"The Chemical Laboratory is provided with a full assortment of chemicals, furnaces, and all that is necessary to enable the student to acquire a practical knowledge of chemical analysis and assaying. Connected with this department there is a photographic gallery, where the students may learn photography. Practical lessons are given also on the electric telegraph.

"The Museum of Natural History comprises a large collection of mineralogical and conchological specimens from different parts of the world, besides several natural curiosities.

"The College Library contains about ten thousand volumes.

"For the purpose of improving themselves in public speaking, the more advanced students have formed Literary Societies, provided with select libraries, to which they may have access in leisure hours."

Another class of educational institutions whose commencements are but seldom recorded by the daily press are the Law Schools. There is at least one in this State whose efficiency and thoroughness would secure it as many students as it could accommodate, if it were only as well known as it deserves. Its professors rank among the first jurists in the United States, a fact which, to those who know them, needs no further proof than simply to mention their names, viz.: Hon Ira Harris, LL.D. (practice, pleadings, evidence); Hon. Amasa J. Parker, LL. D. (real estate, wills, criminal law, personal rights, domestic relations); Amos Dean, LL. D. (personal property, contract, commercial law). We are glad to see from the catalogue that its last term has been quite prosperous. There are but few colleges in the United States which have not furnished it students, the total number of whom, for the year, has been one hundred and eightythree (183.) Its position at the capital of the State, within reach of the State Library, and other peculiar sources of legal knowledge, affords it advantages which are scarcely equalled even by those of New York city, and there is good reason to believe that the students avail themselves of all to the fullest extent.

We had intended to take a cursory glance in this article at the changes which have taken place in some of our young ladies' colleges, seminaries, institutes, &c., but we have again to postpone the task until a more convenient opportunity presents itself. We are really unwilling to criticise those institutions, even when their conductors deserve to be exposed as charlatans, for, unhappily, more than one ladies' college" or "university " of this city ceased to exist in a very few months after we had taken the liberty of making some comments on their peculiar system of education. Whether the public has sustained any loss by this or not is another question. The only city high schools of which we

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have heard, for some time, anything that is much to their credit, are the Ferris Female Institute and Rutgers Institute. Their last annual commencements have proved entirely to our satisfaction; that while kindred schools have been decaying, or disappearing altogether for lack of brains and intelligence, these two have been making healthy progress, doing excellent work and, as a natural result, towering higher and higher in public confidence.

ART. VI.-Speeches at the Bar and in the Senate. By the Right Hon. WILLIAM CONYNGHAM, Lord Plunket, Lord High Chancellor of Ireland. Edited, with a Memoir and Historical Notices, by JOHN CASHEL HOEY. 12mo. Dublin.

2. Sketches, Legal and Political. By the late Right Hon. RICHARD LALOR SHIEL Edited, with plates, by M. W. SAVAGE. 2 vols. 12mo. London.

3. Sketches of the Irish Bar. By the Right Hon. RICHARD LALOR SHIEL, M. P. With Memoir and Notes, by Dr. R. SHELTON MACKENZIE. 2 vols. 12mo. New York. 1854.

PETER THE GREAT, of Russia, paid a visit to England in 1695, upon the invitation of William the Third. Having been taken to Westminster Hall, close to which are the principal law courts, he observed a great many gentlemen flitting to and fro, in horse-hair wigs, sprinkled with white powder; white muslin bands round their necks; and flowing robes or gowns of black silk, or black poplin-the costume of the English bar from that day to this. His curiosity awakened, the Czar enquired who these magpies might be, and was informed that they were lawyers, one and all. Lawyers!" he exclaimed, "I have only four of that species in Russia, and I shall hang two of them on my return home."

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Whether he kept his word has not been stated by history. It is customary to say that law and lawyers, contrary to the Czar's opinion, are necessary-that is, are necessary evils. Granting the necessity, we may deny the evil. It is proper that there should be laws thoroughly enforced, for the protection of person and property. The golden precept that we should do as we desire to be done by, would be superior to all statutes, were it only acted upon. Unhappily, human nature not being perfect, this first great rule is constantly violated, and it has become necessary to make laws for the

proper government of society, and to have persons competent to apply and to administer them.

Most probably, Peter the Great became fully aware of this when he seriously settled down, after his visit to England, to build up the great Russian Empire ;-at all events, lawyers are proportionately as numerous in that vast realm, which Alexander the Second, his descendant, now governs, as in most other civilized countries.

In no part of the world is there such a passion for law as in Ireland. Litigation is so much in fashion there that the people are happiest when seething in the caldron of a law-suit, and next to the honor and glory of being a principal in such a venture, is the satisfaction of attending the courts of law, and, eagerly participating, (" per procuration" as it were,) in the war of statutes and speeches carried on, under judicial presidency, before a dozen of jurymen as arbiters. When too poor to indulge, personally, in the expensive luxury of an Assize trial at Nisi Prius, a thorough Irishman will generally continue to have an interest in a suit or two at the Quarter Sessions, before "the Assistant Barrister" as the stipendiary chairman, who is invariably a lawyer of high standing at the bar is generally called. These local local courts are not only crowded but crammed with attentive auditors, in all ranks of life, who eagerly watch the wordy encounters of rival lawyers, anxiously listen to the evidence, and curiously observe the bearing of successive witnesses. There is in many instances, a great trial of skill between the lawyer and the witness-the latter sometimes being conqueror. It is not unusual for a witness, on being sworn, to kiss his thumb instead of the book, his idea being that if he successfully evade the latter, he need not be very particular as to what he says. Sometimes the struggle between lawyer and witness b comes very exciting, the latter, with assumed stolidity, baffling his opponent who is putting him through the ordeal of crossexamination. Mr. O'Connell has more than once been beaten in such encounters by men who could neither read nor write, but had sufficient mother-wit to baffle him, one of the ablest as well as one of the most popular lawyers of his time. The lawyer is not only respected but honored in Ireland, especially if his politics are liberal; but there is neither respect nor honor for any minion of the law; that is, for the legal officer who serves a summons for tithe or church-rate, who thrusts the copy of a writ into a debtor's hand, or who seizes person

or property under any statutory process. Such a person is almost unanimously held to be a public enemy, to be dealt with accordingly. The ordinary practice is to make him eat the legal paper or parchment, and having ducked him in the nearest horse-pond, civilly dismiss him with a gentle hint never again to venture into that vicinity as a messenger from Themis.

The stories told, with equal humor and earnestness, by Maxwell and Lever, Carleton and Lover, of the amusing deviltry with which the masses of the Irish pursue the unfortunates who venture into certain districts with the intentiou of placing legal documents in the possession of those who have incurred debts "not wisely, but too well," are less exaggerated than may be imagined. On the one side there is the straining to carry out the requirements of the law; on the other, not less ingenuity in evading it; and in the background are the peasantry, who, almost to a man, hate the calling of the legal myrmidon, and are addicted to carrying out this unfriendly feeling, occasionally, even with fatal results. During the lifetime of the late Mr. Richard Martin, of Galway, who boasted with truth, that from his avenue gate to his hall door was an avenue of only thirty miles, it was proverbial that "no writ could run in Connemara." The unfortunate person who ventured, with such a purpose, within the charmed circle of the Martin property-long since broken up and sold under the Encumbered Estates Actscarcely ever could succeed in avoiding detection, and never was allowed a chance of accomplishing his perilous mission. He would be conveyed away, at night, from place to place until his guards reached some mountain-cave, wherein a private still was bringing up spirits from the vasty deep of an iron pot-hence the word pot-heen applied to illicit whiskey-and would be kept prisoner there until the end of the law term, his liberation being accompanied with such threats of docking his ears, or other mutilations which would scarcely improve his personal appearance, that there was very little chance of his voluntarily paying a second professional visit to Connemara. But for the aid of the peasantry, the Irish gentry of the days gone by could never have been half so successful as they were in baffling the bailiffs. One result was a free-and-easy habit of dealing with the inferior officers of the law, which, out of Ireland, was not tolerated. Irish gentleman was tried, within the last twenty years, at the Old Bailey, in London, on an indictment for knocking

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down a sheriff's officer who had to arrest him for debt, on a writ of ca. sa. The prisoner was convicted and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. As he was leaving the dock, he exclaimed, so audibly that even the Judge heard and smiled, "Now, isn't this a very hard case? Here I am to be imprisoned for three months for knocking down a rascally writ-server, and if I did the same thing in Galway, the gentlemen of the county would acknowledge it by giving me a public dinner, and, maybe, a handsome piece of plate."

It is our purpose to say something about the laws peculiar to Ireland, and to notice, as rapidly as is consistent with clearness, some of the men whose profession it was to apply, expound, and administer them. We shall chiefly confine ourselves, in the present article, to the period between the successful struggle for parliamentary independence in Ireland (coincident with the great American contest for American nationality) and the time when, betrayed by her own Legislature, Ireland surrendered that independence, and, under the operation of the suicidal Act of Union, passed in the year 1800, lost even the name of kingdom and sank into a province. At the Irish bar, as we write, there is only one man living who was a member of it before the Union. This is Thomas Lefroy, now in his ninety-first year, called to the bar in 1797 (Lord Plunket, who died in 1854, was "called" in 1787), who retained his seat as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland until last July, though the faculties of intellect and memory, so necessary to the judicial character, had become so much enfeebled as to render him all but useless on the bench.

"Reluctant lags the veteran on the stage."

The antiquity of Irish law is acknowledged. The first code was established by the Parliament of Tara, some nine hundred years before the Christian era began. Most prominent was the law of hospitality, extended, at public expense, to all travellers. Next ranked the law of gavel, by which, at his death, the property of a parent was divided, share and share alike, among his children.

Blackstone admits the Celtic origin of the custom of gavel-kind, which also prevailed throughout England during the Anglo-Saxon times, and divided the father's inheritance among his sons, generally share and share alike; though in Kent and some few other places the youngest son inherited the homestead, and the oldest, or the next following capable of bearing arms, had the periot-that is, the weapons, offen