I consider some study of this head as a necessary introduction to a thorough course on the subjects of Persons and Personal Property, and the topic, which is so important in the United States, of the Conflict of Laws.
Butler's Horæ Juridicæ. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall, chap. 44. Justinian's Institutes. Savigny's Traité de Droit Romain. Savigny's Histoire du Droit Romain au Moyen Age. Taylor's Elements of the Civil Law. Mackeldy's Compendium. Colquhoun's Summary of the Roman Civil Law. Domat's Civil Law.
VII. Persons and Personal Property.
Reeves on the Domestic Relations. Bingham's Law of Infancy and Coverture. Roper on Husband and Wife. Angel and Ames on Corporations. Les Œuvres de Pothier. Smith on Contracts. Story on Bailments. Jones on Bailments. Story on Partnership. Byles on Bills. Story on Promissory Notes. Abbott on Shipping. Duer on Insurance. Emerigon Traité des Assurances. Boulay-Paty Cour de Droit Commercial. Story on the Conflict of Laws.
VIII. Executors and Administrators.
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 Æneid threw open the adamantine gates that led to Elysium."