D., who had been appointed in 1843. It was known as the chair of common law, and was said by the committee to be somewhat more efficiently managed than the chair of civil law, then held by J. Phillimore, LL. D.; a distinction probably due to the fact that the course in civil law had become entirely nominal. Dr. Kenyon read twenty-four lectures of an hour each every year, but there were no degrees in common law, no honors, and not even examinations. It is not easy to learn from Dr. Kenyon's own testimony what the lectures were about, and he speaks of the whole course of instruction, not as something actually existing, but as a matter about which he and the university were serious in their intention to do something afterward. In reply to the question whether more professors were desirable, he says: "I think the better plan would be to let the thing work itself, and as there might be an increasing disposition to receive instruction from the professors that are now there, you might add other professors." It is possible that the lack of interest in the professor's lectures may be accounted for by an answer of Dr. Phillimore, the occupant of the civil chair, who said the attendance upon his associate's lectures had very much varied. "I believe they have not been very well attended latterly; the committee is aware that Blackstone's Cominentaries on the laws of England first appeared in the shape of lectures delivered from that chair, and it is not surprising that students sometimes read those Commentaries instead of attending the modern lectures on the same science." The largest attendance in any one year is given by Professor Kenyon as thirty-eight. It should be said in justice that the income of the professorship was never sufficient to induce an able man to give his entire time to it, and that the mere delivery of lectures, however able, must be entirely ineffectual to attract any considerable number of students from the greater advantages offered them for the study of law in London. Since the revival of legal education in the inns of court, no attempt has been made at either university to give practical instruction in the law, but scientific jurisprudence has received a new attention of recent years, and has been illustrated by the lectures of such men as Sir Henry Maine and Professor Holland. American law schools and their methods of instruction. Law schools are now so firmly established in the United States as the principal and most popular means of access to the bar, that their best friends no longer feel obliged to dwell upon their advantages as compared with other methods of study. The rapid growth of these schools within the last twenty-five years has proved not only their popularity, but even their necessity to a large majority of law students. Opposition to hem has almost entirely disappeared, or lingers only among those who have no personal knowledge of their benefits. It is no longer necessary to persuade young men that their course is of the greatest value. A far more timely task, for those who take a sincere interest in their welfare, is to inquire into the defects which may be found in that course, and the means of making it better. To those who have at heart the well being of a great profession, the highest possible elevation of the standard, this is perhaps the duty which lies next at hand. That there are such defects is obvious. Some of them must always exist, because perfect schools are no more possible than perfection in any other human institution. But most of them are the result of temporary causes, and especially of that rapid success just referred to, combined with the natural eagerness of students to get admitted to the bar with the least possible expenditure of labor as well as of time and money. These causes have been left to operate almost unhindered, because there was no unity of action among the different schools, and no effective oversight on the part f the bar or bench. Each of some forty law faculties had to act for itself, and the pressure upon them to make the standard low and easy was almost irresistable. The system had to secure its hold upon the profession; each school had to make its own mark, if only as the condition of influence in the system; and growth in numbers was almost indispensable to either. Even now the same temptation operates with all its force upon a large number of weak schools. Therefore it is all the more important that the success attained by the system as a whole should be recognized as soon as |