_imprimatur_, I _then_ read them over very diligently, and with great
profit: but you must remember that this was before the late revolution
in pleading." All this he repeated to me one day, only a few months
before his death.--He never studied under any other practitioner than
Mr. Blick, with whom, moreover, he spent only one year: yet such was his
close application, his wonderful memory, his clear, vigorous, and
disciplined understanding, and the soundness and extent of his
previously acquired law, that on quitting Mr. Blick, Mr. Smith was
really an able pleader, and had laid the basis of an extended, profound,
and scientific knowledge of the law. Even at that early period, I
frequently heard his opinion deferentially asked by men far his seniors,
and of considerable standing in business. On quitting Mr. Blick, Mr.
Smith read a number of other law books, in his usual attentive and
thorough manner, completely mastering both them and the "cases"
contained in them, and of which, generally speaking, they were little
else than digests or epitomes. He was a very keen and acute logician,
and felt great satisfaction in balancing the _pros_ and _cons_ of the
reported cases, and testing the soundness of the judges' decisions, and
the relevancy and force of the arguments of council which had led to
them. Among the books which he read about this time, he enumerated to me
"Sanders on Uses and Trusts," (which, he said, he found to be a
difficult book to master practically;) "Fearne on Contingent
Remainders," which he represented as likely to prove interesting to
_any_ educated man of intellect, fond of exercising it, who would take
the trouble to read it; Sir Edward Sugden's Treatises on "Vendors and
Purchasers of Real Estates," and on "Powers," and Williams' "Saunders;"
while "Comyn's Digest" was ever lying before him, the subject of
continual reference, and with which he soon acquired an invaluable
familiarity. He also read several books on Equity with great attention,
and often said, that no one, who really knew law, could fail to feel a
deep interest in Equity, and the mode of its operating upon law. The
"Code Napoleon," too, he read very carefully, and for many years. He had
a copy of Justinian's Code, and Institutes, always lying on his
mantel-piece, and which he was very fond of reading. We have frequently
conversed together on the subject of the extensive obligations of our
Common Law to the Roman Law; to which he used to re