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Pity had been mixed with the pain inspired by the babies' song in the Petite Provence concerning the "sweet penance" of the shepherd girl, but there was horror mingled with the disgust I now felt. The unconscious energy with which the dreadful words were uttered, the complete abandon with which the little maidens-all fashionable as they were-led away by the excitement of the game, skipped and frolicked as gaily as children of the roture, formed to my mind the only palliative to the poison which was emanating from those youthful lips. It was evident that Nature had resumed her right (she is always on the watch for the opportunity), and had created a momentary oblivion of highheeled boots and Pompadour poufs, of the Abbé de Villar's perfections, and the Abbé Fauvel's deficiencies.

It must be confessed there was a total absence of all appreciation of the cruelty and immorality contained in the odious No. 146.-VOL. XXV.

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ditty they had been chanting. The girl who played the "old woman a fine, laughing creature, full of health and spirits, who created a roar of merriment by the display of the magnificent shower of golden locks as representing the three long grey hairs of the miserable victim, and the dazzling set of teeth which responded to the fangs in her palsied jaw. The laughter was so genuine that it seemed to obliterate at once all suspicion of even the seed of that corruption of which the words they had been singing seemed to imply the rankest and the foulest crop.

While the assembly of little girls, restored for a time to the animal spirits and exuberance of mirth consistent with their age, was still running in frantic eagerness to catch the Old Woman and bury her out of the ring, I turned away to seek a balm to my sickening soul in the solitude which existed round the two parallel enclosures, constructed by order of Robespierre in honour of the childhood of the Republic; helpless human nature under every form, particularly the weakness of infancy, being considered the especial care of the nation. Some few poorly clad children were grubbing in the dirt round the enclosure. They were evidently tabooed by the juvenile aristocracy of the Parc des Princesses. One of them called out just as I approached, "Come back, Fanfan cheri; you know we are not to play in the Carré when the belles demoiselles are there." The child, duly warned, returned to his grubbing in the mud. I could not see his face, but that of the mother I shall never forget. She was sitting crouched up on the stone edge of the plantation; upon her knees was spread a sordid jacket she was mending. She raised her hand, armed with the scissors she was using, towards the Parc des Princesses, while a deadly scowl overspread her countenance; and the expression gave assurance that the feeling of hate and envy which animated the soul of Theroigne de Méricourt is still kept alive amongst the women of the working classes of Paris.

I leaned over the wire trellis which

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encloses the amphitheatre dedicated to the childhood of the Republic, and gazed first with delight upon the two exquisitely sculptured figures representing Atalanta and Hippomenes running their race, then looked earnestly at the marble steps of the hemicycle where Robespierre had once distributed with so much unctuous zeal the rewards of virtue and innocence to the offspring of Liberty. I fixed my gaze so earnestly on the place where he had stood, that I almost fancied I could behold him still standing there, and could imagine that amid the whispering of the holly leaves and ivy with which the fence is thickly planted, I could hear the small nasal tones of his shrill feminine voice, as, raising to heaven the bough of laurel he carried in his hand, he thus spoke to the assembled people in the name of the children of their adoption

"The youth of a great nation should grow up in ignorance of all distinction save that of VIRTUE. Therefore it is decreed that from this day forth"-here the laurel bough was flourished high above the powdered perruque-" that Childhood, to whatever class it may belong, shall become the common care of the Republic. All children must be educated in common. The rich must be made to pay for the poor. Every act of virtue is to be rewarded. Let us leave

individual wealth to tyrants. Glory alone should be the wealth of a Republic. The nation that knows how to honour true greatness will never be wanting in great actions nor in great

men. But real glory is inseparable from virtue, and virtue therefore must be taught to all alike.”

The speech has been preserved, but the sentiments have vanished. I must unconsciously have been repeating the highflown rhetoric of the great Robespierre aloud, for it could not have been the echo of my thoughts alone which saluted my ear in a cold laugh close beside me. I turned and beheld the long, thin figure of the gentleman who had been seated next to me under the chestnut trees. The ronde of the "Old Woman" had begun again, and the harsh tones of the juvenile singers reached us even through the thickness of the leafy wall against which we were standing. "The man was right!" he exclaimed abruptly, as he pointed to the empty space at the top of the marble steps where the thin spare form of Robespierre, with the laurel branch in his hand and the usual nosegay at his button-hole, had stood on the memorable occasion of the Feast of Childhood. I did not answer, but placed my hands to my ears to shut out the horrid sounds which rose higher and higher as the "Old Woman" was whirled her giddy round; and as I walked towards the gate I sought in vain a solution to the great problem which had been enacting thus before me. I had beheld the germ, the bud, the blossom,-and trembled sorely to think what must be the flower and the fruit when fully ripened and developed in the hotbed amid which they had been so strangely planted.

115

LEGAL EDUCATION.

BY ALBERT VENN DICEY.

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A BARRISTER is a member of what is supposed to be a learned profession. He is in virtue of his status entitled to important privileges, for he alone is allowed to plead for others in the Superior Courts of Westminster; he is not responsible to his clients for incapacity or negligence; he is alone eligible to appointments of great emolument and responsibility in this country and in the colonies. By what steps, then, does a young man gain the assumed learning and the certain privileges of a barrister? The answer is simple. He achieves this end by eating or affecting to eat a score or so of bad dinners, and paying in the shape of fees and otherwise from between £100 to £250. No doubt many lawyers do more before they are called than "eat their terms and pay fees; but the present inquiry is, What are the necessary qualifications for becoming a barrister? and the answer already given affords in few words the true reply. To show that this is so, let us suppose the case (of course, a very rare one) of a man who hates study but wishes to be "called." The course he will pursue is as follows. He will get himself entered at one of the Inns of Court. He will take care, for this is essential, to eat his due number of dinners at the Inn to which he belongs. He will in addition to this do one of two things, according to his taste or the state of his purse: he will either attend a certain number of lectures, or he will "read" in the chambers of a barrister or pleader. A layman may suppose that either lectures or "reading" must of necessity teach our imaginary "student" some law. No supposition is more ill-founded. It is one thing to attend lectures, and quite another to attend to the lecturer; no

one ever asks whether the lecturer has anything to teach our friend, and still less if our friend has learnt anything of what he might have been taught. Many of the lecturers are men of eminent ability and command the attention of their classes; but it occasionally happens that the reader cannot be heard for the hubbub made by his students, and that the only thing studied by the latter is the contents of the Times or of Punch. "Reading in chambers" again may, no doubt, be, and often is, a means of serious and profitable work; but it may be nothing of the sort. A. man who goes to chambers in order to qualify for the bar needs a certificate that he has "read" there for a year, but he needs nothing more. As barristers and pleaders are always men of nice and tender conscience, we cannot conceive it possible for a student to receive a certificate without having at least occasionally shown his face within the rooms of his teacher; but it is not the custom for a barrister to do more than give his pupils an opportunity of working; what they read, or whether they read at all, is well understood not to be his affair. A person, therefore, who becomes a barrister on the strength. of "reading in chambers for a year," may indeed have read through Coke or Stephen, but he may quite as likely have qualified himself for advocacy by devoted study of Trollope, Dickens, or the Sporting Life. Our friend may, therefore, attend lectures, or "read in chambers," without the least strain on his intellectual faculties. In the one case he has spent about twenty-four hours in a manner as dull as it is profitless; in the other he has paid away a hundred guineas. When, however, his "terms are eaten and his lectures or "reading" done, he

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is fully qualified for the bar. Let him satisfy a few formalities and pay £100 or so in fees, and he straightway becomes a barrister, endowed with all the learning, dignity, and privileges attached to the position. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to assert that the digestion of dinners and the payment of fees are the sole necessary qualifications for a call to the bar.

The question, What need a law student learn? suggests the inquiry, What can he learn? The reply to the latter question is scarcely more satisfactory than the answer to the former.

Reading, study, and practice will, no doubt, by degrees, give a knowledge of the law; but the path by which legal learning is attained is a curious and tortuous road which a student finds it a difficult task to follow. Suppose the case of a studious, sensible young man who wants not only to be called to the bar, but to understand the principles of his profession. His first discovery is that though the law may be a science, and is popularly conceived to be (we think erroneously) a particularly difficult science; yet that, speaking roughly, there are no professors or teachers of law in existence from whom he can learn anything worth the knowledge. either of a speculative or practical lawyer. He further discovers that there is no recognized systematic course of reading which he can be authoritatively recommended to pursue.

What he prac

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tically does, is, if he has money, to read for a year or two in the chambers of a pleader or barrister, and during that time make himself master of such textbooks as the barrister in whose chambers he reads, or his own judgment, may recommend to his attention. course of study has great advantages; and no one who has read, say, with a really intelligent pleader in full practice will dispute that a man who knows how to use his opportunities gains in chambers a kind of training which is of inestimable value, and ought, if possible, to form a portion of the instruction which every lawyer should receive. But this training in chambers, which consists, in

effect, of making a man learn law by practising it, has inherent defects. Our supposed student when he comes to be called will inevitably have received an education of a fragmentary and unsystematic character. Of the actual practice of one portion of the law,—say, for example, of special pleading,—he knows something (which, it may be added, if he does not immediately get business himself, he is all but certain to forget); of the elements or principles of law he knows nothing, and will not in all human probability even perceive that the law is a mass of rules until he has been what is termed a practising lawyer for at least seven years. If the English bar has at all times been adorned by many eminent lawyers, this is the result of the fact that individuals of speculative talent have refused to practise the rules of their profession without understanding its principles, and have mastered, as barristers, the elementary knowledge which they never gained as students; but no student has, at any rate of recent years, received a systematic legal education; and the answer to our second inquiry is in effect that a law student can learn fragments of the practice, and may begin to pick up from text writers a disconnected knowledge of the elements of law; but that no man reading for the English bar can obtain a regular course of legal instruction.

The matter, therefore, stands thus:No barrister need know as much law as is contained in the first chapter of Blackstone's Commentaries, and no man can, even if he wishes it, receive systematic instruction, either before or after he becomes a barrister.

This state of things is, to use the mildest term, anomalous, and has at last called into existence an influential body bent on the complete reform of legal education.

This society, the Legal Education Association, is in one respect an extremely remarkable body. It is not composed of speculative innovators, benevolent reformers, or, of what is perhaps the same thing under another name, of brief

less barristers.

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Sir Roundell Palmer is its president; in its ranks are numbered the chancellor and many of the judges; among its supporters may be counted the most eminent counsel and solicitors of the day. The proposals of such an association deserve and must command general and respectful attention. aim in the present article is to consider carefully the general principles on which these proposals1 (as far as regards education for the bar) rest, the reasons by which they may be defended, and, what is at least equally important, the arguments by which they may be assailed.

The Association recognizes that the two main evils of the present state of things are that barristers may be grossly ignorant, and that law students are certainly untaught, and proposes to meet both these evils by the foundation of a university or school of law.

This school is destined to achieve two objects. It is, in the first place, by means not very clearly pointed out, to secure that every person called to the bar shall possess a certain minimum of legal and general knowledge; it is in the second place to provide systematic. instruction for men who wish to study the principles of law or jurisprudence. Both these aims may be equally desirable and equally attainable, but the two objects are in their nature entirely distinct. Each of them might be pursued separately, and the attainment of the one by no means implies the attainment of the other. A resolution, for example, of the Inns of Court to call no one who had not gone through a strict examination, would go far towards placing the admission to the bar on what the Association somewhat mysteriously describes as "the basis of a combined test of collegiate education and examination by a public board of examiners," but would have

1 No reference is made in this article to the proposals put forward by the Association with reference to the education of solicitors, or attorneys. These propositions are of great importance, but cannot fairly be considered without entering into the question of the right relation between the two branches of the profession, a subject of great interest, but demanding for a proper treatment a separate article.

no tendency to promote the other aim of the reformers. Suppose, on the other hand, that the Society itself were to collect funds and pay therewith a body of professors, who might deliver courses of lectures on the various provinces of law to such students as thought it worth while to attend and pay the necessary fees. This step might be open to many disadvantages; but supposing the professors to be eminent lawyers, capable of performing their duties, the Association would undoubtedly have gone very near "the establishment of a law university for the education of students intended for the profession of the law." To put the thing shortly, it may be desirable to examine, and it may be desirable to teach, but examination is not instruction, and instruction does not imply examination; the distinction is perfectly obvious, but it is one which is sometimes forgotten, and which should, in the present case, never be lost sight of, since the arguments in favour of one of the objects of the Association are not exactly the same as those in favour of the other; while some of the objections to the compulsory examination of all persons called to the bar have no application whatever to proposals for giving some instruction in law to students who desire to be instructed.

The leaders of the Association have wisely concerned themselves, in the main, with making known the principles and objects of the Society, and have left questions of detail for a future day. It is, at any rate, with the principles and aims only of the Association that the public can have any real concern; for it is clear that if once these command general assent, the means by which these principles may be applied, or objects attained, must be settled by skilled lawyers. The general public is, however, fully capable of estimating as well as either barristers or attorneys, the general views of the Society, and the arguments by which they can be defended or assailed.

The first object of the Association is, as has already been pointed out, to insure that all persons who practise the

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