[286]
at once his person became sacred. He spoke with something approaching contempt of our laws; and said, ‘Dans votre pays il n'y a pas de justice du tout:’ if he could have the making of the laws, he would make a law by which all thieves should be hung!
Here the Journal ends.
To Simon Greenleaf, Cambridge.
Paris, April 13, 1838.my dear friend,—Your letter was a green leaf cast up by the ocean, —fresh, cheering, and full of goodly tokens. Would that I could take the wings of the morning,—or of the evening rather,—and cross for one day the depths of water that part me from Cambridge and Boston! One draught from the deep fountains of home would be better than all the rich sources which are open about me. And yet I have renounced the former willingly, ay, joyously for the time, and have found no occasion to repent of my choice. Since I have been in Paris my every moment has been occupied; and one of the subjects which has interested me much is the lectures and the manner of lecturing at the Law School (where there are four thousand pupils from all the countries of the world except the United States), and at the Sorbonne, and the College of France. I have heard, perhaps, one hundred and fifty or two hundred lectures in all branches of jurisprudence (droit,) belles-lettres, and philosophy.1 . . . Most of the lectures at the Law School consist of commentaries on the French Codes, and the Institutes and Pandects of the Roman law. The professor has before him the law which forms the subject of his lectures; he first reads a section, and, if it be the French Code, takes clause by clause, and in a free, easy, and conversational manner expounds it, illustrates the importance of the provision, and the reasons which led to its adoption. Judge Story's Commentaries on the Constitution are executed in precisely the style of these lectures, except that there is in them more unction and more research than in any law-lecture I have heard in France. If the subject of the lecture be the Roman law, the professor reads one section and then translates it critically, giving occasionally some of the different readings. The lectures on the Roman law were excessively dry,—almost repulsive. There is but little in the manner of these professors that differs from that at Cambridge, except that the examination of the students is not intermingled with the exposition of the professors. But I would not have you understand that the students escape examination; if they desire the diploma of Bachelor of Laws, which is necessary in order to be admitted to the bar, they must undergo repeated examinations,—not as with us, for the sake of strengthening and confirming their knowledge, but in order to test it, and ascertain if it
