The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 4, December, 1834Various
History
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 4, December, 1834
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Formerly, the professors of the complex sciences of law, medicine, and
divinity, were regarded as exalted by their attainments, to an
immeasurable height of superiority over the mass of mankind, because
they shrouded the truths and principles of science from the vulgar eye,
by a veil of unintelligible jargon and grandiloquent technicalities,
entirely above the ordinary powers of comprehension. Years of laborious
and incessant toil were requisite to master the hidden complexities of
those venerated and "time-honored" professions; and he, who with
martyr-like resolution and unwearied perseverance, devoted his time and
talents to their attainment, was regarded by the "_vulgus ignobile_"
with sentiments of respect and admiration, nearly approaching to the
idolatrous reverence of a Hindoo, for the fabled virtues of his bloody
Juggernaut. But the illusion has at last been dispelled by the
refulgent light of truth, and those illustrious individuals, the
Luthers of the age, who have stripped these hoary errors of the veil
which concealed their enormity, may with merited exultation and triumph
exclaim, "_Nous avons changé toute cela!_" The art of economising time
has been simplified, and subjected to the grasp of the most obtuse
intellect; so that a science which formerly required years of intense
and unremitted study, united with long experience and observation, is
now thoroughly understood and mastered in a fortnight! So rapid indeed
has been the march of intellect, sweeping from its path obstacles
heretofore deemed insurmountable, and scaling the most impregnable
fortifications of philosophy, with a force no less astonishing than
irresistible, that many of our most profound adepts in the "glorious
science" of the law, are (_mirabile dictu!_) at once initiated into all
its mysteries by a single perusal of "Blackstone's Commentaries" and
the "Revised Code!" instead of toiling his way up the steep ascent of
fame by consuming the midnight oil, by exploring the dark and
forbidding chambers of the temple of law, dragging forth truth from the
musty volumes of antiquity, and searching the origin of long
established principles. Among the feudal customs of our Saxon
progenitors, a man may now become "like Mansfield wise, and Old Forster
just," by one month's attendance at the bar of a county court! At the
expiration of that period, he can rivet an admiring audience in fixed
attention, by the strains of Demosthenian eloquence, in which he asks
if "the court will hear a motion on a delivery bond?" And will astound
some illiterate ignoramus, by the consequential pomposity with which he
prates of "contingent remainders," "executory devises," and all the
labyrinthian subtleties of nisi prius! No one will then contest his
right to perambulate the streets, with all the ostentatious dignity of
a man "learned in the law," and to parade before the eyes of the
admiring rabble, his colored bag of most formidable
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