AMONG the learned or liberal professions, the one that oftenest tempts and dazzles the youthful mind is that of the law.

This fact has its reason, and is susceptible of explanation.

The profession of the law is venerable for its antiquity, rich in the illustrious names which adorn its history, and unequalled for the aggregate of talent and eloquence which have in all ages characterized its leading members.

Far back in the dim vista of the past, the fancy of the legal enthusiast may behold the commanding form of the inspired Cicero, his toga falling gracefully about him, his eye glowing with pathetic emotion, as he stands there on the Roman forum pleading the cause of his early friend and tutor, the poet Archius. It must be with no small degree of pride that the advocate thus traces his professional lineage back to the greatest orator of ancient times.

There is a kind of ancestral congratulation that he, too, like Cicero, is empowered to use his country's laws, when occasion requires, to defend the innocent and relieve the oppressed.

Then again there is romance connected with the practice of the law. Should every lawyer of long experience keep a journal, wherein he might detail the stories of all his clients, their strange grievances, their complicated affairs, and confidential disclosures, it would form a book only surpassed for variety and novelty by the famous 'Arabian Nights.'

The amount of heart-history with which he becomes acquainted, seems strangely in contrast with the lack of sentiment for which his character is so generally noted. He becomes familiar with domestic difficulties, disappointed affections, atrocious crimes, and daring schemes; and finds out more of the inner life of humanity than can be discovered from any other stand-point in society. His council-room is a kind of secular confessional, where clients re7

VOL. LVIII.

veal reluctant secrets, and tell of private wrongs. To him, what the world is accustomed to regard as fiction, constitutes the common-place facts of his legal practice.

But in our country the more seductive phase of the law is this: it has ever been the natural avenue to political preferment and judicial honors. Hence it is that young men of fine abilities and ambitious of distinction, so frequently choose this profession as the proper field whereon to meet the high endeavor and the glad success.' And perhaps it is sometimes a misfortune that such a reason decides them rather than a sense of any peculiar fitness for the calling which they so hastily espouse. But of that hereafter.

Lawyers, as a class, are, or were, much respected and revered, exerting as they do a very controlling influence over society and affairs. I know full well that novels and plays abound in a certain stereotyped character called an attorney, who is made to do all the dirty work of the plot or story. He is represented usually as a cadaverous-looking individual, with a swinish propensity to thrust his nose into every one's business, who is willing to damn his soul for a fee, and whose heart is devoid of all sympathy for suffering and distress. The worst of all these human fiends is Uriah Heep, whose freckled, hairy hand, with its cold clammy touch, so often makes the reader shudder as he turns the pages of 'David Copperfield.' Then there is Oily Gammon, who figures in ‘Ten Thousand a Year,' and whose qualities are very plainly suggested by his name. And among the more recent types of this character, we have the Marks' of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who, when asked to do a small favor, or to perform a common act of politeness without the tender of a fee, rolls out his eyes in wonderment, and to explain his refusal drawls out: 'Oh! I'm a lawyer!' The muses too have conspired against these poor persecuted fellows; and there is extant a little poem, called, 'Law versus Saw,' in which a very invidious comparison is sought to be made between a lawyer and that small operator in the lumber business commonly known as a sawyer. In usefulness and dignity the poet confers the palm on the vocation of the latter. The last verse sums up the whole matter thus:

'THIS conclusion then I draw,
That no exercise of jaw,
Twisting India-rubber law,

Is as good

As the exercise of paw
On the handle of a saw,
Sawing wood.'

But these pictures of law-attorneys, found so frequently in light literature, furnish the unknowing with a very erroneous estimate of the average character of the legal profession. These seeming caricatures have had, and still have originals in fact, but they are as much hated and despised by the more respectable members of the bar as by the world at large. Indeed, to a person of experience in life, there need be no argument to prove that lawyers as a body are quite as honorable, intelligent, liberal and public-spirited as the same number of men selected from any class which has a distinctive existence.

When De Tocqueville, the learned and philosophic Frenchman, came among us to study our institutions, surveyed us in our social and political aspect with his keen, analytic eye, he paid the legal profession the highest compliment, and called it the aristocracy of American society.

The popular prejudice which is sometimes manifested toward lawyers, is affected rather than really felt, and the world is, after all, disposed to give them the measure of merit they deserve; in short, to render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's.

But my design is not to vindicate the profession from any charges which may have been unjustly preferred against it; a special plea of this kind is unnecessary. I choose to consider it as a sphere of action wherein the young aspirant has embarked his fortunes, and to speculate on the probable chances of his success, and the difficulties which may embarrass him in his efforts to achieve a respectable position as a member of the bar. As before indicated, there is no pursuit in life that, at a distance, appears more fascinating to the uninitiated beholder. Young men usually get their first and often only ideas of the business of an advocate by witnessing interesting trials in courts of justice. These are not unfrequently, from the matters involved, the feelings engendered, and the sympathies excited, scenes of dramatic interest and effect.

Especially do criminal proceedings attract the people to watch their progress and termination. Let a man be on trial for his life, and however depraved his nature, however friendless or obscure, his fate is made a theme of universal gossip and debate. The court-room will be crowded to its utmost capacity; and each individual spectator seems to have a personal interest in the event of the trial.

Now this multitude does not assemble on such occasions so much on account of any particular sympathy for the culprit, or any nervous anxiety for the protection of society, as it does to watch the dextrous manoeuvring of ingenious counsel, and to mark when one loses a position or gains an advantage. Such an exhibition as this is a kind of intellectual gladiatorship, having none of the sanguinary horrors of brutal combat, but still possessing all its elements of fascination and excitement. The stern and dignified tone in which the public prosecutor usually opens the case for the people, speaking of the atrocity of the crime, of violated law, merited punishment, and the demands of justice and social welfare; then the pathetic appeal of the prisoner's counsel, his remarks in extenuation of the offence, and his cunning argument to convince the jury of the innocence of the accused; and lastly the grave and solemn charge of the judge, and the breathless silence of the audience; all these things conspire to produce the strongest impression upon the susceptibilities of the interested listener. After witnessing a scene of this character, is it strange that a youth, conscious of talent, of noble impulses, of ambitious hopes for the future, but as yet of wavering purpose, should leave the courtroom resolved in his own mind to become a lawyer? Many, I doubt not, have been decided in their choice of a profession by this very circumstance happening to them at an early day. A choice thus hastily made may often have its origin in fancy rather than reason.

The elated young man who has attended one of these exciting trials, and admired these rare displays of genius and eloquence, does not stop to consider that actions of this character occur cnly at long intervals, but foolishly imagines that they make up the staple of professional duties. He pictures to himself the life of a lawyer to be one composed of a brilliant succession of forensic triumphs, interspersed, perhaps, with a Senatorial term, or a foreign mission by way of political episode. If he does not believe this to be the average experience of the bar, he at least expects no less to be meted out to him. Now, that such an idea is somewhat extravagant and fantastical, will hardly be disputed by the veteran members of this profession.

Young men seldom reflect on the peculiar qualifications necessary to make a successful advocate, or even a common attorney. That it requires a combination of faculties, not perhaps of the highest order, still of a certain species and degree of development, is a fact which they do not sufficiently consider.

If a youth have what is popularly styled 'a gift of gab,' if he have astonished a village lyceum, or shone as the valedictorian of an academic exhibition, he and his flattered parents are prone to think that it was fore-ordained and predestined from the creation of the world that he should become 'the bright particular star' of the legal firmament.

Accordingly, if he can consent to wait, he finishes his scholastic education, then enters an office, or attends, perhaps, one term at a law-school, and is shortly admitted to practise a profession whose honors he is impatient to achieve. Well, what are his chances of success? Granting that beside his gift of gab, he has a pleasing address, a legal mind, a handsome person, and the whole inventory of successful requisites, it is at least quite safe to say, that he will meet many disappointments, and endure a good deal of impatient waiting before he acquires a paying practice or any considerable reputation. He finds that his is the most discouraging profession in the world to commence. His youth is imputed to him as a crime, and he feels a painful sense of his inexperience and want of practice. The details and clerical part of his calling, unless he has served a long apprenticeship in an office, will bother and perplex him. The intricacies and artificial rules of pleadings, the quirks and quibbles of the law, are as yet almost unknown to him; but he soon finds out that these compose the light infantry of legal skirmishing. This fact, however, is well understood by older men, and hence their hesitancy to entrust their pecuniary interests to the untried skill of young attorneys. A youthful clergyman, if he be devout, and delivers even a prosy discourse in an acceptable manner, his parishioners will be delighted; his want of years enhances the praise, and he is thought almost equal to John the Baptist. In this age of medical cant and prejudice, if a new-fledged physician settles in a community, the believers in the particular school of medicine which he represents, will, despite his youth and inexperience, give him their support. Why? Simply because they had rather be killed by an allopathist than cured by a homeopathist, or the reverse, as the case may be. Whoever is of the favorite school gets the practice. Not so of the law. It is divided into no creeds or schools, and affords little opportunity for pretence or quackery.

The lawyer, above all other men, is dependent entirely on public patronage, and to command it he must rely for the most part on his own individual merit.

When he first opens an office, unlike the merchant, advertising in the newspapers is of little avail, and the novelty of his name has no charm to those in pursuit of legal advice and assistance. Of such it is emphatically true: 'By their works shall ye know them.' Hence, a young lawyer's first clients, after he has any, naturally distribute themselves into three classes: First, those who go to law for the luxury of the thing; and have such petty grievances that older lawyers would not undertake their investigation; second, those who have been sued, have no defence, yet wish to defend to gratify their malice, and of course wish to have it done at the cheapest rates; third, a few who have good causes of action, or good defences, but who have not got the money to retain old and experienced counsel.

The clients enumerated in the first two classes do very little to help the tyro in the law to acquire a coveted reputation; and the last, though they sometimes give him fame, do not perceptibly increase his finances; and with many, increase of finance is made the index of success.

What if the young lawyer, whose chief qualification is as Carlyle would say, that he could 'wag the tongue with dextrous acceptability,' finds, alas! no occasion for its wagging? Perhaps he is sitting in his office, waiting impatiently for a murder-trial; or if he be of a sentimental turn, he would prefer to commence an action in behalf of some fair client for breach of promise, coupled with seduction. In fancy he has already rehearsed to himself what he would say to the jury in a case of the latter description, and in his mind's eye he sees those twelve susceptible men all bedewed with tears at the story of the poor girl's wrongs.

How touchingly he speaks of broken hearts and blighted affections, of hope's bright star that set in darkness and left a midnight in the soul. Then he talks of man's inconstancy, treachery and perfidious vows; comes down with withering invective on the character of the base seducer, until he im-* agines the indignant twelve are about to leave their seats and inflict summary justice on the pale and trembling defendant; but he graciously bids them forbear! And ah! how felicitous in his poetical quotations! In his delicate allusion to the unhappy sequel of the affair, he says in the tenderest pathos: 'She loved not wisely but too well.'

When he confesses the inability of the law to make any thing like ample reparation for the deep, the lasting injury inflicted upon the character and reputation of his client, and of the black despair which clouds her future, he recites those affecting lines of Goldsmith, commencing:

'WHEN lovely woman stoops to folly,

And finds too late that men betray,' etc.;

and thus proceeds till the lachrymose propensities of the twelve bid fair to dissolve them into a sea of tears. He closes by dilating on the moral heroism of the unfortunate girl, reminding them that the seducer's victim, stung to madness by her mingled sense of shame and wrong, too often swallows the subtle poi