“I should,” said Coke, “feel that I ought to be put out of my profession if I could not answer a question in the common law without referring to the books.  I should feel that I ought to be put out of my profession if I would answer a question in the statute law without referring to the statute.”

Do not confine yourself to law-books. A man who does so is like the farmer who persists in planting the same soil with the same crop; exhaustion, barrenness, and unprofitableness are the results in each case.  Read generously, widely.  It is impossible for a man to be a great lawyer, so far as the learning of his profession is concerned, who has not saturated himself with the Bible.  He may be a great practitioner, but not a great lawyer.  It illuminates all our law—­is the source of much of it.  There is no more curious and fascinating study than a comparison of the ordinances of the Hebrews with what we think our modern statutes.

Read deeply in science.  Read widely the great novelists.  They are scientists of human nature, and you are dealing with human nature in your profession.  Read profoundly in history.  A comprehensive knowledge of history is absolutely indispensable to an understanding of our Constitution.  The Federalist, the constitutional debates, and all the discussions that preceded and accompanied the adoption of our organic law are bewilderingly full of historical references.  If you were to study every decision on constitutional questions made by every court in this country, you could not understand the Constitution.

You must go back to the roots of it.  Trace out the growth of our institutions in Holland.  Work out the modifications by these upon institutions adopted from England.  Follow the indigenous development of both of these from the old Crown Charters, and finally up to the Constitution itself.

Then take Bancroft’s “History of the United States”; then that great monument of intellectual achievement in the realm of historical criticism, Von Holtz’s “Constitutional History of the United States.”  Books like Douglass Campbell’s remarkable production, Fisher’s convincing yet novel essay, and other like serious and original works, too numerous to properly mention here, are helpful.

Nothing is more disgusting to an informed court than to hear a surface argument on constitutional law by an advocate who thinks he has mastered that tremendous subject by studying all the decisions upon any given point.

You will say this is a heavy task I am assigning you.  It is, indeed.  But have you not chosen the profession of the law?  And, if so, do you dare to be less than a lawyer?  How dare you not shoulder your glorious burden with patience, fortitude, and determination?  Do not be as if you were to enlist as a soldier, and end as a camp-follower.