Beyond keeping up a certain interest in architecture, on which in early youth he is said to have composed a treatise, Blackstone seldom allowed himself to be diverted from a persevering and varied study of law. He divided his time between Westminster and Oxford, and long remained undecided whether he should finally settle in the law-courts or among his books. While, with hardly any practice of his own, he was training himself with unusual diligence, as his reports of cases testify, in the practical part of his profession, he had it clearly before him that law is not to be mastered by any one who neglects its history. “In my apprehension,” he said, when he was a student, “the learning out of use is as necessary as that of every day’s practice;” and he carried out this belief by making the _Commentaries_ as much a history as an exposition. Even more plainly than in his great work we can see in his edition of _Magna Charta and the Charter of the Forest_ how unflagging were his zeal and patience, and how minute his investigations. His knowledge of general history may have been superficial, as Hallam said it was; he may have had old-fashioned notions about Alfred the Great, even though he does warn his readers against the tendency to ascribe all imaginable things to that king; yet the _Commentaries_ contain what, on the whole, is still the best history written in English of English law. The plan of the book had long been in his mind; he was indirectly led to carry it out through an attempt of the Duke of Newcastle to corrupt him. Lord Mansfield (then Mr. Murray) recommended him to the chair of civil law at Oxford, which was vacant in 1756, but he lost the appointment, according to report, because he was not hearty enough in promising the duke support “whenever anything in the political hemisphere is agitated in the university.” Murray, hearing of his disappointment, advised him to lecture on his own account upon English law. He took the advice; the novelty of the lectures and their ability made them successful; and when the Vinerian chair of common law was founded in 1758 he was appointed the first professor. Making hardly any change in form, arrangement, or mode of treatment, as appears from his notes which are still extant written in the neatest of hands, he expanded the lectures into the _Commentaries_. But while he never deviated from his original plan, his store of knowledge grew steadily throughout the fourteen years which elapsed between his first private lectures and the appearance of his work. When the question of _ex officio_ informations was debated in the House of Lords in 1812, Lord Ellenborough spoke of him as follows:—“Blackstone, when he compiled his lectures, was comparatively an ignorant man; he was merely a fellow of All Souls’ College, moderately skilled in the law! His true and solid knowledge was acquired afterwards. He grew learned as he proceeded with his work. It might be said of him, at the time he was