sacra_ forms no part of the theory of civil law, but they are
under the separate jurisdiction of the College of Pontiffs. The
letters of Cicero to Atticus, which are full of allusions to them,
leave no doubt that they constituted an intolerable burden on
Inheritances; but the point of development at which law breaks away
from religion has been passed, and we are prepared for their entire
disappearance from the later jurisprudence.

In Hindoo law there is no such thing as a true Will. The place filled
by Wills is occupied by Adoptions. We can now see the relation of the
Testamentary Power to the Faculty of Adoption, and the reason why the
exercise of either of them could call up a peculiar solicitude for the
performance of the _sacra_. Both a Will and an Adoption threaten a
distortion of the ordinary course of Family descent, but they are
obviously contrivances for preventing the descent being wholly
interrupted, when there is no succession of kindred to carry it on. Of
the two expedients Adoption, the factitious creation of
blood-relationship, is the only one which has suggested itself to the
greater part of archaic societies. The Hindoos have indeed advanced
one point on what was doubtless the antique practice, by allowing the
widow to adopt when the father has neglected to do so, and there are
in the local customs of Bengal some faint traces of the Testamentary
powers. But to the Romans belongs pre-eminently the credit of
inventing the Will, the institution which, next to the Contract, has
exercised the greatest influence in transforming human society. We
must be careful not to attribute to it in its earliest shape the
functions which have attended it in more recent times. It was at
first, not a mode of distributing a dead man's goods, but one among
several ways of transferring the representation of the household to a
new chief. The goods descend no doubt to the Heir, but that is only
because the government of the family carries with it in its devolution
the power of disposing of the common stock. We are very far as yet
from that stage in the history of Wills in which they become powerful
instruments in modifying society through the stimulus they give to the
circulation of property and the plasticity they produce in proprietary
rights. No such consequences as these appear in fact to have been
associated with the Testamentary power even by the latest Roman
lawyers. It will be found that Wills were never looked upon in