Bart Ridgeley Part 11

A smile.

"It is law Latin, and most of it would have puzzled Cicero and Virgil, I fear. Are you a Latin scholar?"

"I'm not a scholar at all. I've been an idler, generally, and have picked up only a few phrases of Latin. I've a brother, a student with Giddings & Wade, at Jefferson, who would have told me all I want to know, but I had a fancy to find it out first hand."

"Exactly;" and the General thought he looked like a youth who would not take things second-hand. "They are able lawyers, and it is said Giddings will retire from the bar and run for Congress. It is thought that Mr. Whittlesey will resign, and make an opening."

Bart thought that the General spoke of this with interest, and he made another dab at Blackstone. He then wandered off to a small but select case of miscellaneous books. "Adam Smith!" he said, with animation; "I never saw that before. How interesting it must be to get back to the beginning of things. And here is Junius, whom I have only read about!

and Hume! and Irving! and Scott's Novels! Oh dear, oh dear! General, what a happy man you must be, with all these about you, and these newspapers, to come and go between you and the outside world."

"Oh! I don't know. I have but few books, compared with real libraries, and yet I must say I have more than I make useful."

Bart plunged into Ivanhoe for a moment, and then laid it down with a sigh.

The General, who found much in the frank enthusiasm of Bart to attract him, asked him many questions about himself, surroundings, etc., all of which were answered with a modest frankness, that won much on the open, manly nature of Ford.

Bart said he most of all wanted to study law, but he did not know how to accomplish it. He was without means, and wanted to remain with his mother, and he wanted only to look at the books, and learn a little about what he would have to do, the time, etc. The General said "the laws of Ohio required two years' study, before admission, which would be upon examination before the Supreme Court, or by a committee of lawyers appointed for that purpose; lawyers who received students usually charged fifty or sixty dollars per year for use of books and instruction, the last of which often did not amount to much."

Bart looked wistfully at the books, and arose to go. The General asked him to remain to dinner with such hearty cordiality, that Bart a.s.sented, and the General took him into the house and introduced him to Mrs. Ford, a tall, slender woman, of fine figure, with striking features, and really handsome; of very kindly manners, and full of genuine good womanly qualities, who believed in her husband, and was full of ambition for him.

The quiet, easy manners, and frank, sparkling conversation of Bart, won her good-will at once.

"Was he acquainted with Judge Markham's people?"

"A little."

"Mrs. Markham is one of the most superior and accomplished women I ever met," said Mrs. Ford. Of course he was acquainted with Julia, who was thought to be the belle of all that region?

Barton was slightly acquainted with her, and thought her very beautiful. His acquaintance with young ladies of her position was very limited, but he could believe that few superiors of hers could be found anywhere, etc.

Poor Bart!

Mrs. Ford presumed that a great many young men had their eyes on her, and it would be a matter of interest to see where her choice would fall.

It was some satisfaction to Bart to feel that he could hear this point referred to without any but the same pain and bruise of heart that any thought of her occasioned.

After dinner, General Ford said to Bart that if he really wished to enter upon the study of the law, he would do what he could for him; that he would permit him to take home such books as he could spare, and when he had read one he would examine him upon it, and give him another.

This was more than had entered Bart's mind; and so unaccustomed was he to receiving favors, that the sensations of grat.i.tude were new to him, and he hardly expressed them satisfactorily to himself.

His new tutor had taken a real liking to him; he may have remembered that the Major was one of the rising young men in the south-west part of the county, whom he liked also. He called Barton's attention to the chapters of Blackstone that would demand his more careful reading, and they parted well pleased with each other.

Bart pushed off across the fields in a right line for home, with the priceless book in his hand; light came to him, and opportunity. Lord!

how his heart and soul and brain arose and went out to meet them! As the branches of the young forest-tree that springs up by a river-side shoot out, rank, and strong, and full, to the beautiful light and air, and so, too, as the tree grows one-sided and disfigured, the danger is that this embodiment of young force and energy may develop one-sided.

The poetic, upward tendency of his nature will help him, and his devotion to his mother will hold him unwarped, while the struggle with a great, pure, and utterly hopeless pa.s.sion shall at least make a sacred desert of his heart, where no unhallowed thought shall take root. His was eminently a nature to be strengthened and purified by suffering.

But he had the law in his hands. No matter how gnarled, warped or obscure were the paths to its lurking-places, he would find them all out, and pluck out all its meanings, and make its soul his own. He had already learned from his brother the fallacy of the vulgar judgment of the law, and he knew enough of history to know that some of the wisest and greatest of men were eminent lawyers, and he thought nothing of the moral dangers of the law as a profession. He had never been even in a magistrate's court, but he had heard the legends and traditions of the advocates; had read that eminent fiction, Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, and a volume of Charles Phillips's speeches, and had felt that strong inner going forth of the soul that yearned to find utterance in oversweeping speech.

Several times on his way home he stopped to read, and only suspended his studies at the approach of evening, which found him east of the pond, lying across his direct route, and which he found the means of pa.s.sing.

Blackstone he took in earnest, and smiled to find nothing that he did not seem to comprehend, and often went back, fearing that the seeming might not be the real meaning.

At the end of a week he returned to his kind friend, the General, not without misgivings as to the result of his work. He found him at leisure in the afternoon, and was received with much kindness.

"Well, how goes Blackstone?"

"Indeed I don't know; and I am anxious, if you have leisure, to find out."

The General took the book, and turning to the definition of law, and the statement of a few elementary principles, found that they were thoroughly understood. Turning on, he paused with his finger in the book.

"What do you think of the English Const.i.tution?"

Bart looked a little puzzled.

"The English government seems to be an admirable structure--on paper; but as to the principles that lie below it, or around it, that govern and control its workings, and from which it can't depart, I am cloudy."

"Yes, a good many are; but then there is, as you know, a great unwritten English Const.i.tution--certain great fixed principles which from time to time have been observed, through many ages, until their observance has become a law, from which the government cannot depart, and they take the form of maxims and rules."

"I think I understand what you mean; but to me everything is in cloud-land, vague and s.h.i.+fting, and the fact that n.o.body has ever attempted to put in writing these principles, or even to enumerate them, leads one to doubt whether really there are such things. When king, lords and commons are, in theory and practice, absolutely omnipotent, I can't comprehend how there can be any other const.i.tution. When they enact a law, n.o.body can question it, n.o.body can be heard against it; no court can p.r.o.nounce it unconst.i.tutional.

What may have been thought to be unconst.i.tutional they can declare to be law, and that ends it. So they can annihilate any one of the so-called const.i.tutional maxims. When a party in power wants to do a thing, it is const.i.tutional; when a minister or great n.o.ble is to be got rid of, he is impeached for a violation of the const.i.tution, and const.i.tutionally beheaded."

"Well," said the General, smiling, "but this, for instance: the great palladium of British liberty, taxation, must be accompanied with representation."

"Yes; that, if adhered to, would protect property and its owners; but then it never has been carried out, even in England, while the non-taxpayer is wholly out of its reach; and my recollection is, that the const.i.tutional violation of this palladium of the Const.i.tution by king, lords and commons, produced a lively commotion, some sixty-odd years ago."

"Yes, I've heard of that; but the attempt to tax the colonies was clearly unconst.i.tutional; they were without representation in the Parliament that enacted the law."

"But then, General, you are to remember that, according to Blackstone, Parliament was and is, by the English Const.i.tution, omnipotent. The fact is, we took one part of the const.i.tution, and George the other; we kept our part, and all our land, and George maintained his, on his island, strong as ever; and yet there, property-owners always have been and always will be taxed, who do not vote. I fear that it will be found that all the other maxims have from time to time suffered in the same way."

"You must admit, however," said the General, "that the maxims in favor of personal freedom have usually been adhered to in England proper."

"Yes, the st.u.r.dy elements of the natural const.i.tution of the English people have vindicated their liberty against all const.i.tutional violations of it; and while I cordially detest them, one and all, there isn't another nation in Europe that I am willing to be descended from."

"I fear that is the common sentiment among our people," said the General. "And so you think the world-famous British Const.i.tution may be written in one condensed sentence--the old English formula--Parliament is omnipotent."

"Yes, just that. Parliament is the const.i.tution; everything else is ornamental."

Without expressing any opinion, the General resumed, and turning at hop, skip and jump, he found that Bart happened to be at home wherever he alighted. He finally turned to the last page, and asked questions with the same result, closing the book with:

"Well, what else have you been doing this week?"

"Not much; I've worked a little, dabbled with geometry some, read Gibbon a little, newspapers less, run some in the woods, and fooled away some of my time," answered Bart, with a self-condemning air.

"Have you slept any?"

"Oh, yes."

"Oh, dear!" said the General, laughing good-humoredly, and then looking grave, "this will never do--never!"