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QUITE a novel idea in incorporated In the volume entitled as abova and edited by Leon Mead and F. N. Gilbert. The novelty of it is the grouping together under alphabetical legal heads of a large number of appropriate quotations from the addressed of great lawyers discussing questions related to the various subject-headings. Thus, under the heading of Self-Defense is a quotation from a speech to the jury by Hon. Daniel W. Voorhees, in defense of H. C. Black, Frederick City, Md., April 1st, 1871, as follows: The law of self-defense is written in the heart of man more plainly and powerfully than in the pages of libraries. We here place our feet on its solid and eternal foundations. We build upon it a house of refuge for the prisoner, which will withstand the fury of the storm and the malice of his enemies He was not called upon to retreat I spurn the doctrine of being driven to the wall or the ditch, that odious doctrine of degradation, danger, and death to the assaulted party. Every inch of ground on which he stood was his own. Who had the right to command him to yield it? The free air around him was his wall, and he who sought to drive him further embraced the peril of his own lawlessness. Hon. John W. Griggs writes the introduction to this work in which he uses this language. The dearest and most valuable rights of mankind are submitted to the arbitrament of trial jury. Jurors are men of the vicinage; in the language of the ancient venire, liberi et legalet homines-men of ordinary everyday capacity, subject to all the prejudices, to all the passions, to all the emotions of the human mind. They can be reasoned with; they can be inflamed, made indignant or merciful, generous or severe, unjust or righteous in their verdicts, as they are moved to one sentiment or another by the art of the advocate who is a master of eloquence. It is to the jury that the contesting litigants mutually appeal for the final adjustment of their conflicting claims. So that the lawyer who speaks in such a case is no mere academic orator, aiming to produce fine sentences and swelling periods that will look well in print next day, but one who has a direct and single object before him-to convince the judgment and secure the assent of the twelve men in the jury-box to the correctness of his client's cause. Here, then, we might expect, and here, in fact, we shall find, eloquence in its least artificial form-where reasoning is most persuasive, where emotion is most real, and where all the arts of rhetoric, learning, wit, humor, irony, sarcasm, indignation, denunciation are employed in the most genuine and natural manner. -The Central Law Journal, Vol. 57 [1903]

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