ce to endure being questioned on
matters which to him have grown too trite and familiar to seem to need
explanation. In Mr Warren's book he will meet with exactly the information
he wants; he will find a chart of the profession unrolled before him; he
may quietly test his own abilities, or his own courage, to adopt any of
the several departments as they are submitted to his inspection. He will
obtain all that he could gather from that kind good-natured friend at the
bar, whom he has been longing for, and would so willingly seize by the
button--nay, far more than he could gather from any one man who had not
made the subject one of especial attention, and taken pains himself to
collect information from various quarters. Besides, how infinitely
agreeable is it, whilst yet a resolution is unripe, whilst yet it is the
secret of our bosom, to be able to get our doubts solved, and our
questions answered, from the silent pages of a book; to be spared the
penance of exposing half-formed designs to the jocular scrutiny of our
friends--to be permitted to consult without necessarily making a
confidant--to be able to dismiss our thought, if it is destined to be
dismissed, without betraying how dear a guest it has been.

The more youthful and less instructed of its readers will find every
portion of this work useful to them; especially they will have reason to
thank; the author for that facile introduction he has offered them to the
study of the law itself. Never has been such a gently inclined plane set
up, for weak and unsteady feet, against the hill of legal knowledge. The
talent which Mr Warren has for familiar and elementary exposition is
something quite peculiar. Nor will they fail to profit by his many
practical hints for the discipline of the mind, and his advice as to their
general reading. The student more advanced in years and in thought, and
who entertains the project of entering the profession at a time when his
mind has approached towards maturity, will perceive, and will have the
candour to reflect, that much of the work was not written for _him_. But,
on the other hand, he is the very person who will especially value it for
that description of practical, familiar, but most necessary information,
which it is rare to get from books at all--which to him it is peculiarly
disagreeable to be compelled to extract piece-meal from chance
conversation with men but half furnished with it, and perhaps impatient
of the interrogator