a good deal of discussion, “concurred,” and on May 14, 1817, voted “that some Counsellor, learned in the Law, be elected to be denominated University Professor of Law; who shall reside in Cambridge, and open and keep a school for the Instruction of Graduates of this or any other University, and of such others, as, according to the rules of admission of Attorneys, may be admitted after five years study in the office of some Counsellor.” At the same meeting they instituted the degree of LL.B. “as an excitement to diligence and good conduct,” and elected Asahel Stearns of Charlestown first University Professor.
Now the milk of the cocoanut lay in this—that the learned Chief Justice, in spite of the old saw, had really brought to pass something new under the sun. Though a good lawyer, he had gone beyond the precedents. College lectures on law, of the sort he was giving, were common enough both in England and in this country; at William and Mary the Commonwealth of Virginia had founded such a chair as far back as 1779. The information thus imparted, as already described, was mainly of a general and popular nature. But when a young man wished really to study law as his profession, college was of no use to him. He had nowhere to go except the office of some practising attorney, where he became, virtually or actually, a legal apprentice, reading textbooks at hap-
