John Barbee Minor. ginia, to succeed the Honorable H. St. George Tucker, former President of the Vir ginia Court of Appeals. For the first few years of his professorship, he had entire charge of the Law School. It was then di vided, he becoming Professor of Common and Statute Law. Throughout the troublous years of 1861 to 1865 he again alone main tained the Law School of the University, against many difficulties. In 1866, he was again relieved from double duty, by the ap pointment of an additional professor. Since that time the school has steadily grown having now a faculty of four apart from the chair of Medical Jurisprudence, the max imum number of students being one hun dred and fifty-one. In the vacation of 1870 Mr. Minor established a summer law-school, which he continued until his death. He be gan with a school of twenty, which steadily increased, attaining a maximum of one hundred and twenty-one. It will thus be seen that for the last twenty-five years of Mr. Minor's life, he allowed himself a vaca tion from teaching, of only one month a year, and during this time, he was constantly at work upon his great book. He might • well say, as he frequently did, that he lived by work. The degree of LL.D. was con ferred upon him by the Universities of Wash ington and Lee and Columbia. He always preferred, however, to be called simply " Mr. Minor," disliking even the designation of professor, which, he very truly said, has be come the property of the bootblacks, tonsorial artists, patent medicine quacks, and dancing masters, to the exclusion of its true proprietors. In praise of Mr. Minor as a teacher, it would be hard to say too much, and indeed no student of his will admit that it is pos sible. We do not allow that he has a superior, and since Kent, but one equal — Professor Dwight of Columbia, for whom Mr. Minor always had a sincere admiration. The most salient feature of Mr. Minor's teaching was his analytical method. Follow
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ing the analysis of Blackstone, founded on Hale, he carried it to an extent never dreamed of by either. The advantages of this system of instruction can only be com prehended by those who benefited by it, and I will have more to say of it when I come to speak of Mr. Minor's book, "The Institutes." As a lecturer Mr. Minor was unsurpassed. His manner was entirely con versational — rarely raising his voice. His habit was to question the members of his class on the subject of his lectures, requir ing from them the most concise replies, — usually no more than "Yes" or "No.' Indeed it was not well to be too fluent, as he had no patience with a parrot-like repetition of the text-book. Upon these replies he built up his lectures, amplifying, explaining and illustrating in his inimitable manner. Perhaps the best proof of his merit as a lecturer is, that no student of his ever re turned to the University without going to hear " old John B." lecture, a compliment seldom paid to professors, I think. Mr. Minor's influence with his students was very great. His personality was such that it could not fail to impress strongly any who knew him. This influence must have been indirectly of great service to his coun try, as he had numbered many public men among his students. Indeed, at the present time, at least two cabinet ministers, one Justice of the United States Supreme Court, both Senators from Virginia, together with many other senators, representatives and state and federal judges are counted among his graduates. For the first thirty years of his work as a teacher, Mr. Minor was collecting material for his work on Common and Statute Law. For several years previous to 1873, synopti cal notes of his lectures were lithographed for the benefit of his classes. In that year he published the first edition of the first and second volumes of his work under the style of "Minor's Institutes of Common and Statute Law." Their fourth edition ap
