Formerly, the professors of the complex sciences of law, medicine, and divinity, were regarded as exalted by their attainments, to an immeasurable height of superiority over the mass of mankind, because they shrouded the truths and principles of science from the vulgar eye, by a veil of unintelligible jargon and grandiloquent technicalities, entirely above the ordinary powers of comprehension. Years of laborious and incessant toil were requisite to master the hidden complexities of those venerated and "time-honored" professions; and he, who with martyr-like resolution and unwearied perseverance, devoted his time and talents to their attainment, was regarded by the "_vulgus ignobile_" with sentiments of respect and admiration, nearly approaching to the idolatrous reverence of a Hindoo, for the fabled virtues of his bloody Juggernaut. But the illusion has at last been dispelled by the refulgent light of truth, and those illustrious individuals, the Luthers of the age, who have stripped these hoary errors of the veil which concealed their enormity, may with merited exultation and triumph exclaim, "_Nous avons changé toute cela!_" The art of economising time has been simplified, and subjected to the grasp of the most obtuse intellect; so that a science which formerly required years of intense and unremitted study, united with long experience and observation, is now thoroughly understood and mastered in a fortnight! So rapid indeed has been the march of intellect, sweeping from its path obstacles heretofore deemed insurmountable, and scaling the most impregnable fortifications of philosophy, with a force no less astonishing than irresistible, that many of our most profound adepts in the "glorious science" of the law, are (_mirabile dictu!_) at once initiated into all its mysteries by a single perusal of "Blackstone's Commentaries" and the "Revised Code!" instead of toiling his way up the steep ascent of fame by consuming the midnight oil, by exploring the dark and forbidding chambers of the temple of law, dragging forth truth from the musty volumes of antiquity, and searching the origin of long established principles. Among the feudal customs of our Saxon progenitors, a man may now become "like Mansfield wise, and Old Forster just," by one month's attendance at the bar of a county court! At the expiration of that period, he can rivet an admiring audience in fixed attention, by the strains of Demosthenian eloquence, in which he asks if "the court will hear a motion on a delivery bond?" And will astound some illiterate ignoramus, by the consequential pomposity with which he prates of "contingent remainders," "executory devises," and all the labyrinthian subtleties of nisi prius! No one will then contest his right to perambulate the streets, with all the ostentatious dignity of a man "learned in the law," and to parade before the eyes of the admiring rabble, his colored bag of most formidable dimensions,--albeit, it may be filled with cheese and crackers to stay his stomach in the intervals of business.