testimony to its importance to the American practitioner. Chancellor Kent seems, as I have intimated in the note, to lean rather against Coke upon Littleton, as an Institute of Legal Education, although he acknowledges its value and authority as a book of reference. It appears to me that after Coke, Preston's Elementary Treatise on Estates may be read with advantage. He is perhaps unnecessarily diffuse and tautological; but he enters largely into the reasons of the abstruse doctrines of which he treats, and his work is calculated to lead the student to inquire more earnestly into the philosophy of the science. Fearne's Essay on the Learning of Contingent Remainders, should then be well studied. If no other book be read over a second time, it must not be omitted as to this. This volume is occupied in the discussion of points of great difficulty and abstruseness; yet the style is remarkable for clearness and perspicuity, and the reasoning is logical and irresistible. A taste or otherwise, for this book, will test the student's real progress. After Fearne, take up Sheppard's Touchstone of Common Assurances--a work generally supposed to have been written by Mr. Justice Doddridge, and not by William Sheppard, whose name it bears. It is a most valuable book, one of the most esteemed and authoritative of the old treatises. There is an edition by Mr. Preston, but I do not recommend it. Had he annotated in the common way, his labors and references would no doubt have increased the value of the book; but he has taken liberties with the text,--subdividing it, occasionally changing the phraseology, and inserting matter of his own: a course of proceeding in regard to any work, except a digest or dictionary, to which I cannot be reconciled. The Touchstone may be followed by Preston on Abstracts of Title, and Preston's Treatise on Conveyancing.