'It is likewise to be observed, that this society hath a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong, so that it will take thirty years to decide whether the field, left me by my ancestors for six generations, belong to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off.'

Having offered these general observations for your consideration, I shall now conclude that through the death or defalcation of a previous agent, or in consequence of sudden illness in a country gentleman, or through the benevolent selection on the part of some wellfortuned widow, you are called upon to exercise those great powers and functions with which you are endued; and that estates and families are about to become dependent upon your legal husbandry. You are sent for to a languishing or an agitated bedside,-and now, my dear Gabriel, throw your whole professional soul into a passage which ought to be printed in letters of gold in the Law List, and in your Lett's Diary,

'There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,
Neglected, all the voyage of men's lives

Is bound up in shallows and in miseries!'

Your fortune is at the flood in the dying man's room. And now are you called to act with firmness, oneness, and discretion. The will is to be made! The property ascertained, it is for you to suggest the mode of its appropriation; for I never yet saw the man who was competent to undertake himself this difficult part of the task.

You will, Gabriel, have been an ill manager if you have not in some cases wormed yourself into the stewardship, or accomplished the possession of leases and title-deeds, and in fact been the active manager or agent of the testator some time before he dies. Get a farm into your own tenancy as soon as may be, and never mind the rent being a little large at the outset. You will see anon the value of this course of conduct. Confirm firstly in the will the appointment of yourself as steward. Allow all reasonable travelling expenses; costs as between client and solicitor, and give yourself a life-interest in the farm at a nominal rent. Make yourself trustee and executor, with enunciating powers to all around you. You are to pay the annuity to the widow during her widowhood (according to your approval of her conduct). You are to be guardian to the son or daughter, with a prohibitory power over marrying. You are to have a discretionary right to cut timber; sell, buy, or exchange lands; keep, hire, or discharge servants; and to repair buildings, and let farms or houses. You will take care that a large surplus is to be at your disposal,-either to be invested or divided (as you please), or expended in improvements, or consumed in costs; for on this surplus the great command over an excited family is to depend. Let a one of them' talk of chancery, and you cut off the supplies. You act as a conscientious trustee against the rebellious, to protect the submissive; and can have apparently no personal motives to act otherwise than for the benefit of the estate. Invest yourself with liberty to raise monies by way of mortgage, and to pay them off again; because you can always get up an arrearage

of rents, and mortgages and discharges are, as Marall (a fine old model for you, by the way,) says very costly.' You will act wisely to oppose all this armour, in which you are arrayed against the family, with apparent shields against yourself. Leave yourself a mourning ring, or a few guineas, and appoint an arbitrator from some of the old barristers in London, or at a great distance, who will of course, for a proper fee, pass your accounts in ignorance and generosity. Lastly, get some other attorney to be a witness to the will, and pay him for his trouble; it would be hard indeed if such a service should be denied, and it does wonders as to your own open conduct.

'A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind.'

I believe I have given you such directions as to the framing of the will as cannot fail to place you in gigantic power; and now presuming the testator to have afforded you, by a timely retirement from life, a fair opportunity of exercising your manifold rights, I will proceed to give you a few hints as to your conduct as executor and trustee. < The will-where Death has set his seal, Nor Age can chill, nor rival steal, Nor Falsehood disavow!'

Remember, my dear Gabriel, you must never write a letter, converse with tenant, legatee, or annuitant, but you must lug in the words, consistently with your duty as trustee!''or, ready as yourself individually to,' &c.; but as a conscientious trustee,' &c.; or, 'confidence reposed in you by testator,' or 'unceasing regard and respect for the wishes of the deceased;' or 'consideration for the interests of those intrusted,' &c.; or 'due regard for your own character as executor;' or 'unflinching observance of your actions as trustee.' You will soon drop into a proper style of phraseology, and adapt your language to the decorum of your situation, and the necessities arising out of your actions.

and it is your own Commence the tyrant

The will proved, you commence your reign error if you are deposed or involved in war. at once. All the members of the family should act the flies to your Domitian. Throw off all the previous fawning and servility, and plunge into the full tide of power. Ask for the money in the house; seize all maps, deeds, account-books, banker's book, inventories, &c., and commence the subduing of the widow by severities of manner, and insinuations against conduct and character. Express disgust at your own labour and responsibilities to come, and complain of your large claims unsettled. Use a little new language, and threaten chancery for your own protection.

It were to be wished that, to the utter exclusion of all relations and friends, you could have left all to yourself; but this is a dangerous and impolitic course, and leads to litigation against yourself. Give small annuities to sons or nephews,-bestow trifling legacies on old bosom-friends,-nay, even permit a residue of a well-thinned personalty to descend to the widow or daughter. These little desertions of self tell importantly with the world, and in the Court of Chancery. You can also then make the suspension or death of the annuity, or benefit, a penalty imposed on any questioning of the will. You may

even allow an estate to go to the legal heirs of a son, or grandson, or nephew, if you accompany the same with a restriction from mar. riage without your own consent in writing. Should the residue be left to the widow, you, as receiver, will be able to render it what you please; and be sure to make it out with a statement of shillings, pence, and halfpence,--(never mind how small the pounds,)-a halfpenny is invaluable, because it will savour of the reality. Be sure not to pay over the trifling amount, which you will be certain to find the residue to consist of, without taking a release. It is a virtuous act in you to save the estate as much as possible; and you will do yourself no ill turn in fortifying against all risk except an appeal to equity. Do not forget that you will be sure to find long bills of costs unsettled at the time of the testator's death, which must be defrayed out of the residue; and if you charge and retain as you ought to do, there never can be a balance of more than a few pounds left for the residuary legatee. You will remember, Gabriel, that I have already recommended you to give yourself the power of buying, selling, or exchanging lands; and, with reference to rendering this power of essential value, you must be very careful in purchasing a rood or two of land in the immediate neighbourhood of that belonging to the testator's estate, in order that you may confound boundaries, and improve your own property. You may be the intermediate purchaser of land with a bad or questionable title, and have clearly a right (see Will) to sell it for the benefit of the cestuique trust, and add to the value of your own freehold. Part with a good barren upland, or rude hill-plantation, explaining to the family that the beauty of the estate is increased. The inheritors of land have an eye to the picturesque; whilst you will remember Fielding's Peter Pounce: A fig for prospects,' answered Pounce; 'one acre here is worth ten there; and, for my own part, I have no delight in the prospect of any land but my own.' Continual sales and exchanges, Gabriel, are not effected without deeds; and I think I need not hint to you how much, owing to the difficulty of the titles, you will gain in the abstract.

It is of vital importance that you should at the commencement of your trusteeship disclaim wealth in the strict discharge of your duties.

*No one will dispute the plain truths with which the following passage, from the pen of Anstey, opens and concludes; but the impossibility which the poet presses into his service as an illustration has recently given up the ghost!-and Old Neptune, under the professional care of Dr. Paisley, has had an emetic or two, cylindri cally administered to him, which has made him vomit up the Royal George,' with a vengeance. This is the most extensive case of sea-sickness on record. It will, however, take a wilderness of Paisleys to administer an effective emetic to a lawyer's purse!

Not one of all the trade that I know
E'er fails to take the ready rhino,
Which haply if his purse receive,
No human art can e'er retrieve;
Sooner the daring wights who go
Down to the watery world below
Shall force Old Neptune to disgorge
And vomit up the Royal George,
Than he who hath a bargain made,
And legally his cash conveyed,
Shall e'er his pocket reimburse
By diving in a lawyer's purse.'

You have had no opportunities of attending to your own interests. To recur again to Peter Pounce, Fielding hath so well described the conduct as well as the language you should adopt, that I cannot do better than press him into my service.

"I fancy, Mr. Adams, you are one of those who imagine I am a lump of money; for there are many who, I fancy, believe that not only my pockets, but my whole clothes, are lined with bank-bills. But I assure you, you are all mistaken; I am not the man the world esteems me. If I can hold my head above water, it is all I can. I have injured myself by purchasing. I have been too liberal of my money. Indeed, I fear my heir will find my affairs in a worse situation than they are reputed to be. Ah! he will have reason to wish I had loved money more, and land less. Pray, my good neighbour, where should I have that quantity of riches the world is so liberal to bestow on me? Where could I possibly, without I had stole it, acquire such a treasure?" "Why, truly," says Adams, "I have been always of your opinion. I have wondered as well as yourself with what confidence they could report such things of you, which have to me appeared as mere impossibilities; for you know, sir, and I have often heard you say it, that your wealth is of your own acquisition. And can it be credible that in your short time you should have amassed such a heap of treasure as these people will have you worth? Indeed, had you inherited an estate like Sir Thomas Booby, which had descended in your family for many generations, they might have had a colour for their assertions." "Why, what do they say I am worth?" cries Peter, with a malicious sneer.-" Sir," answered Adams, "I have heard some aver you are not worth less than twenty thousand pounds!"'-FIELDING. Never allow a farmer to have an interest in the land he cultivates beyond that of a tenant at will; for unless he is dependent upon your bounty, he is a dangerous sort of vermin on the land he rents. You must be able to keep the terror of dismissal over him, or he will require the repairs charged in your accounts to be really done; and will cavil at the exchanges of fields, and the cheese-parings of land, which you will see fit to make; and will think rather of sound farming than submissive vassalage. On no account omit the variation of fences: you thus may defeat surveys and maps as to the trust estate, and furnish ground for maps of your own. If there be rivers and mountain streams careering about the property, they are invaluable; because the damage they do to stone walls at a distance, and worthless banks, form matchless foundations for charges in the accounts, and are incessant sources of imaginary waste and damage. A good mountain stream ought to be worth a thousand a year to you. Always object to repairs that ought to be made, on account of the great expense of the repairs that are not made; and because you may, in the character of trustee, be called upon to account by the next heir. Lug in the words tenants in tail-male; because they are very confusing to inexperienced ears, and sound legal.

You must never think of trees but as timber, as I have entreated you to consider rivers and streams but as means of devastation and sources of visions of repair. Avoid rhapsody and poetry as you would steel-traps and spring-guns. This seems a foolish warning to a country attorney; but I once read of a certificated gentleman who was betrayed in an inland county; and I hold it right to caution you against even a remote danger. I remember your father read Pom

frett's Choice, and lost the drawing of Dr. Buggins's lease; but then, it must be confessed, he (your father, not Buggins) was a man of extraordinary weakness. Facts, my dear Gabriel,-facts and absolute things are the matter for a lawyer's mind,-unless he is making his own representations,-and then he may, of course, divert facts into the smooth, tortuous, and agreeable current of his own views. Of trees, however, or rather timber,-for all leaves and branches are superfluities, it is right you should take a just estimate.

Threaten to cut down ornamental timber, not as ornamental timber; and cut it down whenever it improves your own prospects, or extends a proper system of espionage. Create an auctioneer, and nourish an exciseman: you will understand why. Sell sometimes openly, and sometimes by private contract; thus inquiry may come to a check. Wood to an intelligent trustee is of incalculable importance. The felling, the peeling, the barking, the sawing, the carriage, are all unquestionably items of expense, and no one can unravel the results. You can make your own gates, perfect your own fences, and no one except yourself be the gainer.

Turn a deaf ear to all personal abuse, unless you are attacked as a professional man, that is, called 'lawyer;' for you, like poor Betty, in Mrs. Tow-wouse's inn, ought as naturally to feel the word revolting as she did the one from her mistress, 'so odious to female ears.' 'I can't bear that name,' answered Betty. If I have been wicked, I am to answer for it myself in another world; but I have done nothing that's unnatural.' If any timber should happen to be blown down by some fortuitous storm, cart it away, and confound it with timber cut down. The estate, or some one, will be benefited.

Having the power of hiring and discharging servants, you will be but the weed of a country attorney if you do not get all your own labouring work done at no cost. Indeed, but that I would not urge you to any overcharge unworthy the character of a professional trustee, I should advise you to charge something for the employment of the labourers' leisure time. Take care to have them illiterate-educated servants are fatal to the well-ordered accounts of a trustee. An alternate course with them of bullying and treating is the surest one you can adopt. Take receipts for all payments made, as they will often serve for payments not made; and mind, if possible, that your auditor never puts his initials to vouchers, because that will prevent their serving again in the musters of your accounts. I would advise you (to use a mercantile phrase) to keep your books by double entry; that is,.keep two sets of books, one of them to show receipts and payments, and quite correct, for the eye of a live client; the other unsettled, unpaid, and unclosed, ready for immediate use after his death.

Thus are you doubly arm'd,-your death and life,
Your bane and antidote are both before you.'

And before I conclude this long letter, allow me to draw your attention to the subject of game; because, trifling as it may appear to you when compared with the more important matters of which I have treated, it is rightly regarded one of the most abundant sources of business to a country attorney that an estate can produce. I never see a