Grotius and Puffendorf in the office of the Attorney-General of
New York, and Edward Livingston, under Chancellor Lansing,
explored all parts of the _Corpus Juris Civilis_.[Footnote:
Hunt, "Life of Edward Livingston," 41.] John Quincy Adams a few
years later, under the instruction of Chief Justice Parsons of
Massachusetts, took up Vattel and the Institutes of
Justinian.[Footnote: Report of the American Bar Association for
1903, 675, note.] The latter, as well as Van Muyden's
_Compendiosa Tractatio_ of them, his father had studied in
his preparation for the bar thirty years before.[Footnote: "Life
and Works of John Adams," I, 46.]

The lectures of Chancellor Wythe at William and Mary, like those
of Mr. Justice Wilson in 1790 at the University of Pennsylvania
and of Chancellor Kent in 1794 at Columbia, were designed, as
were Blackstone's at Oxford, to give such information as to the
nature and principles of law as might be of service to any one
desirous of acquiring a liberal education. Such instruction
could not be considered as anything approaching a proper
preparation for entering on the practice of the legal profession.

The United States preceded England in the endeavor to provide
such a preparation by a systematic course of study pursued under
competent teachers at a seat of learning established for that
sole purpose.

The need of something of the kind was felt to be pressing after
the independence of the United States had been fully established.
An unusual number of young men of promise were turning from the
army to the bar.[Footnote: "Memoirs of James Kent," 31. In 1788,