Broughton really meant him well, and did his best now and then to start him on in the acquisition of a knowledge of the law. Books were put into his hands, and he was told what parts of them to study, and had to prepare extracts from them occasionally. Aymer did his best, conscientiously, but he hated it—he hated it most thoroughly. It was not altogether that the reading in these books was dry and uninteresting to the last degree. Flat, tame, spiritless, meaningless,—a mere collection of decisions, interpretations, precedents—such they appeared at first. Aymer had talent and insight sufficient to speedily observe that this forbidding aspect was not the true one. All these precedents, rules, decisions—these ten thousand subtle distinctions—were much like the laws or rules of a game at chess. They decided in what way a pawn should be moved or a bishop replaced. The science of law seemed to him like a momentous game at chess, only the pieces were living human creatures. These subtle distinctions and technical divisions, formalities though they appeared, had a meaning, and a deep one. Following his employer, Mr Broughton, into the petty law courts at Barnham, he saw how the right and the wrong, the sorrow or the joy of human beings depended almost upon the quibble of a word, the incident of a slip of the pen. It was a game—a game requiring long study, an iron memory, quick observation, and quicker decision; and he hated it—hated it because the right appeared to be of no consequence. Truth, and what he had always thought was meant by justice, were left entirely out of sight. It was not the man who had the right upon his side who won. If that was the case, what use would there be for lawyers? Too often it was the man who had the law upon his side, and the law only. He actually heard magistrates, and even judges, expressing their regret that the law compelled them to give decisions contrary to the true justice of the cause before them. By degrees he became aware of the extraordinary fact, that with all the cumbrous system of law phrases—a system that requires a special dictionary—there was not even a word to express what he understood as justice; not even a word to express it! Justice meant a decision according to the law, and not according to the right or wrong of the particular case proceeding; equity meant a decision based upon a complex, antiquated, unreasonable jumble of obsolete customs. The sense of the word “equity”—as it is used in the sublime prophecy, “With equity shall he judge the world”—was entirely lost.