The arts of rule are learned, the mechanism of human nature is unveiled in all the agencies of influence that work it, perhaps even more fully in the police-office, the court-house, and the prison, than in either of the places previously named. Brought before the bar of the judge, surrounded by the imposing and terrible array of the law with its dread apparatus of inquisition and punishment, every secret of the human heart is extorted. The culprit, the hero, the high and the low, the weak and the strong, all kinds and states of men, there betray their several characteristics in their demeanor, and uncover the springs of the world in its deepest interests, passions, and plots. Thus the legal profession, manipulating the laws, sitting as umpires for the decision of the complex conflicts of men in the endless collisions of their universal struggle of hostile interests, consummate masters of every method and artifice of power, have a place nearest to the seat of government. Their hands are on the very index and regulator of public authority. Their omnipresent instinct, ever since the rise of the black- gowned confraternity, has chiefly inspired and shaped as well as administered the judicial code of society. Now, their profound knowledge of the arts of sway, their matchless skill in victory and evasion, their vast professional prerogative, have been chiefly used not to bless mankind, but to win offices, honors, and fees from them. The universal function of the lawyer is justice, the prevention or reconciliation of disputes, the teaching of men to live in harmonious equity. But his private individual and class interest is litigation, the putting of the cause of a client above the public right, the retention of his light that other men in their darkness may be forced to look to him for guidance. The genius of the law is the nursing of its own authority by preserving occult technicalities, blind submission to precedents, and the pursuit of victory regardless of right or wrong.