I was saved, however, from something of this danger. The injustice

which I had been subjected to, in my own boyhood, had filled me

with the keenest love for the right. The idea of injustice aroused

my sternest feelings of resistance. I had adopted the law as

a profession with something of a patriotic feeling. I felt that

I could make it an instrument for putting down the oppressor, the

wrong-doer--for asserting right, and maintaining innocence! I had

my admiration, too, at that period, of that logical astuteness,

that wonderful tenacity of hold and pursuit, and discrimination

of attribute and subject, which distinguish this profession beyond

all others, and seem to confirm the assumption made in its behalf,

by which it has been declared the perfection of human reason. It

will not be subtracting anything from this estimate, if I express

my conviction, founded upon my own experience, that, though such

may be the character of the law as an abstract science, it deserves

no such encomium as it is ordinarily practised. Lawyers are too

commonly profound only in the technicalities of the profession;

and a very keen study and acquaintance with these--certainly a too

great reliance upon them, and upon the dicta of other lawyers--leads

to a dreadful departure from elementary principles, and a most woful

(sic) disregard, if not ignorance, of those profounder sources of

knowledge without which laws multiply at the expense of reason,

and not in support of it; and lawyers may be compared to those

ignorant captains to whom good ships are intrusted, who rely upon

continual sounding to grope their way along the accustomed shores.

Let them once leave the shores, and get beyond the reach of their

plummets, and the good ship must owe its safety to fortune and the

favor of the winds, for further skill is none.

I did not find the practice of the law affect my taste for domestic

pleasures; on the contrary, it stimulated and preserved them. After

toiling a whole morning in the courts, it was a sweet reprieve to

be allowed to hurry off to my quiet cottage, and hear the one dear

voice of my household, and examine the quiet pictures. These never

stunned me with clamors; I was never pestered by them to determine

the meum et tuum between noisy disputants, neither of whom is exactly

right. There, my eye could repose on the sweetest scenes--scenes

of beauty and freshness-the shady verdure of the woods, the rich

variety of flowers, and pure, calm, transparent waters, hallowed

by the meek glances of the matron moon. No creature could have

been more gentle than my wife. She met me with a composed smile,

equally bright and meek. I never heard a complaint from her

lips. The evils of which other men complain--the complaints about

servants, scoldings about delay or dinner--never reached my ears.

The kindest solicitude that, in my fatigue, or amid the toils of

a business of which wives can know little, and for which they make

too little allowance, there should be nothing at home to make me

irritable or give me disquiet, distinguished equally her sense and

her affection. If it became her duty to communicate any unpleasant

intelligence--any tidings which might awaken anger or impatience--she

carefully waited foi the proper time, when the excitement of my

blood was overcome, and repose of blood and brain had naturally

brought about a kindred composure of mind.




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