The writings of Lord Bacon are distinguished for the perspicuity and simplicity with which every subject is treated.

Lord Coke's Institutes have had a most extensive and permanent influence on the common law of England. The first part is a commentary upon Littleton's Tenures; and, nothwithstanding the magnitude of the work, it has reached seventeen editions. Many of the doctrines which his writings explain and illustrate have become obsolete, or have been swept away by the current of events. The influence of two centuries must inevitably work a great revolution in the laws and usages, as well as in the manners and taste of a nation. Perhaps everything useful in the Institutes of Coke may be found more methodically arranged, and more interestingly taught, in the modern compilations and digests; yet his authority on all subjects connected with the ancient law is too great and too venerable to be neglected. The writings of Coke, as Butler has observed, stand between and connect the ancient and the modern law,-the old and new jurisprudence. He explains the ancient system of law as it stood in his day, and he points out the leading circumstances of the innovation which was begun. We have in his works the beginning of the disuse of real actions; the tendency of the nation to abolish the military tenures; the rise of a system of equity jurisdiction, and the outlines of every point of modern law.

The second part of the Institutes of Coke is a commentary upon the ancient statutes, beginning with Magna Charta, and proceeding down to the reign of Henry VIII.; and his commentaries upon the ancient statutes consisted, as he himself declared, of the authentic resolutions of the courts of justice, and were not like the glosses of the civilians upon the text of the civil law, which contain so many diversities of opinion as to increase rather than to resolve doubts and uncertainties. His commentary upon Magna Charta, and particularly on the celebrated 29th chapter, is deeply interesting to the lawyers of the present age, as well from the value and dignity of the text, as the spirit of justice and of civil liberty which pervades and animates the work. In this respect, Lord Coke eclipses his contemporary and great rival, Lord Bacon, who was an inferior to Coke in a just sense and manly vindication of the freedom and privileges of the subject, as he was superior in general science and philosophy. Lord Coke, in a very advanced age, took a principal share in proposing and framing the celebrated Petition of Right, containing a parliamentary sanction of those constitutional limitations

upon the royal prerogative which were deemed essential to the liber

ties of the nation.

The third and fourth parts of the Institutes treat of high treason and the other pleas of the crown, and of the history and antiquities of the English courts. The harshness and severity of the ancient criminal code of England are not suited to the taste and moral sense of the present age; and those parts of the Institutes are of very inconsiderable value and use, except it be to enlighten the researches of the legal antiquary. In this respect, Coke's Pleas of the Crown are inferior to the work under that title by Staunforde, who wrote in the age of Philip and Mary, and was the earliest writer who treated didactically on that subject. Staun forde wrote in law French; but Lord Coke, more wisely and benevolently, wrote in English, because, he said, the matter of which he treated concerned all the subjects of the realm.

Before we quit the period of the old law, we must not omit to notice the grand abridgements of Statham, Fitzherbert, and Brooke. Statham was a baron of the Exchequer, in the time of Edward IV. His abridgment of the law was a digest of most titles of the law, comprising under each head adjudged cases from the Year Books, given in a concise manner. The cases were strung together without regard to connection of matter. It is doubtful whether it was printed before or after Fitzherbert's work, but the latter entirely superseded it. Fitzherbert was published in the reign of Henry VIII., and came out in 1514, and was, for that period, a work of singular learning and utility. Brooke was published in 1573, and in a great degree superseded the others. The two last abridgments contain the substance of the Year Books regularly digested; and by the form and order which they gave to the rude materials before them, and the great facility which they afforded to the acquisition of knowledge, they must have contributed very greatly and rapidly to the improvement of legal science. Even those exceedingly laborious abridgments were in their turn superseded by the abridgments of Rolle and his successors.

The treatise of Sir Henry Finch, being a discourse in four books, on the maxims and positive grounds of the law, was first published in French, in 1613; and we have the authority of Sir William Blackstone for saying, that his method was greatly superior to that in all the treatises that were then extant. His text was weighty, concise, and nervous, and his illustrations apposite, clear and authentic.

But the abolition of the feudal tenures, and the disuse of real actions, have rendered half of his work obsolete.

Sheppard's Touchstone of Common Assurances was the production of Mr. Justice Dodderidge, in the reign of James I. It is a work of great value and authority, touching the common-law modes of conveyance, and those derived from the Statute of Uses. It treats also copiously of the law of uses and devises; but the great defect of the book is the want of that lucid order and perspicuous method which are essential to the cheerful perusal and ready perception of the merits of such a work. The second volume of Collectanea Juridica has an analysis of the theory and practice of conveyancing, which is only a compendious abridgment of the Touchstone; and there is a very improved edition of it by Preston, who has favored the profession with several excellent tracts on the law of real property.

Rolle's Abridgment of the Law was published soon after the restoration, with an interesting preface by Sir Matthew Hale. It brings down the law to the end of the reign of Charles I., and though it be an excellent work, and, in point of method, succinctness, and legal precision, a model of a good abridgment, Sir Matthew Hale considered it an unequal monument of the fame of Rolle, and that it fell short of what might have been expected from his abilities and great merit. It is also deemed by Mr. Hargrave a great defect in Viner's very extensive abridgment, that he should have attempted to engraft it on such a narrow substance as Rolle's work. Rolle was Chief Justice of England under the protectorate of Cromwell, and under the preceding commonwealth; but as his abridgment was printed in the reign of Charles II., he has no other title annexed to his name than that of Sergeant Rolle, and his republican dignity was not recognized.

Since the period of the English revolution, the new digests have superseded the use of the former ones; and Bacon, Viner, Comyns, and Cruise contain such a vast accession of modern law learning, that their predecessors have fallen into oblivion. Viner's Abridgment, with all its defects and inaccuracies, is a convenient part of every lawyer's library. We obtain by it an easy and prompt access to the learning of the Year Books and the old abridgments, and the work is enriched with many reports of adjudged cases not to be found elsewhere; but, after all that can be said in its favor, it is an enormous mass of crude, undigested matter, and not worth the labor

of the compilation. The Digest of Lord Chief Baron Comyns is a production of vastly higher order and reputation, and it is the best digest extant upon the entire body of the English law. Lord Kenyon held his opinion alone to be of great authority, for he was considered by his contemporaries as the most able lawyer in Westminster Hall. The title Pleader has often been considered as the most elaborate and useful head of the work; but the whole is distinguished for the variety of the matter, its lucid order, the precision and brevity of the expression, and the accuracy and felicity of the execution. Bacon's Abridgment was composed chiefly from materials left by Lord Chief Baron Gilbert. It has more of the character of an elementary work than Comyns's Digest. The first edition appeared in 1736, and was much admired, and the abridgment has maintained its great influence down to the present time, as being a very convenient and valuable collection of principles, arising under the various titles in the immense system of the English law. And in connection with this branch of the subject, it will be most convenient, though a little out of the order of time, to take notice of Cruise's recent and very valuable Digest of the Laws of England respecting Real Property. It is by far the most perfect elementary work of the kind which we have on the doctrine of real property, and it is distinguished for its methodical, accurate, perspicuous and comprehensive view of the subject. All his principles are supported and illustrated by the most judicious selection of adjudged cases. They are arranged with great skill, and applied in confirmation of his doctrines with the utmost perspicuity and force.

The various treatises of Lord Chief Baron Gilbert are of high value and character, and they contributed much to advance the science of law in the former part of the last century. His treatise on Tenures deserves particular notice, as having explained, upon feudal principles, several of the leading doctrines in Littleton and Coke; and it is a very elementary and instructive essay upon that abstruse branch of learning. His essay on the Law of Evidence is an excellent performance, and the groundwork of all the subsequent collections on that subject; and it still maintains its character, notwithstanding the law of evidence, like most other branches of the law, and particularly the law of commercial contracts, has expanded with the progress and exigencies of society. His treatise on the Law of Uses and Trusts is another work of high authority, and it

has been rendered peculiarly valuable by the revision and copious notes of Mr. Sugden.

The treatises on the Pleas of the Crown, by Sir Matthew Hale and Sergeant Hawkins, appeared early in the last century, and they contributed to give precision and certainty to that most deeply interesting part of jurisprudence. They are both of them works of authority, and have had great sanction, and been uniformly and strongly recommended to the profession. Sir Martin Wright's Introduction to the Law of Tenures is an excellent work, and the value of it cannot be better recommended than by the fact that Sir William Blackstone has interwoven the substance of that treatise into the second volume of his Commentaries. Dr. Wood published in 1722, his Institutes of the Laws of England. His object was to digest the law, and to bring it into better order and system. By the year 1754, his work had passed through eight folio editions, and thereby afforded a decisive proof of its value and popularity. It was greatly esteemed by the lawyers of that age; and an American judge (himself a learned lawyer of the old school) has spoken of Wood as a great authority, and of weight and respect in Westminster Hall.

But it was the fate of Wood's Institutes to be entirely superseded by more enlarged, more critical, and more attractive publications,` and especially by the Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone, who is justly placed at the head of all the modern writers who treat of the general elementary principles of the law. By the excellence of his arrangement, the variety of his learning, the justness of his taste, and the purity and elegance of his style, he communicated to those subjects which were harsh and forbidding in the pages of Coke the attractions of a libera! science, and the embellishments of polite literature. The second and third volumes of the Commentaries are to be thoroughly studied and accurately understood. What is obsolete is necessary to illustrate that which remains in use, and the greater part of the matter in those volumes is law at this day and on this side of the Atlantic.