any conflicting decisions, and a luminous
exposition of the _principles_ which ought to govern the administration
of commercial law. The calm, practised skill with which this young
unknown jurist moved about in these regions of subtle intricacy--_inter
apices juris_--excited the cordial admiration and respect of all
competent judges. He was manifestly a master of his subject; and having
quietly detected important but unoccupied ground, had possessed himself
of it with skill and resolution:--and this he did within little more
than two years after he had quitted the scene of his solitary year's
pupilage. Within six years this book has passed through three large
editions; and a fourth is, it is believed, in preparation, which will
comprise a great number of its departed author's own additions and
emendations, continued up to within two or three months of his decease.
Not only in this country, but in the United States of America, is this
valuable work deservedly held, at this moment, in the highest
estimation, as practically the only book of its kind. A glance at the
brief Preface will suffice to show to a competent judge, whether lay or
professional, at once the real and peculiar difficulty of the
undertaking, the author's exact and happy illustration of the sources of
that difficulty, and the simplicity and accuracy of his style.

"The Mercantile Law is in one respect better adapted to compression
than the Law of Real Property; inasmuch as the reasons upon which
the former is based, can be explained more shortly than those which
support the latter. The reasons upon which our Law of Real Property
is founded, are, generally speaking, historical; and part of
history must therefore be recounted, in order to explain them
clearly and philosophically; while the Mercantile Law is deduced
from considerations of utility, the force of which the mind
perceives as soon as they are pointed out to it. For instance, if a
writer were desirous of explaining why a rent-service cannot be
reserved in a conveyance, by a subject, of lands in fee-simple, he
would be obliged to show the feudal relations that existed between
lord and tenant, the nature of sub-infeudations, and how the lord
was injured by them, in such his relation to his tenant, how the
statute _quia emptores_ was enacted to prevent this injury; in
consequence of which statute a tenure, without which no