Six Essays on Commons Preservation. (Low, Son, and Marston.)— 'When
Earl Spencer proposed to improve Wimbledon Common by selling part of it and enclosing the rest, a committee of the commoners and residents of Wimbledon was formed to watch over their own interests. Of this committee a Mr. Peck was a leading member, and as he was desirous of ascertaining the exact rights of Earl Spencer and of the committee, he offered prizes for the beat essays on the subject. Forty- six essays were sent in, and of these six are printed in this volume. We have only read the essay which obtained the first prize, for we have no wish to set up our authority against that of the eminent men Who acted as judges, and if we differed from them we should be forced either to impeach their judgments, or to confess that our own was faulty. Neither alternative recommended itself to us, and the task of reading ene essay was quite sufficient. The essay which has been chosen by the judges is certainly a learned legal document, full of citations of oases, old and new, and fortified by copious allusions to standard writers. Yet it is not much clearer than the works to which it alludes, it is deficient in method as well as in style, and it will hardly attract either the public or the commoners of Wimbledon. The author has in many places contented himself with copying out dicta, and putting them down one after another in what seems to him to be order, but is in truth the order of his reading. Of course he has ample justification for this method, as it has been pursued in so many text-books. But such text- books are repugnant to lawyers, and are fortunately inaccessible to the general reader. No one cares to wade through long paragraphs which have neither beginning, middle, nor end, and in which contradictory decisions are arbitrarily connected by " and " or ," but otherwise." And though it is not easy to reconcile eases, there is no need for the task being attempted by one who wishes to bring a matter clearly before the public.
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