tive point kept immediately in view by a uniform scientific plan; but it is hoped that liberality and candor, which are the usual accompaniments of extensive information, will allow for the painful embarrassment of the undertaking, for the arduous task, which requires of the advocate an argument adapted to the lay as well as to the professional mind, upon most subtle and complex problems.
The gravest of all the difficulties encountered was the overweight and copiousness of the matter,and the labor of its modification and connection by any comparatively lucid system. It is a matter of regret that the plan of the work made it necessary to avoid many authentications by notes and original references which, if full enough to be of value, would have made long and frequent interruption without the advancement of its main object. Moderate success is as much as could be reasonably anticipated for limited abilities, in the brief space of time allotted for the performance of the work. Many errors and omissions might have been avoided had there been leisure for consideration of methods rather than results, since inaccuracies and incompleteness are unavoidable in a work executed with intermitted study, and by piecemeal, in moments snatched from anxious care of every-day professional life, often filled with deep solicitude.
The experienced trial-table lawyer, to whom has been given the understanding of many mysteries, is aware that in the presentation of an obscure cause it is frequently necessary to throw the great corrective force of light upon hidden truth by bold, characteristic, often grotesque, portrayal. Hamlet's delineation of his father as "Hyperion to a satyr," compared with his step-father, affords an apt illustration of the exaggerated representation of an advocate engaged in presenting the truth of a good cause in a strong light. It is only under such a combination of mirrors as apparently augment its dimensions that the real characteristics and the hidden "proper deformity" of error can be clearly discerned.
The practitioner will readily admit that both court and jury, in their daily routine, as a rule, are slow of heart to perceive, or to distinguish the true from the false; neither eats long of the same spiritual food, nor drinks often of the same spiritual drink.
