the new, with the successful against the one whose fortunes are low, and whose future is dubious? Truth may appeal imploringly to his intellect, but he remembers that he is the father of a family, with sons to get established and daughters to get married-results not greatly facilitated by intellect, and seriously imperilled by his adoption of unpleasant truths. In this way we all love Truth, and slight her. Whenever she presents herself without encumbrances, we give her hearty welcome. But, distinguished from the mass of human beings, having this passion for truth modified by circumstances, there are, as I am given to understand, certain men who wish for nothing but the Truth. "Before all things truth; and truth at all times," is their proud device. Numerous as these persons appear to be, I have never met one. I have heard men say in public that they cared for nothing else; I have known unblushing humbugs who, in prefaces, declared the same. "The author of the following work submits it to the judgment of his critics. Truth is his only object; and should his theory be proved erroneous, he will be the first to withdraw it." Trusting to such declarations, I have innocently taken these truth-lovers at their word, proving their facts to be incomplete, and their conclusions fallacious. They have been exceedingly fond of me ever since. Moreover, friendly authors have sent me their works, with an engaging request that I should favour them with my opinion of those performances, warning me against the un friendliness of not being sincere, for they "want to hear the truth." In such a case, the truth can only be what the critic troweth-the true expression of his opinion, although the opinion itself may be erroneous. This I have given, and I pledge you my word that the countenance of the author was very unlike what a physiognomist would interpret as the emotion roused by the satisfaction of fervent desire. Wandering about the world, I have eagerly sought, but sought in vain, for the being who does wish to hear the Truth. I have not found him among philosophers, not even among cabmen. No poet, no politician, no critic, no divine, has been able to stand the simple test. If I tell Weissnicht that his theory cannot be true, because it is in flagrant contradiction with notorious facts, he gets angry, denies my facts, or tries to evade their application, shuffles, sophisticates, and, if hard pressed, retorts upon me some insinuation disrespectful to my moral character. If I point out to the Rev. Mr Brimstone that his doctrine is unscriptural, he grieves over my declension from the simplicity of vital truth, or perhaps insinuates that I am an infidel. If Pericles Brown asks for my candid opinion on his verses, and hears that I think them mediocre, he becomes my foe for ever. In fact, instead of finding men desirous of hearing the Truth for Truth's sake, I uniformly find them desirous of hearing it only when it is agreeable, when it flatters their pride, their prejudices, or their interest. NO. IV. THE MAN WHO KNOWS HIS PLACE. A rare, a mythical character! It is often advertised, often believed in, but has never yet crossed my path. "Biggam is an excellent man-he thoroughly knows his place." I straightway seek Biggam's acquaintance; for a man who knows his place must be one of eagle eye, rapid intuition, and rare modesty. He cannot know his own place without knowing that of every one else; and as this is the most difficult of all social problems, I am naturally eager to see VOL. LXXXIII.—NO. DVIII. the man who can solve it. On investigation, Biggam turns out by no means an eagle. I find him a man of servile, timid, cringing disposition, acknowledging, with great alacrity, the superiority of those who are more wealthy, or of more consequence than himself. He is either a flatterer or a "mush of concession." He does not know his place; he only knows that it is pleasant for others to have their assumption of superiority recognised, their opinions uncontradicted, their efforts unopposed. One of the most conceited men I ever knew-that is to say, the man having the most exorbitant and unwarranted estimate of his own capacity-was one of those conceding, unopposing gentlemen said to "know their place." He knew his place so little, that he was always attempting to do that for which he was utterly unfit, and always failing, but verbally acquiescing in his failure, and saying," I have not your talents, or success would have followed." NO. V. THE MAN WHO HAS NO NONSENSE ABOUT HIM. "Wardle is a capital fellow, I assure you-no nonsense about him." Who has not heard of Wardle? Who can honestly say he has the pleasure of Wardle's acquaintance? I got introduced to one of the Wardles, fondly hoping that at last I had found the man with no nonsense about him. But the illusion quickly vanished. I found him a large man, bald and ventripotent, loud in voice, coarse in manner, and narrow in intellect. He wore mutton-chop whiskers, and had strong opinions about foreigners, who, he thought, were all dirty and exiles. He had strong views on politics and statesmanship, without any acquaintance with history or political economy. He thought birth and blood were nonsensical prejudices, and refinement effeminacy. He never read novels; his newspaper sufficed. He despised poetry, and all that stuff. He bought pictures as furniture, but pronounced the old masters "all humbug." He knew nothing of philosophy or science, but asked for commonsense. "As long as I have commonsense, sir, I don't care a button who has philosophy." He sent his eldest son to college, and ran into debt to keep him there; not that he saw any good in Greek and Latin, but he was as proud of " my son's friend, Lord Fiddlefaddle," as if he had a great deal of nonsense about him. In the domestic circle he was at once harsh and feeble, self-willed and vacillating. He ate, drank, slept, and snored with robust energy; but, on the whole, he did not strike me as being wholly without nonsense. Other people besides Wardle I have met, who bore the same proud character, but I found them all belonging to one of two classes either they were free-and-easy people, who conceived that taking every possible liberty with you, your name, your books, your horses, and your friends, was proof of their having no nonsense about them; or else they were coarse rude people who jarred upon your sensibilities, and made virtues of their very deficiences. The best men I have known have been more generous than prudent, more imaginative than Bentham, less virtuous than Cato. They have been fond of children, of animals, of poetry, of art, of sentiment, of joking, of buffoonery, of extravagance, of good society, of honours, of picnics, of dances, of private theatricals-in short, men with no inconsiderable amount of nonsense mingled in their daily lives; but one form of nonsense they were entirely free from, and that is the pretension of having no nonsense about them. NO. VI. THE MAN WHO BELIEVES IN A FORTUITOUS CONCOURSE OF ATOMS. Every reader of semi-philosophical works, especially works of polemics, must have frequently noticed eloquent refutations of, and sarcastic allusions to, shallow philosophers who are said to maintain that this universe, with its marvels, arose from a" fortuitous concourse of atoms." An opinion so monstrous, so hyperbolically absurd, naturally attracted a lover of the eccentric like myself. I cannot express the youthful contempt I felt for such shallowness, and eagerly hunted through debating societies in the hope of finding and studying a man who could maintain such a proposition. Not succeeding in these efforts, I sought in books for some historical person on whom to fix my scorn, but without success. This was surprising. It appeared from the allusions and arguments constantly recurring in theological and semi-philosophical works, that there still exist ed men who held the absurd hypothesis; because, if no writer had ever held that hypothesis-if no one had traditionally inherited it, a vast amount of polemical powder was constantly being wasted. One could not imagine so much fighting to go on without an antagonist-one could not suppose learned doctors would elaborately demonstrate that two multiplied by two could not make five, unless some imperfect Cocker existed who held that two and two did make five. The believer in a fortuitous concourse of atoms must therefore exist. Yet I have never met with him. It was puzzling to me to observe, that although so many writers seemed perfectly familiar with the existence of this philosopher, and with the scope of his hypothesis, no one ever gave the slightest clue by which he could be traced. No one cited his works; no one mentioned his name. He was always being ridiculed and outargued, but never quoted. In vain did I search through books; no trace could I find of this man. Yet how could I suppose him to be a myth? Surely learned doctors would not set up a fictitious opponent, holding the most outrageous hypothesis, merely for the easy feat of refuting the said opponent? It is common enough to find doctors misrepresenting their adversaries, and attributing to them opinions they do not hold, but surely they never invent the adversary as well as the opinions? I find many silly gentlemen complacently asserting of some thinkers with whom they do not agree, that "this school believes in nothing but what it can see and feel." And although this assertion is curiously inept, and carries folly on its very face, yet it is at least applied to thinkers whose names are mentioned, and whose works are cited, so that we can verify the truth of the assertion, if verification be needed. But with respect to the "fortuitous concourse of atoms," no thinker is ever named, no work cited, and consequently I have never yet met with the man who holds, or ever held, that hypothesis. NO. VII. THE MAN WHOSE WORD IS AS GOOD AS HIS BOND. This also is a type which would seem to be abundant if we trusted to the unproven statements of lax admirers. But I have never met with it. Observe, I do not say the man whose word is as good as his bond is altogether a myth; far from it. Men of noble integrity I have met, and men of integrity not so noble-men who would blush at the thought of an injustice, and men who, if they might think an injustice, would be slow to act it. But even the noblest of these men may die, and be succeeded by a son or nephew of less scrupulous conscience, and in this case the "word" is unsubstantial vapour, whereas the "bond" is a solid litigable document, admitting of no equivocation except among lawyers, who, I am informed, would detect a flaw in the title-deeds of the universe, and argue an alibi for the sun at noon. The bond, then, has a prodigious superiority over the word even of the honestest of men. There are other men I have met, whose word for five pounds would be as good as their bond for that sum, even allowing for all casualties; but if, instead of five pounds, the sum in question be five thousand, what a wondrous possibility is opened! How easily the force of some small subterfuge may assail the integrity-how greedily some irregularity, which in the case of a small sum would never be noticed, is seized upon as a pretext for nonfulfilment of the agreement! Such is the temper of the mass of men, who can only he kept to their engagements by their bonds. Thus taking into consideration the casualties of life, which may render the word of the strictly honest man mere vapour, and the sophistications of self-interest, which may render the word of one less scrupulous in conscience, no better, it is clear that the frequent boast of such a one's word being as good as his bond, can only be accepted with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I must do mankind the justice to confess that, from time to time, I have met with a man whose word was absolutely as good as his bond-but his bond was good for nothing. LORD ST LEONARDS' HANDY BOOK ON PROPERTY LAW. * THE work now before us, and the title of which stands at the bottom of this page, is in several aspects unique. In the first place, it is written by one who, as exactly twelve months ago we ourselves felt justified in saying, was unique in his fourfold capacity as a first-rate author, advocate, judge, and legislator." We did not then expect that in our Number for February 1858 we should have to introduce to our readers another work from the pen of such a man, and be justified in pronouncing it, also, unique; but so it is. Here we have a little-almost a pocket -volume of 192 pages, such as no man but Lord St Leonards could have written: for in it is to be found the essence of all the Property Law of England. The simplicity, precision, and point with which this is done, indicate, at every turn, the hand of a great master. His powers of condensation are truly wonderful, but equalled by his accuracy; while the Saxon strength and plainness of his language must find ready access for his teachings to the understanding of almost every one possessed of, or interested in, Property, in all its modifications, to however small an amount, and however humble his position in society. Peer and commoner,-gentle and simple every one who has, or is interested in, a house or an acre of land—may henceforth, for half-a-crown, have at his elbow, as a permanent adviser in acquiring and disposing of his property, not an attorney, or solicitor, or counsel, though experienced and shrewd--but one who twice held the Great Seal of Ireland, and afterwards that of England, with universal acclamations. We doubt whether a work so well calculated as the little volume before us, to serve all classes of society in the most important practical business of life, ever made its appearance, independently even of its cheap and con venient form, in this country. It is at once law for the million, and yet does not aim at making every man his own lawyer-which would be simply giving every man a fool for a client; but its precious counsels inspire him with a prudent self-distrust, put him upon inquiry, and arm him with weapons against fraud and over-reaching. Let us, however, introduce the reader to his sagacious adviser, by putting together his first Letter and the concluding paragraph of his last; whereby we shall see at a glance both what he proposes, and what he considers that he has effected. "You complain to me," he says in his first Letter, that, although utterly ig norant of law, you are constantly compelled to exercise your own judgment on legal points: that you cannot always have your solicitor at your elbow; and yet a contract for the sale, purchase, or lease of an estate, a loan, or, perhaps, even an agreement to make a settlement into at once; and it is not until you on a child's marriage, must be entered have gone too far to retreat, that you learn what errors you have committed: that you are even at a loss in giving instructions for your will, and wholly incapable of making the most simple one for yourself: that you cannot readily comprehend your solicitor when you seek his advice: that, in a word, you have been plunged into a lawsuit, which a slight previous knowledge might happily have prevented. It is, unquestionably, a matter of profound regret, that so large a proportion of contracts respecting estates should lead to litigation. It is equally to be regretted that, however desirous the man of property may be, to understand the effect of his daily contracts, there is no source to which he can apply for the desired information. You ask me to remove the cause of your complaint, and in particular to point out the precautions to which you should attend in selling, buying, mortgaging, leas ing, settling, and devising estates. You express, besides, a desire to know something, in a popular way, of the nature of the different interests in property, and of A Handy Book on Property Law: In a series of Letters, by LORD ST LEONARDS. William Blackwood & Sons. 1858. No. ccccxcvi., February 1, 1857, p 264. the mutual rights of yourself and your wife, and your power over your children, which would lead me to introduce the new law of divorce to your notice. You further ask me to give you some general hints as to your conduct in the character of a trustee or executor, which may keep you from harm. In short, you want, in the form of familiar Letters, what is now so much in vogue, a work upon an interesting subject calculated "for the million," whom I should be but too happy to assist: such a work, whilst it imparts knowledge, may, perchance, beguile a few hours in a railway carriage. I have in my youth and in my manhood written much for the learned in the law; why should I not, at the close of my career, write somewhat for the unlearned? This I shall proceed to do concisely, and without encumbering my pages with many technical phrases. I must premise, that I shall say little which is not warranted by decided cases; but I shall not burden you with references to them, as they lie scattered in many a bulky volume to which you have not access. "I have now," he says in concluding his last Letter, "only to express my hope that you may derive some benefit from my correspondence. If it merely teach you to distrust your own knowledge on the subject, it will not have been written in vain. Much that I have written has cost me little more than the labour of writing currente calamo; although the portions explaining the new Acts of Parliament, well as I am acquainted with them, have not been unattended by labour of a severer character. The learning which my Letters contain is, however, of common occurrence; but you will not therefore find it of less use. has been justly observed, that refined sense, and enlightened sense, are not half as good as common sense. The same may be said of legal learning. It would have been idle in me to furnish you with nice disquisitions on abstruse points of law. I have felt no anxiety in any case to point out to you how you may evade or break in upon any rule. It I have avoided the lanes and byways, and endeavoured to keep you in the public high-road. If you wander from it, the blame will rest with yourself. Farewell!" The "Letters" of which this little volume consists, are twenty-five in number, averaging about seven pages each. The first-that which we have already quoted in extenso-is of an introductory character. The next eight are on the subjects of "Sales and Purchases;" the favoured correspondent being alternately advised as Seller, and Buyer. The tenth Letter deals with Real Property generally, its various heads, and the Enfranchisement of Copyholds: the eleventh explains the Rights of Husband and Wife in their respective properties. The twelfth is a luminous exposition of the newly established law of Judicial Separation and Divorce. The thirteenth treats of the important subject of a father's and a The fourteenth is on Mortgages; the mother's power over their children. fifteenth and sixteenth are devoted to Leases; the seventeenth is on Settlements; the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth admirably expound the law of Wills, and the twenty-first and twenty-second as admirably that of Trustees. The twenty-third Letter is devoted to Title acquired by Possession; the twenty-fourth to and the last to Church PatronageCharges on Land barred by Time; Rights to Light, Ways, and Waterand Rights of Common. Any competent professional reader, and any thoughtful layman, moderately conversant with affairs, must, on reading these Letters, be strongly impressed with their pregnant and suggestive character. In proportion to their experience, they cannot fail to be struck by the multitude of exigencies there provided for, and that with the skill and decision of one consciously master of the situation in which his reader is placed. The ablest practical lawyer will see here a multitude of little suggestions thrown out, often in little more than a word or two, of the greatest value, and reminding him at once of the many occasions of litigation, vexatious, expensive, and often ruinous, which, if known at the time, they would have prevented; and of the litigation of a similar character which originated these suggestions. We have, indeed, little doubt that, even before the present number of the Magazine makes its appearance, this little Handy Book will have found its way into the hands of every judge in England, from the highest to the lowest, every practitioner, |