might here be given entire. It was printed, by order of the Board of Trustees, in pam phlet" form, and afterward copied into the "Legal Journal," published in New York. After but little advertising the Law School was opened in October of the same year. No room had as yet been prepared for the Law class, and in consequence the first reci tation was in the office of Judge Robert L. Caruthers, at that time a practising lawyer. There, on the first day of the term, the new professor was met by seven young men. The number of students increased during that term to thirteen. This was considered encouraging. At that time the Professor was just get ting out of press his first edition of " The History of a Lawsuit." It was a small work of forty pages octavo. Afterward it grew under his own hand to be a large law book of six hundred pages, and has acquired a reputation almost as extensive as that of its author. The work has recently been re vised, annotated, and greatly improved by the Hon. Andrew B. Martin, of the present Law Faculty. The first lesson was recited from this book. The present Chancellor of the University, Nathan Green, Jr., was among the seven youths who composed the nucleus of the first Law class in Cumberland University. Several of them had undertaken to study law at home in the ordinary way; that is, in lawyers' offices. They found great difficul ties in this method. Lawyers in full prac tice have but little time to bestow upon their students, and this at irregular and un certain periods. The lawyer is not himself trained and devoted to the business of teach ing. He may be a great advocate or a pro found jurist and at the same time a very poor instructor. Studying in a law office involves many interruptions from various sources : clients, friends, and idlers inter fere. Besides, there is absent the powerful stimulus of a class. Those of the seven students who had tried it, found a vast difference between
that method of learning the law and this upon which they were just entering. Here they had an able man, and one of the best lawyers of the country, devoting to them the whole of his time and great talents. He had given up every other pursuit. He had noth ing else to think about, and he went into his new business with enthusiasm and zeal. Here also they had in their text-book, in plain language, the manner of beginning and conducting a lawsuit through all its stages. This was explained by their teacher, and then, to make certain that they understood it, they were themselves required to prepare and present the different phases of a law suit. They were made practising lawyers on the spot. They had their sheriff, their jurors, and their judge, as well as their fic titious client. It may be well imagined how interesting, how new, and how differ ent to them the study of law now seemed, compared with the old method of reading in an office. The old system of lectures which had been universally adopted in the professional schools in the United States was utterly discarded. Judge Caruthers reasoned that the science of law should be taught like any other science, — like mathematics, like chemistry. So, instead of adopting a new method, he simply resorted to old paths. He assigned a given portion of the text every day, and upon this he rigidly ex amined every student; and the student was required to apply his knowledge through the moot courts, from the time of his matri culation till his pupilage was ended. It is not strange that the plan soon became popular. The first session there were thirteen ma triculates, the second term twenty-five, the third term forty; and so the numbers in creased from year to year, until the Law School of Cumberland University numbered, in the year before the late war between the States, one hundred and eighty students. The second year of its existence (1848), it became manifest that the experiment would
