Few events in history can be mentioned which have conduced more to the welfare of Europe than this discovery.  The codes, the capitularies, the formularies, and the customs, by which, till that time, the feudal nations had been governed, fell very short of affording them the legal provisions, which society, in the improved state of civilization, to which it was then advancing, evidently required.  Unexpectedly, a system of law presented itself, which seemed to contain every thing that the most enlightened men of those times could have desired.  The wisdom and justice of the system of law expressed in the Pandects seem to have been universally felt.  The study of it was immediately pursued with ardour.  It was introduced into several universities; exercises were performed, lectures read, and degrees conferred in that, as in other branches of science; and most of the nations of the continent adopted it, if not as the basis, at least as an important portion of their civil jurisprudence.  A regular succession of civil lawyers followed.  At first, they rather incumbered the text with their subtleties, than illustrated it by learning and discrimination. Andrew Alciat was the first who united the study of polite learning with the study of the civil law:  he was founder of a school called the Cujacian, from Cujas, the glory of civilians.  Of him, it may be truly said, that he found the civil law in wood and left it in marble.

This school has subsisted until our time:  it has never been without writers of the greatest taste, judgment and erudition; the names of Cujacius, Augustinus, the Gothofredi, Heineccius, Voetius, Vinnius, Gravina and Pothier, are as dear to the scholar as they are to the lawyer; an Englishman however must reflect with pleasure, that the Commentaries of his countryman, Sir William Blackstone, will not suffer in a comparison with any foreign work of jurisprudence.  So far as the researches of the present writer extend, the only one that can be put into competition with them, is the Jus Canonicum of Van-Espen.

[Sidenote:  CHAP.  II. 1597-1610]

The judicial process of the nations on the continent differed considerably from that of England.  Trial by jury, and separate courts of equity, were unknown to them.  Some causes were heard and decided by all the magistrates of the courts; others were referred to one or more of their number.  The king’s advocate, or the advocate of the state, as he was termed in a republic, held a situation between the judges and the suitors:  his province was to sum the facts and arguments of the cause, and to suggest his opinions upon them to the judges.—­We trust our readers will excuse this summary view of foreign jurisprudence.