One field, however, in the legal township of this city, offers room upon its face for tillers—_the field of advocacy_! It is ploughed by some twenty or thirty, and _harrowed_ by some fifty or sixty. There are a _dozen_ whom the ghosts of Nisi Prius flock to hear upon great occasions. And these will long hold the monopoly. Why? Because the advocate and barrister must have had vast experience at Nisi Prius (or the court where matters of fact are investigated by judge and jury); have acquired a practised tact; have had opportunities of testing their own calibre to know if they are fitted for emergencies—as the gunsmith tests his barrels before he "stocks" them. And the young lawyer has small opportunity afforded him to acquire this tact—to permit this testing. If he can play "devil" for a few years to some barrister of extended practice, or scent "occasions" like a blood-hound on the trail of the valuable fugitive from justice, then he is a happy man, and is in the fair way of soon becoming a monopolist himself. Any juryman of two years’ standing will corroborate our statement as to the openness of the field of legal advocacy. How often has he seen cause after cause "set down," "reserved," or "put off," because counsel are engaged elsewhere? How often has he heard the same advocate in four or five causes in the same week, in the same court, changing positions like the queen of an active chess-board; profiting his fame and pocket by means of only a hurried glance at the elaborate brief which his junior has "got up" for him? Some one has said that the barrister works hard, lives well, and dies poor. Regarding the first two conditions of his life there is little doubt upon the question of truth; the dying in poverty _may be_ problematical. Yet in a recent print, professing to furnish a list of wealthy tax-payers, the list contained four lawyers, and only one was a barrister. The instance proves little, for a lawyer may be very rich and yet pay no taxes. The assessors may fight shy of his bell-pull as they go their rounds, because of his penchant to find flaws in their actions and bring them official discredit in an apparently laborious task, but in reality a sinecure of an employment. We have often asked ourselves if barristers have stomachs. Bowels of compassion they have not, that is certain; but have they stomachs? Say nine times in a year they dine at the same hour of the day; and then spoon their soup with the blood all drawn from the digestive apparatus to feed the brain. Yet they eat like aldermen and drink like German princes.... This much of idle reverie, as, with pen in hand, we laid down the two bulky and elaborately-published volumes whose title we have taken as text; this much of glance at the condition of the young and old advocate of to-day, before we digest our reflections upon the advocate and jurist of the past.