Noblesse de la Robe.
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accepted unconditionally, that the right of giving legacies. It is no longer the Old Tes inheritance or descent was allowed much tament, " with the copper and the scales," earlier than the right of devising by testa! which is the first step in the evolution of its ment Abraham himself, prior to the promise modern counterpart. The oldest English that his seed should succeed him, had chosen will, it may be remarked, of which any rec Eliezer, his steward, as his heir, in accord ord is extant, is that of Alfred the Great, ance with the primitive usage which allowed which was preserved in the register of the a man, on the failure of children, to appoint 1 Abbey of Newminster, at Winchester. In his servants born in his house his successors. this, it is curious to notice, — subject to the But this is readily distinguishable from the sanction and support of the Witenagemote, right of testamentary disposition; and it is, — he devised and bequeathed his lands and withal, impossible to trace the true analogies moneys in various proportions among his between this Egyptian will and wills as we sons and daughters. William the Conqueror, know them, or even the wills of the Romans. i too, as every school-boy knows, did not scru The gap is too wide ever to be filled up. ple to devise the realm of England by will The rarity of evidence of testamentary to William Rufus. But in general, the old power in archaic communities is such that Frisian customary law of inheritance pre its bare existence prior to Roman times is vailed in this country, in spite of the efforts of the ecclesiastical authorities, and it was commonly disputed, and students have al ways suspected all rudimentary and inchoate not until the reign of Henry VIII. that a forms of it to be of Roman origin. This will of lands was permitted. As for our modern wills and their intricate incidents, may perhaps now be doubted. The Athenian will, if not indigenous, may all that need be said is that they are the have been borrowed, not from Rome, but creatures of statute. If would be a difficult from Egypt. The pedigree of modern wills task to establish the analogies between them cannot, if Mr. Petrie's suggestions be cor and this testament of an Egyptian priest, rect, be traced back finally to the plebeian made forty-five hundred years ago. But, will, legalized by the law of the Twelve Ta nevertheless, it seems to put the period of bles, which, it is conjectured, first gave the legal evolution some twenty centuries back. power of putting a will into writing and of — Standard.
NOBLESSE DE LA ROBE. TN these degenerate days, when the dignity of the legal profession is but indif ferently regarded by some of its members, and some " counsellors at law " are not ashamed to set up capacious shingles and boards of advertisement on their premises, as a means of attracting public attention, of a size which would more appropriately give notice of a dry-goods store or a grocery, — it may not be inappropriate to recall the high and proud position which in other countries the profession and the office of advocate has /-
sustained. Nowhere, perhaps, did the pro fession of the law ever attain a prouder position than in the fair land of France in former times. Mr. Forsyth, in his admirable work " Hortensius," gives an interesting ac count of the palmy days of advocacy in France. Beside her mailed chivalry stood an order of men known as the Noblesse de la robe, whose only patent of nobility was ad mission on the role of advocates, and from whose ranks were taken the magistrates who, as members of the Parliament of Paris,
