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THE BARRISTER.

THIS CHARACTER OF A BARRISTER IS

MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED TO SIR EDWARD SUGDEN.

B. M.

THE BARRISTER.

THIS character of the Barrister is "after the manner of Fuller."

SECTION I.

HIS DUTY TO HIMSELF.

1. Before he engages as a student he considers his health,-whether it will enable him to encounter sedentary confinement, continued intensity of thought, the exertion of long and frequent pleadings in hot and crowded courts, and the anxiety ever attendant upon the consciousness of being intrusted with the happiness of others.

2. He considers the fitness of his intellect for the profession of the law,-whether he has invention to find, judgment to examine, memory to retain, and a prompt and ready delivery. He is mindful that a man may be miserable in the study of the law, who might have been serviceable to his country at the spade or the plough.

3. He duly considers his motive for engaging in the profession.-It is not fame, but honourable

fame; it is not wealth, but wealth worthily obtained; it is not power, but power gained fairly and exercised virtuously; it is not the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees, but the heavenly contemplation of justice and equity. His plans will not be subservient to considerations of rewards, estate, or title; these will not have precedence in his thoughts, to govern his actions, but follow in the train of his duty.

He enters his profession, mindful of the admonition of Lord Bacon. "We enter into a desire of knowledge, sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain our minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; sometimes to enable us to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of our gift of reason, for the benefit and use of man :-as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate."

4. He is careful of his health.-He remembers

that the foundation of happiness in life, and of excellence in his profession, is health of body. His rule, therefore, is, ne quid nimis. He is warned by an eminent lawyer, who said, "I will not sit up more than three nights together for any attorney in London." He remembers the admonition of Lord Bacon, "Although the world to a Christian travelling to the land of promise be, as it were, a wilderness, yet that our shoes and vestments be less worn away while we sojourn in the wilderness, is to be esteemed a gift coming from divine goodness."

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5. He is industrious.- "I have two tutors, said King Edward to Cardan, Diligence and Moderation." So our student will be on his guard against indolence, fickleness, irresolution, immoderate love of amusements, and against every ensnaring and dissipated habit; the natural effect of an overgrown, wealthy, and luxurious capital.

6. He stores his mind with the general principles of law. The tutor to King Edward the Sixth said, "I will not debase my royal pupil's mind with the nauseated and low crumbs of a pedant, but will ennoble it with the free and high maxims of a statesman. The stream must fail which is not supplied from the fountain."

Lord Bacon, in his entrance on Philosophy, says: "And because the partitions of sciences are not like several lines that meet in one angle ; but rather like branches of trees, that meet in one

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