The Inns to-day, aside from their exclusive right of call to the bar, and the lectures they offer, do little in the way of legal training. They afford agreeable places for their mem bers to dine, and historic chambers for their quarters. They are pleasant social centers, resembling somewhat the Bar Association in New York. There are tennis courts in the closes, flower shows in the gardens, and good music in the Temple Church. There is even a Rifle Corps of the Inns of Court, that George III., on hearing it was composed en tirely of lawyers, named the "Devil's Own, but I fancy the legal atmosphere of the times of Lord Coke does not hover so thick over the old Chambers and Halls. With the moots have passed away the formal legal dis cussions that occupied the dinner hour. The English barrister of to-day may get the rudi ments of his law from the lectures of his university or he may read or tutor in private if he chooses. He has not the benefit of the old exercises where the juniors and the ancients of the bar contended before him for their and his instruction. A descendant of one of the most famous of English judges, who recently visited Cambridge, is reported
to have said that there was little regular schooling to-day in the law in England. Dicey's article in the Harvard Law Review seems to show the same opinion. There is, however, an increasing interest in the matter, and since the Report of the Parliamentary Commission in 1854, many plans have been suggested to make the training of the Inns of Court more effective. It seems likely that in the near future there will be a more exact ing and definite mode of study carried out under the auspices of the Council of Legal Education. In the constitution of a more thorough scheme of legal education there is much in the old system worthy of imitation. The Inns of Court have been for centuries identified with the growth of the common law. Once they were esteemed the most re nowned legal university in the world. It is to be hoped that they will resume their old standing; that the old spirit of eager, care ful, interested study will once more pervade the ancient Halls and Chambers of what rare Ben Jonson called "the noblest nurser ies of humanity and liberty, the Inns of Court."
