vice except in case of invasion. He volunteered for active service in the South African war, and was directed to proceed to Chichester Barracks for final approval. He presented himself accordingly and was accepted and attested. He, with others, according to instructions, assembled at the same barracks, and the final order for embarkation was shortly afterwards received. Two days before sailing for South Africa he made the will in question. He died of wounds received in battle at Retief's Nek. The Court held that the testator was "in actual military service" within the meaning of sec. 11 of the Wills Act, and that the will was therefore privileged.'

The Law Times of August 18th has a long article on Public Rights over the Seashore, concluding as follows:

In short the rights of the public on the foreshore seem to be of a very limited character indeed. But the public may at any rate console themselves with this, that seldom is it worth the while of a private owner-who usually is the lord of the manor or some large landowner-to raise any objection to the use of the public of the foreshore so long as that user is reasonable. The truth is that the foreshore as an item of property is not a valuable possession. If some of the fruits of its ownership are of value, these fruits can usually be taken by the owner without preventing the public from using the foreshore for other purposes, Then there is always this further consideration, that very often the question of title is a doubtful one, and the establishment of title against some obscure member of the public is not an enterprise that any discreet landowner will readily undertake.'

The Law Times for September 15th contains the following interesting paragraph respecting the longevity of judges:

'The attainment by Lord Halsbury on the 3rd inst. of his ninety-fourth birthday, in full possession of his mental and physical faculties, naturally recalls some instances of longevity in the cases of eminent members of the Judiciary. Vice-Chancellor Bacon was born in 1798, died in 1895, and was on the Bench till 1886. The Right Hon. Thomas Lefroy, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, was born in 1776, discharged his judicial duties till he had entered on his ninety-first year in 1866, and lived till 1869. Lord Chancellor Plunkett lived till his eighty-ninth year, Lord St. Leonards was ninety-four, Lord Lyndhurst ninety-one, and Lord Brougham eightynine at the time of death. Lord Campbell broke the record in being appointed Lord Chancellor for the first time in 1859, when past eighty; and in Ireland the Right Hon. Francis Blackburne, who had been successively Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Lord Chancellor, and Lord Justice of Appeal, was in 1866 reappointed to the Lord Chancellorship of Ireland in his eighty-sixth year.'

The Law Journal (English) for September 8th says:

'A delightful Times article on the Temple as an abode of silence, "A London Sanctuary," recalls to our minds some of the earlier less peaceful associations of the place, of whose "bricky towres" Spenser wrote:

'Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templar Knights to byde,

Till they decayed thro' pride.'

'Here King John, seeking refuge from his barons, passed the night before he signed the Great Charter at Runnymede; here Wat Tyler and his men worked their vicious will on "the Hutches of the apprentices of the law," pulling down their houses and lodgings and destroying their books and records; here brawls among the apprentices themselves grew to the factions of the Red Rose and the White, plucked in the Temple Garden. But the literary associations predominate, and it is true that the atmosphere of the place is one of peace and restfulness. Geoffrey Chaucer himself dwelt for a while in these Courts-being according to a fond tradition, a student of the Inner Temple-and in his Prologue he tells us:

'A manciple there was of a Temple

Of Masters had he more than thrice ten
That were of law expert and curious.'

In these "classic green recesses" Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was produced, Oliver Goldsmith worked and died, Fielding and Cowper held their chambers, Dr. Johnson took his daily walks, and gentle Elia spent his youthful days. It was the author of the "Deserted Village" who wrote of the "plan of policy" of the rooks establishing here in the very midst of the city "a kind of legal constitution by which all intruders are excluded from coming to live among them, and none suffered to build, but acknowledged natives of the place. Alas! in our days the same policy has been turned against the gentle rooks themselves; so that they have been turned out of the Temple as "intruders." But still it is true, as the writer in the Times enthusiastically declares, that: "Here is an oasis in the world desert of war and tumult. Here may one approach the peace that passeth understanding. And strange men stray hither now to keep a belated Sabbath of the soul.'

The Law Journal (English) of September 15th quotes words which Lord Russell of Killowen took occasion to use in an action brought against an omnibus company some seventeen years ago:

'It is perfectly consistent with the highest honour to take up a speculative action in this sense, viz., that if a solicitor hears of

an injury to a client and honestly takes pains to inform himself whether there is a bona fide cause of action, it is consistent with the honour of the profession that the solicitor should take up the action. It would be an evil thing if there were no solicitor to take up such cases, because there is in this country no machinery by which the wrongs of the humbler classes can be vindicated.'

As it goes on to point out since these words were employed by Lord Russell an official scheme of legal assistance has been established in England.

The Solicitors' Journal and Weekly Reporter for August 4th contains a well written article on The Normal Perils of the Highway, which is continued in the issues for August 11th and 18th. It opens with the arresting words:

'One of the chief excellences of an unwritten law is that when the progress of discovery or civilization demands, or even the genius of the time or novel circumstances require, it is sufficiently plastic and malleable to meet the occasion. In a certain sense it is neither crystallized nor frozen. Accordingly in our various series of reports there are reflections of the actual conditions and sentiments, and hints of the customs and fashions prevalent at various periods in English life. And to those who have the leisure and a little imagination it is extremely interesting to observe and follow out the harvest to be reaped.'

It then deals with the more interesting of the reported decisions on its subject, and it is noticeable that the reason of the immunity of landed proprietors in respect to injury resulting from their domestic animals straying on the highway assigned by the writer really has no application to conditions in Ontario:

'It is most probable that most public ways were unfenced when first dedicated, and that the majority of the landowners subsequently found it advisable, when traffic increased and strangers multiplied, to erect fences to prevent their crops from being spoiled, the public, who had been granted or had acquired an inch, taking the proverbial ell. It could hardly be thought, or justly held, that, by such preventive measures on the part of some landowners, a further dedication was universally made or implied enlarging the public rights relative to the now fenced highways against those landowners; a fortiori, the public rights against landlords is general in respect of all and every public way. In short we apprehend that when the public originally acquired the right to pass and repass along a way, pausing only for such time as is reasonable

and usual when a person is using a highway as such, such acquisition was naturally subject to all the normal dangers of user; while on the other hand, the landowners were entitled, subject to this limited right, to do what they willed with their own." . . The introduction of novel, or even of faster traffic can, as respects the landowner, neither increase nor diminish that right, although such introduction necessarily increases the risks of the passers-by. . . . In short one may not look a gift horse in the mouth, and an occasional mishap in the use of the King's highway is the very insignifi. cant price paid for an invaluable, if limited, right.'

The same issue contains the first portion of an article on the Operation of a Disclaimer, by Mr. Charles Sweet, by disclaimer" being meant a refusal by the grantee to accept the estate or interest granted to him.

The issue of the Solicitors' Journal and Weekly Reporter for August 11th contains a full and most interesting account of a conference of the legal profession in England, held at the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on July 23rd last, to discuss the possibility of a durable settlement by means of a League of Nations. Speeches were made by Lords Parmoor and Buckmaster, Sir Walter Phillimore, Sir Frederick Pollock, and others. The general consensus of opinion was that what was needed to adjudicate upon disputes between nations was a judicial tribunal, analogous to the Supreme Court of the United States, and not arbitration; and that there must be a measure of disarmament. Space permits us to do little more than refer our readers to this interesting report. Many are the extracts we would like to give, but shall content ourselves with one from Sir Frederick Pollock's speech:

"Did any seriously-minded man who knew the history of the last twenty years expect that the present German Government or any German Government resembling it, would be a party in good faith, or, he might say, a party at all, to any possible effectual league of peace? What was the record of the German Government? It had persistently thwarted and obstructed, from the first Hague Conference onwards, every attempt to establish anything like a really international Europe. It had thwarted, as far as it dared, any attempt to restrict the laws of war in the direction of humanity. Baron Marshall von Bieberstein, the German representative at the

Hague Conference, put his foot down on the proposal to stop the indiscriminate scattering of mines. No, he said, it was incompatible with the rights of a great power and incompatible with selfdefence; but, of course, Germany always would observe the law of humanity in any future war, and it was an insult to Germany to suppose it would not. That was at the Hague Conference of 1907. Well, that was the sort of government you had to deal with. So long as the present system of German government continued there was no reasonable expectation that Germany would be a party to any effectual system of setting up justice between the nations; and for his own part, if such a government as there was now came forward proposing to join a League of Nations, and said it was willing to accept all the rules, he should not believe a word of it."

We learn from the same Journal, in its issue of August 25th, that the executory devise which was the subject of decision in the great case of Cadell v. Palmer (1833), 1 Cl. & F. 372,-whereby an estate was limited which was not to vest until after the expiration of twenty years from the death of the survivor of twentyeight persons then living-vested on the 15th of August last, that is, ninety-nine years and four months from the death of the testator.

The Law Notes (Northport, N.Y.) for September - contains a wise and witty article by Mr. Otto Erickson, entitled Human Nature and the Law, dwelling on the importance to the lawyer of a knowledge of human nature. Well worth while for aspiring limbs of the law to ponder over the following:

'Success in advocacy depends of course upon many things, but the lawyer who understands the operation of the human mind, who knows how to touch the sensibilities, how to read the character of others and with that knowledge how to influence them, has the battle more than half won. Consider the average jury, twelve men fundamentally alike, yet how illimitable the variety of intellect and feeling that must be influenced-ignorance, superstition, education, bigotry, cupidity, liberality, narrow-mindedness, class hatred, social and economical prejudices, all perhaps cunningly dissimulated. It is the lawyer's province to reach everyone of them and each one in a different way. If he cannot readily discern these varying qualities of human nature, one fatal expression, one false move, may involve his cause in disaster. On the other hand if he understands men, know how to deal with them, face to face, and heart to heart, he may mould them as the potter does his clay.'