the style is somewhat more
diffuse than we should on all occasions approve, we are far from regarding
this as a defect _here_. The work, amongst other advantages, presents
really a storehouse of that useful phraseology in which a public speaker
should abound, that phraseology which lies between the familiarity of
business and the pomp of oratory. And if, as we may perhaps be tempted
again to remark, there is something too much of laudation of that
profession and of that system of jurisprudence to which he is introducing
the young aspirant, this too is a bias to which, in the present work, it
would be ungracious to raise an objection. An elementary teacher should
not chill and discourage his pupils by criticisms of a cold and censorious
character; he should rather exercise his penetration in drawing into light
concealed excellences. In this Mr Warren follows the example of the first
of all commentators, the most successful of all teachers--Blackstone; who
continues to be the most popular of all expounders of the law, even though
the system that he expounds has almost deserted him. It seems that the law
can be made obsolete, but not the commentary. With a pupil it is a thing
understood and agreed upon that he is to learn the system as it now
exists; to engage him to do this it were bad policy to decry that system,
and expose its faults with a merciless analysis. When the student has
mastered it as a lesson, he may then overlook and criticise it with what
severity he thinks fit. We will quote a passage which will illustrate at
once the lively manner of our writer, and also this happy Blackstonian
tendency--the habit of animadverting very gravely on those errors of the
law which have been reformed, and remaining still "a little blind" to
those which are yet untouched.

"Down to the year 1832, the system of common law pleading and
practice supplied the student, during the greater period of his
pupilage, with little else than the most degrading and unprofitable
drudgery. It presented to his despairing eyes a mass of vile
verbiage--a tortuous complexity of detail, which defied the efforts
of any but the most creeping ingenuity and industry. There was really
every thing to discourage and disgust a liberal and enlightened mind,
however well inured to labour by the invigorating discipline of logic
and mathematics. The deep and clear waters--so to speak--of legal
principle, there al