NOTE C C. 



, attainment. The pleasures of intellect being greater than the pleasures of am 

 bition or of wealth. Cicero says : &quot; Sed quid ego haec, quae cupio deponere, 

 et toto animo atque omni cura &amp;lt;j&amp;gt;i\offo&amp;lt;j)iiv 1 Sic, inquam, in animo est ; vellem 

 ab initio.&quot; To the same effect Mr. Burke says, &quot; Indeed, my lord, I greatly 

 deceive myself, if, in this hard season, I would give a peck of refuse wheat for 

 all that is called fame and honour in the world. This is the appetite but of a 

 few,&quot; So says Mr. Burke ; but, as knowledge advances, it may, unfortu 

 nately for activity in government, be the appetite of many ; and if so, the com 

 mon ranks of life will not be filled with the ablest men. William Wordsworth, 

 llobert Southey, Mr. Robert Smith, Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir William 

 Grant, are instances now before me of eminent men who have lately shrunk 

 from their laborious occupations ; and when the present mass of law is con 

 sidered ; when it is remembered that since the year 1800 there have been thirty 

 volumes of statutes, and perhaps one hundred volumes of reports, the profes 

 sional prospects to men who know the shortness and value of life, will not in 

 our times be considered attractive by men of the greatest attainment. 



Lord Bacon attempts to answer this objection ; whether satisfactorily or not 

 is another question. He says : &quot; And that learning should take up too much 

 time or leisure : I answer ; the most active or busy man, that hath been or can 

 be, hath, no question, many vacant times of leisure, while he expecteth the 

 tides and returns of business (except he be either tedious and of no dispatch, or 

 lightly and unworthily ambitious to meddle in things that may be better done 

 by others) : and then the question is but, how those spaces and times of leisure 

 shall be filled and spent ; whether in pleasures or in studies ; as was well 

 answered by Demosthenes to his adversary yEschines, that was a man given to 

 pleasure, and told him that his orations did smell of tlie lamp: Indeed, said 

 Demosthenes, there is a great difference between the things that you and I do 

 by lamp-light. So as no man need doubt that learning will expulse business ; 

 but rather it will keep and defend the possession of the mind against idleness 

 and pleasure, which otherwise at unawares may enter, to the prejudice of 

 both.&quot; (a) 



No man knew better, none perhaps so well, as Lord Bacon, that intellectual 

 pleasures are the most exquisite pleasures which an intellectual being is capable 

 of enjoying. He expresses this in various parts of his works. &quot;God hath 

 made all things beautiful or decent in the true return of their seasons ; also he 

 hath placed the world in man s heart : yet cannot man find out the work which 

 God worketh from the beginning to the end, declaring, not obscurely, that God 

 hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass, capable of the image of the 

 universal world, and joyful to receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyelh 

 to receive light, and not only delighted in beholding the variety of things, and 

 vicissitudes of times, but raised how to find out and discover the ordinances and 

 decrees which throughout all these changes are infallibly observed.&quot; (b) 



This being the case, what, prospect is there that men of the greatest attain 

 ments will &quot; delve in law s laborious mine.&quot; 



Mr. C. Butler, in his Essay on the Life of Chancellor de I Hopital, says, 

 &quot; When a magistrate, after the sittings of the court, returned to his family, he 

 had little temptation to stir again from home. His library was necessarily his 

 sole resource ; his books his only company. To this austere and retired life, 

 we owe the Chancellor de I Hopital, the President de Thou, Pasquier, Loisel, 

 the Pithous, and many other ornaments of the magistracy.&quot; I am afraid this 

 is not now to be expected in England. 



Proper use of Lawyers in legal Improvement. Although lawyers are not per 

 haps the best improvers of laws, their use in expressing intended improvements 

 cannot be doubted. &quot; If the lawyer, instead of abounding with knowledge, 

 might be described as he was described two thousand years since, leguleius 

 quidam cautus, et acutus praeco actionum, cantor formularum, auceps sylla- 

 barum, these very properties would be made subservient to the common good 

 in modelling the laws which wisdom suggests.&quot; 



() Vol. ii. p. 21 . (b) Vol. ii. p. 9. 



