LAW 147 



future Napoleon III on a charge of treason against Louis 

 Philippe; and of Captain Dreyfus' courageous counsel, 

 Labori, whose recent death the two Republics lament. 

 These traditions, continuous over five centuries, are not 

 without meaning to the American student of law. They 

 impress themselves on the whole system of law and justice. 

 A country which possesses and prizes such traditions of the 

 Bar is one which offers the Anglo-American student an in- 

 spiration congenial and fruitful to his professional studies. 

 Another feature worth recalling intangible, per- 

 haps, but real is the rich variety of legal reminiscences 

 that meet the visitor at every spot in France, and help 

 to arouse interest in the history and romance of the law. 

 Every epoch of law here purveys for him something of 

 its sentiment. In Paris, he may linger before the veritable 

 pillar of Hammurabi's Code, four thousand years old. 

 In the South and in the museums and libraries of Paris 

 he may trace, in manuscripts and monuments, the vast 

 influx, in a later epoch, of the great system of Roman 

 law, as it spread over Celtic Gaul. In the next great 

 epoch, the revival of Roman law a thousand years later, 

 he finds everywhere, south of the Loire, the reminiscences 

 of the world-jurists of the day, at Toulouse, where 

 Coras lectured to 4000 hearers; at Avignon and at 

 Valence, where Alciat brought the new law-learning from 

 Italy four centuries ago; and at -Bourges, where Cujas 

 taught, at whose renowned name (Hallam tells us) the 

 law students of Germany were accustomed to take off 

 their hats; and where also the great Hotman lectured, 

 who once said that our Littleton's classical treatise on 

 "Tenures" was "incondite, absurde, et inconcinne 

 scriptum," and was thereupon pilloried by our patriotic, 

 irascible Coke ("Stultum est absurdas opiniones refel- 

 lere.") In Normandy, at Rouen, he may enter the 

 superb Court House, the oldest building in Europe (now 



