that I had a very bad ear, and was advised to give it up. Yet, I was passionately fond of music; it has always had a powerful effect on my feelings. It soothes the mind, and tames the ferocious heart. At church, the music has often reconciled me to a dull sermon, in which bad reasoning and bad language were rendered almost torturing, by bad voice and bad delivery.

CHAPTER IX.

LEGAL STUDIES-FIRST

COURT HELD IN A NEW COUNTY.

DURING the latter part of my apprenticeship in the office, I attended the court, kept the minutes, swore the juries and witnesses, and listened to the speeches of lawyers and the charges of the judge, by means of which I picked up some law, in the way a child acquires its vernacular tongue. The bar was a very able one, and the lawyers were in the habit of handling every subject in the most elaborate manner.

It was now determined that I should begin a course of regular legal study, being in my eighteenth year. I had gone through a great deal of literary and miscellaneous reading, had some knowledge of history, and was well versed in the English classics, but had not yet read any law book. Mr William Ayres, who had been a student of my father, was appointed prothonotary of a new county called Butler, and, as he did not intend to give up his practice in other courts, wanted some person to attend to the duties of his office. I was employed by him, and was to read law, excepting when my time would be

required by the business, which would not

often be the case.

It was thought by my father that the solitude of Butler would be more favourable to application than the society of Pittsburgh.

On my arrival at Butler there were a few log houses just raised, but not sufficiently completed to be occupied. It was not long before there were two taverns, a store and a blacksmith's shop; it was then a town. The country around was a perfect wilderness, with the exception of a few scattered settlements, as far removed from each other as the kraals in the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope. I took with me a good supply of books, together with the library of Mr Ayres, and immediately tasked myself with Blackstone's Commentaries. I had also some books selected for lighter reading, such as Shakspeare, Ossian, the Henriade, Pope's Homer, Dacier's Horace, the Comedies of Moliere, Plutarch's Lives, the Travels of Anacharsis, and other classical productions. I was also provided with a light fusee for exercise and amusement. The business of the office requiring but little of my time, and having an unbounded liberty, with a most exquisite relish for its enjoyment, no small portion of it was passed in wild and uncertain rambles through the romantic hills and valleys of Butler. The mornings and evenings were devoted to study, but generally the day was sacred to liberty. For months, and especially during autumn, always my favourite season, when the face of nature is covered with a soft veil of pleasing

melancholy, I wandered forth, without knowing whither I was going or when I should return. It was my practice to have my gun in my hand and my book in my pocket. I should have felt at a loss without them, although I seldom used either. My favourite place of resort was Glade Run, which was more picturesque and romantic than the fertile valleys of the Conequenessing. The scenery was such as Ossian loves to describe; the rocks, the grassy glades, the steep hills crowned with oak, the blue windings of a stream.' Often have I sat for hours on the edge of a precipice, as if personating the genius of solitude. I gazed on the silent waste, giving wing to fancy, and weaving a thousand tissues of the brain. I have imagined incidents and events enough to form volumes of Arabian tales. And will any one say that this was not happiness? Let him first define exactly wherein happiness consists. I followed the impulse of nature, for I had not then read either Beattie's Minstrel, or Zimmerman on Solitude. Much of my life has been passed in the open air, and to this I ascribe, in a great measure, the health and spirits with which I have been generally blessed. Confinement has always been insupportably irksome to my feelings. The Peripatetic school for me. On one of my excursions, while reclining beneath an oak, near a descending natural meadow, musing on the fate of empires, a noble buck, with branching antlers, walked leisurely up the hill towards me. My gun lay by my side, but the majestic appearance of the beautiful creature

riveted my attention, until, raising his head, he caught my eye, lifted his white tail, wheeled about, and bounded away to the thicket.

The first court held in Butler drew the whole population to the town, some on account of business, some to make business, but the greater part from idle curiosity. They were at that time chiefly Irish, who had all the characterestics of the nation. A log cabin just raised and covered, but without window sash, or doors, or daubing, was prepared for the hall of justice. A carpenter's bench with three chairs upon it was the judgment seat. The bar of Pittsburgh attended, and the presiding judge, a stiff, formal, and pedantic old bachelor, took his seat, supported by the two associate judges, who were common farmers, one of whom was blind of an eye. The hall was barely sufficient to contain the bench, bar, jurors and constables. But few of the spectators could be accommodated on the lower floor, the only one yet laid; many therefore clambered up the walls, and placing their hands and feet in the open interstices between the logs, hung there, suspended like enormous Madagascar bats.

Some had taken possession of the joists, and big John M'Junkin (who until now had ruled at all public gatherings) had placed a foot on one joist, and a foot on another, directly over the heads of their honours, standing like the Colossus of Rhodes. The judge's sense of propriety was shocked at this exhibition. The sheriff, John M'Candless, was called, and ordered to clear the walls and joists. He went

I