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becoming so specially tolerant, that no novel or poem seems likely to attract the enlightened public just now, unless it dabbles with some dirt about the seventh commandment. Whenever Mr. Helps touches-and he often toucheson the relations between men and women, and on love, and the office of love in forming the human character, he does so with a purity and with a chivalry which is becoming, alas! more and more rare. In one of his latest books, for instance, "Casimir Marenima," there is a love scene which, at least to the mind of an elderly man, not blasé with sensation novels, rises to high pathos. And yet the effect is not produced by any violence of language or of incident, but by quiet and subtle analysis of small gestures, small circumstances, and emotions which show little, if at all, upon the surface.

This analytic faculty of Mr. Helps's is very powerful. It has been sharpened, doubtless, by long converse with many men and many matters; but it must have been strong from youth; strong enough to have been dangerous to any character which could not keep it in order by a still stronger moral sense. We have had immoral analysis of character enough, going about the world of late, to be admired as all tours de force are admired. There have been, and are still, analysts who, in the cause of art, as they fancy, pick human nature to pieces merely to show how crimes can be committed. There have been analysts who, in the cause of religion, as they fancied, picked human nature to pieces, to show how damnable it is. There have been those again, who in the cause of science, as they fancied, picked it to pieces to show how animal it is. Mr. Helps analyses it to show how tolerable, even loveable, it is after all, and how much more tolerable and loveable it might become by the exercise of a little common sense and charity. Let us say rather of that common sense which is charity, or at least is impossible without it; which comprehends, because it loves; or if it cannot altogether love, can at least pity or deplore.

It is this vein of wise charity, running through all which Mr. Helps has ever

written, which makes his books so wholesome to the student of his fellowmen; especially wholesome, I should think, to ministers of religion. That, as the wise Yankee said, "It takes all sorts to make a world;" that it is not so easy as we think to know our friends from our foes, the children of light from those of darkness; that the final distinction into "righteous" and "wicked" requires an analysis infinitely deeper than any we can exercise, and must be decided hereafter by One before whom our wisdom is but blindness, our justice but passion; that in a word, "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged," is a command which is founded on actual facts, and had therefore better be obeyed: all this we ministers of religion are but too apt to ignore, and need to be reminded of it now and then, by lay-sermons from those who have not forgotten-as we sometimes forget that we too are men.

And it seems to me, that a young clergyman, wishing to know how to deal with his fellow-creatures, and not having made up his mind, before all experience, to stretch them all alike upon some Procrustean bed of discipline (Church or other), would do well to peruse and ponder, with something of humility and self-distrust, a good deal which Mr. Helps has written. Let him read, for instance, the first half of

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Essays written in the Intervals of Business," and if he does not at first appreciate the wisdom and worth of much therein, let him set down his disappointment, not to any dulness of the author's, but to his own ignorance of the world and of mankind: that is, of the very subject-matter which he has vowed towork on, and to improve.

I would ask him, for instance, to consider such a passage as this:-" We are all disposed to dislike, in a manner disproportionate to their demerits, those who offend us by pretensions of any kind. We are apt to fancy that they despise us; whereas, all the while, perhaps, they are only courting our admiration. There are people who wear the worst part of their characters outwards; they offend our vanity; they rouse our fears; and under these in

fluences we omit to consider how often a scornful man is tender-hearted, and an assuming man, one who longs to be popular and to please."

I would ask the young man, too, to read much of "Friends in Council," not merely the essays, but the conversations also. For in them, too, he will chance on many a wise apophthegm which will stand him in good stead in his daily work. Especially would I ask him to read that chapter on "Pleasantness;" and if he be inclined to think it merely a collection of maxims, acute enough, but having no bearing on Theology or on higher Ethics, let him correct his opinion by studying the following passage concerning a certain class of disagreeable people :—

"After much meditation on them, I have come to the conclusion that they are, in general, self-absorbed people. Now to be self-absorbed is a very different thing from being selfish, or of a hard nature. Such persons, therefore, may be very kind, may even be very sensitive; but the habit of looking at everything from their own point of view, of never travelling out of themselves, prevails even in their kindest and most sympathetic moments; and so they say and do the most unfeeling things without any ill intention whatsoever. They are much to be pitied as well as blamed; and the end is, that they seldom adopt ways of pleasantness, until they are beaten into them by a long course of varied misfortune, which enables them to look at another's grief and errors from his own point of view, because it has become their own."

Full of sound doctrine are those words; but, like much of Mr. Helps's good advice on this and on other subjects, not likely to be learned by those who need it most, till they have been taught them by sad experience.

And for this reason: that too many of us lack imagination, and have, I suppose, lacked it in all ages. Mr. Helps puts sound words into Midhurst's mouth upon this very matter, in the conversation which follows the essay. It enables, according to him, a man "on all occasions to see what is to be said and

thought for others. It corrects harshness of judgment and cruelty of all kinds. I cannot imagine a cruel man imaginative; and I suspect that there is a certain stupidity closely connected with all prolonged severity of word, or thought, or action."

No doubt but what if it be said in defence of the stupid and cruel, that imagination is a natural gift; and that they therefore are not to be blamed for the want of it? That, again, it would doubtless be very desirable that every public functionary, lay or clerical, should possess a fair share of imagination; enough at least to put himself in the place of some suitor, whose fate he seals with " a clerk's cold spurt of the pen : but that imagination is a quality too undefinable and transcendental to be discovered at least the amount of it -by any examination, competitive or other?

The answer is, I think, to be found in Mr. Helps's own example. The imagination, like other faculties, grows by food; and its food cannot be too varied, in order that it may assimilate to itself the greatest number of diverse elements. Whatever natural faculty of imagination Mr. Helps may have had, it has evidently been developed, strengthened, and widened, by most various reading, various experience of men and things. The number and the variety of facts, objective and subjective, touched in his volumes is quite enormous. His mind has plainly been accustomed to place itself in every possible attitude, in order to catch every possible ray of light. The result is, that whenever he looks at a thing, though he may not always-who can, in such a mysterious world-see into the heart of it, he at least sees it all round. He has acquired a sense of proportion; of the relative size and shape of things, which is the very foundation of all just and wise practical thought about them.

And this is what young men, setting out as thinkers, or as teachers, are naturally apt to lack. They are inclined to be bigots or fanatics, not from conceit or stupidity, but simply from ignorance. Their field of vision is too narrow; and

a single object in it is often sufficient to intercept the whole light of heaven, and so become an eidôlon-something worshipped instead of truth, and too often at the expense of human charity. In the young layman there is no cure, it is said, for such a state of mind, like the House of Commons; and in default of that, good company, in the true sense of the word. Mr. Helps makes no secret, throughout his pages, of what he owes to the society of men of very varied opinions and temperaments, as able as, or abler than himself. But all have not his opportunities; and least of all, perhaps, we of the clerical profession, who need them most, not only bocause we have to influence human hearts and heads of every possible temper, and in every possible state, but because the very sacredness of our duties, and our conviction of the truth of our own teaching, tempt us-paradoxical, as it may seemtowards a self-confident, blind, and harsh routine. What is the young clergyman's cure? How shall he keep his imaginative sympathy strong and open?

Certainly, by much varied reading. The study of the Greek and Latin classics has helped, I believe, much in making the clergy of the Church of England what they are-the most liberalminded priesthood which the world has yet seen. The want of it has certainly helped to narrow the minds of Nonconformists. A boy cannot be brought up to read of, and to love, old Greeks and Romans, without a vague, but deep feeling, that they, too, were men of like passions, and it may be sometimes of like virtues, with himself; and he who has learnt how to think and how to know, from Aristotle and Plato, will have a far juster view of the vastness and importance of the whole human. race and its strivings after truth, than he who has learnt his one little lesson about man and the universe from the works of one or two Divines of his own peculiar school. He will be all the more inclined to be just to the Mussulman, the Hindoo, the Buddhist, from having learnt to be just to those who worshipped round the Capitol or the Acropolis. One sees, therefore, with much regret, more and

more young men taking orders without having had a sound classical education, and more and more young men so overworked by parish duty, as to have really no time left for study. Under the present mania for over-working everybody, such Churchmen as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw-literary, philosophic, scientific, generally human and humane-are becoming more and more impossible; while a priesthood such as may be seen in more than one country of Europe, composed of mere professionals, busy, ambitious, illiterate, is becoming more and more possible.

One remedy, at least, is this, that more varied culture should be insisted on, by those who have the power to insist; that if not a sound knowledge of the best classic literature, at least a sound knowledge of the best English, should be demanded of young clergymen. Let such a one have-say only his Shakespeare at his fingers' ends, and he will find his visits in the parish, and his sermon in the pulpit also, all the more full of that "Pleasantness," which is, to tell the truth, nothing less than Divine "Charity."

Such are a few of the thoughts which suggested themselves to me while reading Mr. Helps's later books, and rereading-with an increasing sense of their value-several of his earlier ones. If those thoughts have turned especially towards the gentlemen of my own cloth, and their needs, it has been because I found Mr. Helps's Essays eminently full of that "sweetness and light," which Mr. Matthew Arnold tells is so necessary for us all. Most necessary are they certainly, for us clergymen; and yet they are the very qualities which we are most likely to lose, not only from the hurry and worry of labour, but from the very importance of the questions on which we have to make up our minds, and the hugeness of the evils with which we have to fight. And thankful we should be to one who, amid toil no less continuous and distracting than that of any active clergyman, has not only preserved sweetness and light himself, but has taught the value of them to others.

THE LEGAL PROFESSION IN AMERICA.

BY JAMES BRYCE.

AMONG English institutions there is perhaps none more curiously and distinctively English than our bar, with its strong political traditions, its aristocratic sympathies, its intense corporate spirit, its singular relation (half of dependence, half of patronage) to the solicitors, its friendly control over its official superiors, the judges. Any serious changes in the organization of such a body are sure to be symptomatic of changes in English society and politics at large, and must have an influence far beyond the limits of the profession. Such changes have of late years begun to be earnestly discussed; and in the prospect of their attracting much attention during the next few years, it becomes a matter of more than merely speculative interest to determine how far the arrangements of our bar are natural, how far artificial; or in other words, to ascertain what form the legal profession would tend to assume if it were left entirely to itself, and governed by the ordinary laws of demand and supply. Suppose a country where this has happened, where the profession, originally organized upon the English model, has been freed from those restrictions which ancient custom imposes on it here,-what new aspects or features will it develop? Will the removal of these restrictions enable it better to meet the needs of an expanding civilization? And will this gain, if attained, be counterbalanced by its exposure to new dangers and temptations? Such a country we find beyond the Atlantic: a country whose conditions, however different in points of detail from those of England, are sufficiently similar to make its experience full of instruction for us.

When England sent out her colonies, the bar, like most of our other institutions, reappeared upon the new soil, and soon gained a position similar to

that it held at home, not so much owing to any deliberate purpose on the part of those who led and ruled the new communities (for the Puritan settlers at least held lawyers in slight esteem), as because the conditions of a progressive society required its existence. That disposition to simplify and popularize law, to make it less of a mystery and bring it more within the reach of an average citizen, which is strong in modern Europe, is of course nowhere so strong as in the colonies, and naturally tended in America to lessen the individuality of the legal profession and do away with the antiquated rules which had governed it at home. On the other hand, the increasing complexity of relations in modern society, the development of so many distinct arts and departments of applied science, brings into an always clearer light the importance of a division of labour, and, by attaching greater value to special knowledge and skill, necessarily limits and specializes the activity of every profession. spite, therefore, of the democratic aversion to class organizations, the lawyers in America soon acquired professional habits and an esprit de corps similar to that of their brethren in England; and some forty years ago they enjoyed a power and social consideration relatively greater than the bar has ever held on this side the Atlantic. explain fully how they gained this place, and how they have now to some extent lost it, would involve a discussion on American politics generally. I shall not therefore attempt to do more than describe some of those aspects of the United States bar which are likely to be interesting to an English lawyer, indicating the points in which their arrangements differ from ours, and endeavouring to determine what light their experience throws on those weighty

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questions regarding the organization of the profession which are beginning to be debated among us.

In the United States, as in most parts of Europe and most of our colonies, there is no distinction between barristers and attorneys. Every lawyer, or "counsel," which is the term whereby they prefer to be known, is permitted to take every kind of business he may argue a cause in the Supreme Federal Court at Washington, or write six-and-eightpenny letters from a shopkeeper to an obstinate debtor. He may himself conduct all the proceedings in a cause, confer with the client, issue the writ, draw the declaration, get together the evidence, prepare the brief, and manage the trial when it comes on in court. Needless to add that he is employed by and deals with, not another professional man as our barristers do, but with the client himself, who seeks him out and makes his bargain directly with him, just as we in England call in a physician or make our bargain with an architect. In spite, however, of this union of all a lawyer's functions in the same person, considerations of practical convenience have in many places established a division of labour similar to what exists here. Partnerships are formed in which one member undertakes the court work and the duties of the advocate, while another or others transact the rest of the business, see the clients, conduct correspondence, hunt up evidence, prepare witnesses for examination, and manage the thousand little things for which a man goes to his attorney. The merits of the plan are obvious. It saves the senior member from drudgery, and from being distracted by petty details; it introduces the juniors to business, and enables them to profit by the experience and knowledge of the mature practitioner; it secures to the client the benefit of a closer attention to details than a leading counsel could be expected to give, while yet the whole of his suit is managed in the same office, and the responsibility is not divided, as in England, between two independent personages. Nevertheless, owing to causes which it is not easy

to explain, the custom of forming legal partnerships is one which prevails much more extensively in some parts of the Union than in others. In Boston and New York, for instance, it is common; in the towns of Connecticut and in Philadelphia one is told that it is rather the exception. Even apart from the arrangement which distributes the various kinds of business among the members of a firm, there is a certain tendency for work of a different character to fall into the hands of different men. A beginner is of course glad enough to be employed in any way, and takes willingly the smaller jobs; he will conduct a defence in a police-court, or manage the recovery of a tradesman's petty debt. I remember having been told by a very eminent counsel that when an old apple-woman applied to his son to have her market-licence renewed, which for some reason had been withdrawn, he had insisted on the young man's taking up the case. As he rises, it becomes easier for him to select his business, and when he has attained real eminence he may confine himself entirely to the higher walks, arguing cases and giving opinions, but leaving all the preparatory work and all the communications with the client to be done by the juniors who are retained along with him. He is, in fact, with one important difference, to which I shall recur presently, very much in the position of an English Queen's Counsel, and his services are sought, not only by the client, but by another counsel, or firm of counsel, who have an important suit in hand, to which they feel themselves unequal. He may, however, be, and often is, retained directly by the client; and in that case he is allowed to retain a junior to aid him, or to desire the client to do so, naming the man he wishes for, a thing which the etiquette of the English bar forbids. In every great city there are several practitioners of this kind, men who undertake only the weightiest business at the largest fees; and even in the minor towns court practice is in the hands of a comparatively small knot of people. In one New England

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