It was not unknown to him that some lawyers in England are called barristers, some solicitors, and he had a vague impression that the former, only, are advocates, whose functions and activities differ from those of the solicitor; but he was hardly conscious that the two callings are as unlike as those of a physician and an apothecary. It requires personal observation to see that the barristers, belonging to a limited and somewhat aristocratic corps, less than 800 of whom monopolize the litigation of the entire Kingdom, have little in common with the solicitors, scattered all over England. The former are grouped together in their chambers in the Inns, their clients are solicitors only, they have no contact, perhaps not even an acquaintance, with the actual litigants and a cause to them is like an abstract proposition to be scientifically presented. The solicitors, on the other hand, constitute the men of law-business, whose clients are the public, but who can not themselves appear as advocates and must retain the barristers for that purpose. Again, it is difficult to grasp fully the influence exercised through life by the barrister's Inn--that curious institution, with its five hundred years of tradition--voluntarily joined by him when a youth; where he has received his training; by which he has been called to the Bar and may be disbarred for cause, and upon the Benchers of which Inn he must naturally look as his exemplars, although the Lord Chancellor may be the nominal creator of King's Counsel and the donor of judge-ships. The impulse of these Inns is still felt at the American Bar, despite more than a century's separation, for, about the time of the Revolution, over a hundred American law students were in attendance, not only acquiring, for use in the new country, a sound legal training, but absorbing the spirit of the profession which has been transmitted to posterity, although its source may be forgotten. Nor will anything he has read prepare the American for the abyss which separates the common law barrister, who spends his days in jury trials, from the chancery man, who knows nothing but equity courts; nor for the complete ignorance, if not contempt, with which they seem to regard each other.