and deep excogitation clung to him to his latest hour. Form these habits now: learn all that may be learned at your University, and bring all your acquisitions and your habits to the study of the law, which you say is to be your profession;--and when you come to this study, come resolved to master it--not to play in its shallows, but to sound all its depths. There is no knowing what a mind greatly and firmly resolved, may achieve in this department of science, as well as every other. Resolve to be the first lawyer of your age, in the depth, extent, variety and accuracy of your legal learning. Master the science of pleading--master Coke upon Littleton--and Coke's and Plowden's Reports--master Fearne on Contingent Remainders and Executory Devises, 'till you can sport and play familiarly with its most subtle distinctions. Lay your foundation deep, and broad, and strong, and you will find the superstructure comparatively light work. It is not by shrinking from the difficult parts of the science, but by courting them, grappling with them, and overcoming them, that a man rises to professional greatness. There is a great deal of law learning that is dry, dark, cold, revolting--but it is an old feudal castle, in perfect preservation, which the legal architect, who aspires to the first honors of his profession, will delight to explore, and learn all the uses to which its various parts used to be put: and he will the better understand, enjoy and relish the progressive improvements of the science in modern times. {36} You must be a master in every branch of the science that belongs to your profession--the law of nature and of nations, the civil law, the law merchant, the maritime law, &c. the chart and outline of all which you will see in Blackstone's Commentaries. Thus covered with the panoply of professional learning, a master of the pleadings, practice and cases, and at the same time a _great constitutional and philosophic lawyer_, you must keep way, also, with the march of general science. Do you think this requiring too much? Look at Brougham, and see what man can do if well armed and well resolved. With a load of _professional duties_ that would, _of themselves_, have been appalling to the most of _our_ countrymen, he _stood, nevertheless, at the head of his party in the House of Commons_, and, _at the same time, set in motion and superintended various primary schools and various periodical works, the most instructive and useful that ever issued from the British press, to which he furnished, with his own pen, some of the most masterly contributions_, and yet found time _not only to keep pace_ with the progress of the _arts and sciences_, but _to keep at the head of those whose peculiar and exclusive occupations these arts and sciences were_. _There_ is a model of _industry and usefulness_ worthy of all your emulation. You must, indeed, be a great lawyer; but it will not do to be a mere lawyer--more especially as you are very properly