d--unable to thread
his way through the mazes of authorities, to reconcile apparently
conflicting cases, or deduce any satisfactory conclusion from them--in
short, he has no greater aptitude, accuracy, and discrimination than
when he set out in the beginning of his studies. No better advice can
be given to a young practitioner, than to confine himself generally to
his office and books, even if this should require self-denial and
privation, to map out for himself a course of regular studies, more or
less extended, according to circumstances, to aim at mastering the works
of the great luminaries of the science, Coke, Fearne, Preston, Powell,
Sugden, and others, not forgetting the maxim, _melius est petere fontes
quam sectari rivulos_, and to investigate for himself the most important
and interesting questions, by an examination and research of the
original authorities. "He that reacheth deepest seeth the amiable and
admirable, secrets of the law,"[27] and thus may the student "proceed in
his reading with alacrity, and set upon and know how to work into with
delight these rough mines of hidden treasure."[28]

It may be allowed here to commend to most serious consideration, the
remarks of one of the most eminent of the profession--Horace Binney--a
gentleman of our own Bar, whose example enforces and illustrates their
value: "There are two very different methods of acquiring a knowledge of
the laws of England, and by each of them, men have succeeded in public
estimation to an almost equal extent. One of them, which may be called
the old way, is a methodical study of the general system of law, and of
its grounds and reasons, beginning with the fundamental law of estates
and tenures, and pursuing the derivative branches in logical succession,
and the collateral subjects in due order; by which the student acquires
a knowledge of principles that rule in all departments of the science,
and learns to feel as much as to know what is in harmony with the system
and what not. The other is, to get an outline of the system, by the aid
of commentaries, and to fill it up by the desultory reading of treatises
and reports, according to the bent of the student, without much shape or
certainty in the knowledge so acquired, until it is given by
investigation in the course of practice. A good deal of law may be put
together by a facile or flexible man, in the second of these modes, and
the public are often satisfied; but the profession itself kn