ings under them, we know of no work which can be compared with this in usefulness as a handbook and a guide.

A Manual of Civil Law; containing a Translation of and Commentary on the Fragments of the Twelve Tables, and the Institutes of Justinian; the Text of the Institutes of Gaius and Justinian arranged in parallel Columns; and the Text of the Fragments of Ulpian, and of Selections from Paul's Recepta Sententiæ. By PATRICK CUMIN, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, Barrister-atlaw. Second Edition, Enlarged. London: Stevens and Sons. 1865.

THIS handsome volume is creditable to the printer, publisher, and papermaker. How far it does honour to the gentleman who claims the title of its author, our readers may be better able to judge when we have laid before them a sketch of the history of the book, and a statement of what it contains. The first edition appeared in 1854, and, making an appeal to the memory rather than to the intellect, was not unfrequently purchased by that class of students who attend lectures on the Roman law as a task which they must go through. It was, in short, a crib,' not of the best kind. This earlier Manual was less pretentious in its appearance and price; in fact, it was rather a shabby little post octavo, and cost 10s. 6d. It consisted of an introduction, giving a very meagre history of the Roman law till Justinian, and of a catechism upon the Institutes, professing to be, between questions and answers, a complete translation of that work. It was said in the preface, that, to supply the defect of elementary works on Civil Law in the English language, the author had had recourse to the Manual of Civil Law by Lagrange, which had already gone through six editions in France. 'Perhaps,' it is said, 'the author might have contented himself with a mere translation; but as he proceeded with his task, he seemed to find occasional defects and obscurities which he hoped to remedy. Using, therefore, the manual in question as a foundation, and retaining the form of question and answer, he has diligently consulted the original Institutes of Justinian and Gaius, the Digest and Code, and particularly the Commentaries of Ortolan and Ducaurroy. Out of these materials,' he continues, he has constructed the following work, which is intended as a Translation of and Commentary on the Institutes of Justinian.'

The preface of the second edition now before us, states that the first has been for some time out of print, and that in this edition the English portion has been cast into a new form, and somewhat enlarged. The object has been to furnish a complete Manual of Civil Law for the use of students, containing both the original texts of the elementary works on Roman law which survive, and an explanation in English.' The reference to Lagrange and the other recondite authorities named in the preface of 1854, is quietly dropped; and the reader is left to account for the extraordinary similarity in arrangement and in the turn and order of every sentence, on the theory of some wonderfully pre-established harmony between the minds of the French 'docteur en droit' and the English barrister from Balliol. For, so far as we have read, text and notes are substantially a translation of Lagrange, with variations too unimportant to entitle the translator to dub himself author. It omits a number of references, and it adds a passage from Grote's History of Greece, on the distinction between nexum and addictio, the reference to which was in Mr Sandars' edition of the Institutes published in 1853. In form, the new edition differs from the earlier one, as well as from Lagrange, mainly in omitting the questions, and supplying the necessary words in the answers, so as to make the Manual a treatise or commentary instead of a catechism. Were it worth while, we might notice instances of the manner in which the conveyance' has been performed, such as the translation of colégataires' and 'commodataire,' not once, but repeatedly, by the barbarous words collegetarii and commoditarius. On the whole, however, it is only fair to say, that the meaning of the French original has in most cases been caught with sufficient accuracy. Where Mr Cumin wanders from his original, he is not generally happy. Lagrange, for instance, does throw some little light upon the Roman trichotomy of jus naturæ, jus gentium, and jus civile, at the commencement of the Institutes; but Mr Cumin so abridges his explanations as to darken the whole matter, and, translating jus gentium by 'Law of Nations,' altogether omits to show, as a conscientious instructor would do, how it differs from the system which now bears that name. M. Lagrange has at least told us categorically that they are not the same.

An equally striking case of appropriation is presented by the second part of this new edition, which contains the original texts' above mentioned. These texts were not, as the preface

leaves us to imagine, part of the former edition. In fact, they are the only enlargement' which we can discover,' and they are in reality an exact reprint of the useful work known as 'Gneist's Syntagma. The only difference consists in the omission of the title-page, the preface, some of the annotations on the Twelve Tables, and a portion of Dr Gneist's notes. By what principle of selection, if any, Mr Cumin has been guided in making these omissions, we are not informed, and have been unable to detect. The whole of Gneist's notes to the first 107 pages of his text are omitted. Then suddenly the notes are resumed, and from p. 464 to 779 of Mr Cumin's edition text and notes are given, so far as we have observed, entire, except that the printer has omitted to reproduce on the first page of each sheet the 'signature' 'Gneist Institutiones.'-It is true that, in a way, Mr Cumin acknowledges his obligations to the German editor; but he does not do so on the title-page, as decency required. Mr Cumin writes: 'The Latin text is the same as Rudolph Gneist's, from whose preface I extract the following explanations :-In my edition of Gaius, I have retained Goschen's divisions;' and so on for two pages and a half out of the three which he calls his preface, without marks of quotation, or any difference of type. The first person is used throughout, and a cursory reader of the preface may, and probably will, fail to notice the allusion to Dr Gneist. One glancing over the preface, as prefaces are usually read, will naturally imagine that the glib mention of Boecking, Mommsen, and the Breviary of Alaric, are all proofs of Mr Cumin's own erudition, and of his right to use such phrases as 'I edit;' 'my edition;' 'I have supplied lacunas;' 'I have explained the comments of the text by comments of my own,' etc., etc. We do not recollect to have seen anything so like a mere reprint which professed to have any other character; and except that Gneist's print of the Twelve Tables, minus some of his notes, and plus a translation by an Oxford friend, is prefixed to Mr Cumin's adaptation of Lagrange instead of to the Syntagma, it is difficult to see why the student should not use the originals. We do not think it necessary further to characterize the performance of Mr Cumin. It need only be added, that

1 It would be unfair to Mr Cumin not to acknowledge an addition of ten lines in English on the title-page of Ulpian, and of four lines on the first page of Pauli Sententiæ.

VOL. X. NO. CIX.-JANUARY 1866.

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his book is published at the price of 25s., and that the Manuel and Syntagma may be got for 4s. 6d. each.

Even if Mr Cumin had attained the object indicated in his preface in a legitimate manner, it is doubtful whether the plan adopted is the best. In the first place, it is a great mistake to bind together Gneist's Syntagma and the Manual of Civil Law. Those who want the 'crib' are either unable or unwilling to read the texts; while those who wish to read or consult the texts will prefer the cheaper and more complete Leipsic edition. But beyond this, the multiplication of mere abridgments of the Roman law, and paraphrases of the Institutes, is not, to our thinking, a healthy symptom as regards the study of the ancient jurisprudence. Nothing can equal the sterility of a handbook such as this to one who really wishes to study Justinian; it disgusts the genuine and intelligent student, though it may serve the purpose of one who merely seeks to pass an examination. Its real mission, whatever its editor may profess, is to supersede the original texts, not to elucidate them. Mr Cumin, who has availed himself so freely of the labours of Gneist, including his scholarly and businesslike preface, has naturally avoided all allusion to the passage in that preface in which he lauds the abundance of illustration in Boecking's edition of Gaius: 'ut ex hoc veluti centro in fontes et adminicula studiorum excurrere tirones possent.' Yet he (Gneist) laments in language, alas! too applicable to ourselves, that students do not avail themselves of the aids offered them: 'Neque tamen excurrunt;' and 'one doubts whether a new age of Roman jurisprudence has really arisen, when you see what are the studies of those who are entering or have entered on forensic practice. I am almost tempted to say, that the more abundant and more convenient the aids to study, the more slight and imperfect do their studies become.' He ascribes this failure in a great measure to the neglect of exegesis in the schools, and mourns that while we begin to neglect and abandon Tribonian, we do not see Gaius take his place. Our forefathers so diligently studied the Digesta and the Code that they remembered the Fragments by their initial words. Then followed a period when we used to learn and commit to memory, as the foundation of our learning at least, the Institutes of Justinian. But now the old foundations are removed, and the new system has but an uncertain and tottering basis. Our youth are not brought up on those simple elements of Gaius and Ulpian which would imbue their minds with the principles of Roman law, attract them,

nourish them, win their minds to a love of the science. But now we quote the jurists, weaving passages into our prelections and our books as mere ornaments and superfluities. Then you would scarcely believe how slender is the utility of handbooks (Denique Chrestomathiarum quam exigua utilitas sit, vix credideris). Thus young men descend into the forum with but a slight and weakly hold upon science, and the many and various propositions which they had learned easily vanish from their minds.'

The mistake of those who write and read such books as this, and of the teachers who recommend their use, consists in a misapprehension of the true value of the Roman law. That lies mainly in the method of the great jurists of the second and third centuries, not in the arrangement of their fragments made in an age of intellectual decrepitude and moral corruption, not even in the material contents of the corpus juris. No jurists ever had so firm a grasp of leading principles as Papinian, Paulus, Gaius, Ulpian, and their fellows. The principles and maxims of their science,' says their greatest modern expositor, appear to them not as creatures of their own arbitrary will, but as real existences whose nature and genealogy have become known to them by long and intimate intercourse. Thus their whole method has a certainty found nowhere else but in mathematics; and it may be said, without exaggeration, that they calculate with their ideas. For them law has no separate existence; its essence is rather human life itself viewed in a particular aspect. If jurisprudence is detached from this its object, legal science or theory may proceed on its solitary way unaccompanied by the normal apprehension of the legal relations (concrete cases); the science may then attain a high degree of formal development and yet want all reality, all practical application. Just in this respect is the method of the Roman jurists most excellent. If they have to decide a case, they start with the most lively apprehension of the facts and their connection; and we see the whole relation arise before our eyes, step by step, and assume a new form. It seems as if the particular case were the starting-point of the whole system of jurisprudence, which is developed out of it. Thus their theory and practice do not stand apart: their theory is formed and adapted for the readiest and most immediate application, and their practice is always ennobled by scientific treatment. In every principle they see at the same time a case in which it is applicable: in every case they see the principle by which it is determined; and in the ease with