"Vigilantibus non dormientibus leges subveniunt."-OLD LAW MAXIM. LONDON: - JOHN CROCKFORD, PUBLISHER, LAW TIMES OFFICE, 29, ESSEX STREET, STRAND. 1844 PREFACE. To students, the hints of a fellow-student are always acceptable, because, travelling the same journey that he is travelling, their difficulties and his are alike—their and his hopes and prospects are, in a great measure, identical. The writer of the following pages, in soliciting the ear of students, does not think it needful, therefore, to say more than that he is and has long been a student himself. To non-students, however (by far the larger class), the author would address an earnest exhortation to listen attentively to the advice which this little work contains. He would speak to these with the solicitude of a man who warns a fellow-creature whom he sees lying listlessly on the margin of an advancing water, heedless of the waxing tide, though soon "some envious surge may in its brinish bowels swallow him." He would tell them that the habits of careless inattention which they are now contracting will, one by one, take root in their natures, will grow thickly over their whole moral constitution; and, at last, |