comfort, 'An Abridgment of Law and Equity!' It consists not of many volumes; it extends only to twenty-two folios; yet as a few thin cakes may contain the whole nutritive substance of a stalled ox, so may this compendium contain the essential gravy of many a report and adjudged case. The sages of the law recommend this Abridgment to our perusal. Let us, with all thankfulness of heart, receive their counsel. Much are we beholden to physicians, who only prescribe the bark of the quinquina, when they might oblige their patients to swallow the whole tree."

Crabbe does our profession the honor of devoting to us a letter in “The Borough." He heads it "Professions

Law;" and as one would naturally expect, a letter on "Physic" succeeds: but one looks in vain for any epistle on "Divinity" from the reverend poet's pen. It seems, on perusing these letters, that the place of honor is given to the law, not on account of any especial partiality in the writer for our profession, but simply for the reason that one of two criminals is hanged first, or with the courtesy that Polyphemus extended to Ulysses, the privilege of being the last to be devoured. After the lawyers and doctors are executed, the clergy appear to receive a full pardon. The letter in question is so dull, that it is difficult to select any thing for quotation. The poet, in alluding to the increasing prosperity of attorneys, observes, —

"One Man of Law in George the Second's reign Was all our frugal fathers would maintain;

He too was kept for forms; a man of peace,

To frame a contract, or to draw a lease:

He had a clerk, with whom he used to write
All the day long, with whom he drank at night;
Spare was his visage, moderate his bill,

And he so kind, men doubted of his skill."

If our poet could see the bills of lawyers of this day, he would not pronounce modern attorneys of a “spare” habit.

After comparing lawyers to spiders, and their clients to flies, etc., after the time-honored vogue, he admits that there may now and then be an honest attorney; but

"These are the few. In this, in every place,
Fix the litigious, rupture-stirring race;

Who to contention as to trade are led,

To whom dispute and strife are bliss and bread.”

In speaking of the ideas that the young imbibe of various occupations, he says,—

"The youth has heard—it is in fact his creed -
Mankind dispute, that Lawyers may be fee'd.”

He makes the lawyer contend that only three of the Ten Commandments are obligatory; namely, those against stealing, murder, and adultery : —

"Break these decrees, for damage you must pay;

These you must reverence, and the rest—you may."

:

Really, if a clergyman will write such stuff as this, one might be excused from observing the third commandment, at least. He compares the law to a still while the fire burns of itself, gains are quickly made; when it begins to fail, the lawyers blow the flame :

"At length the process of itself will stop,

When they perceive they've drawn out every drop."

In all this chaff I find one grain of wit. Of an attorney who got clients by hospitality, he says,

"For this he now began his friends to treat:
His way to starve them was to make them eat.”

GRAY.

It is interesting to learn the views of the elegant author of the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" on the "Study of the Law." They are found in a letter to his friend West, who had thoughts of devoting himself to the profession: "Examples show one that it is not absolutely necessary to be a blockhead to succeed in this profession. The labour is long, and the elements dry and unentertaining; nor was ever anybody (especially those that afterward made a figure in it) amused, or even not disgusted in the beginning; yet upon a further acquaintance, there is surely matter for curiosity and reflection. It is strange if among all that huge mass of words, there be not somewhat intermixed for thought. Laws have been the result of long deliberation, and that not of dull men, but the contrary, and have so close a connection with history, - nay, with philosophy itself, — that they must partake a little of what they are related to so nearly. Besides, tell me, have you ever made the attempt? Was not you frighted merely with the distant prospect? Had the Gothic character and bulkiness of these volumes (a tenth part of which, perhaps, it will be no further necessary to consult than as one does a dictionary) no ill effect upon your eye? Are you sure, if Coke had been printed by Elzevir, and bound in twenty neat pocket volumes, instead of one folio, you should never have taken him for an hour, as you would a Tully, or drank your tea over him?"

COLERIDGE

must have been suffering from an under-dose of opium when he wrote "The Devil's Thoughts," in which he says,—

"He saw a Lawyer killing a viper

On a dung-hill hard by his own stable;

And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind
Of Cain and his brother Abel.”

There is some dispute as to whether Coleridge or

SOUTHEY

is entitled to the discredit of the foregoing. Southey was very fond of writing about the Devil, and of connecting him with lawyers. Thus, in "The Alderman's Funeral," in speaking of the dead man's donations to charity, he calls them

"Retaining fees against the Last Assizes,

When for the trusted talents, strict account

Shall be required from all, and the old Arch-Lawyer
Plead his own cause as plaintiff."

In this view Southey will have an easy term at the day of judgment, for he had but few talents to account for.

In "All for Love; or, a Sinner well Saved," the poet represents Satan as claiming a human soul by virtue of a bond signed by the unhappy mortal : —

"Mine is he by a bond,

Which holds him fast in law;

I drew it myself for certainty;

And sharper than me must the Lawyer be
Who in it can find a flaw."

But Basil, the bishop, defeats him by showing that the bond was framed with fraudulent intent: :

"This were enough; but more than this,

A maxim, as thou knowest, it is,

Whereof all laws partake,

That no one may of his own wrong
His own advantage make."

The Fiend gives up, beaten, and says to himself, —

"The Law thy calling ought to have been,
With that wit so ready and tongue so free,
To prove by reason, in reason's despite,
That right is wrong, and wrong is right,
And white is black, and black is white:
What a loss have I had in thee!"

There is something delightfully absurd in the idea of Southey, who has written so many dull and interminable poems, reprimanding the lawyers for their verbosity. But in "The Doctor" we find the following: "That crafty politician, who said the use of language is to conceal our thoughts, did not go farther in his theory than the members of the legal profession in their practice; as every deed which comes from their hands may testify, and every court of law bears record. You employ them to express your meaning in a deed of conveyance, a marriage settlement, or a will; and they so smother it with words, so envelop it with technicalities, so bury it beneath redundancies of speech, that any meaning which is sought for may be picked out, to the confusion of that which you intended. Something, at length, comes to be contested: you go to a court of law to demand your right, or you are summoned into one to defend it. You