Roper on Legacies. Toller on Executors. Williams on Executors. The Law's
Disposal, by Lovelass.
I believe that the course that I have thus sketched, if steadily and
laboriously pursued, will make a very thorough lawyer. There is
certainly nothing in the plan beyond the reach of any young man, with
ordinary industry and application, in a period of from five to seven
years, with a considerable allowance for the interruptions of business
and relaxation. One thing is certain,--there is no royal road to Law,
any more than there is to Geometry. The fruits of study cannot be
gathered without its toil. It seems the order of Providence that there
should be nothing really valuable in the world not gained by labor,
pain, care, or anxiety. In the law, a young man must be the architect of
his own character, as well as of his own fortune. "The profession of the
law," says Mr. Ritso, "is that, of all others, which imposes the most
extensive obligations upon those who have had the confidence to make
choice of it; and indeed there is no other path of life in which the
unassumed superiority of individual merit is more conspicuously
distinguished according to the respective abilities of the parties. The
laurels that grow within these precincts are to be gathered with no
vulgar hands; they resist the unhallowed grasp, like the golden branch
with which the hero of the AEneid threw open the adamantine gates that
led to Elysium."
No. III.