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with this piece of imaginative biography. The author's misfortune was, that he chose a subject which is too intimately interwoven with the course of public events. A successful lawyer, such as we have here pourtrayed before us, becomes of necessity connected with the highest offices in the state. If he be described merely as a creature of fiction, his story will want vraisemblance, and will at once be thrown aside. If he be represented in connection with the realities of life, his career may excite curiosity so long as it would appear capable of being identified with that of any particular individual. But if, as happens in the present case, the hero be a combination of many features of character, taken from a variety of prototypes; and if just when we have discovered a trait of Lord Eldon, we light upon two or three dashes of Lord Lyndhurst; and after these upon a shade or two of Lord Thurlow, Lord Erskine, or Lord Gifford, it must be admitted that there is ample room for the exercise of our indulgence.

We can hardly believe that in this volume the author discloses the picture of his own life to any considerable extent. If he be a 'Lawyer,' it would seem that he has not yet at least been promoted from that branch of the profession that belongs to the attornies. Certain it is, that he makes his hero guilty of many things as a counsel, which no other man could have perpetrated with impunity. He begins his career by transacting the business of other counsel at half price; a practice which, if it ever prevailed, is, we should hope, now quite passed away. Undertaking a heavy cause, he not only attends to its progress, but he makes a journey to Italy for the purpose of collecting evidence. This any tyro would have told him, it would not become a counsel to do. Defending a man, who is on his trial for life, our Lawyer makes a most eloquent address to the jury on behalf of his client, whom he saves from execution, by virtue of a law which does not yet exist. These and many. other things, equally incongruous and improbable, might be specified as among the blemishes of this story. To some minds, those faults will appear as mountains, to others as mole-hills, not worthy of turning attention aside from the interest which, under disadvantageous circumstances, this tale awakens, or from the moral which it so strongly inculcates.

There is scarcely any profession in which the young disciple stands in more need of all the encouragement which a sanguine imagination can hold out, than that of the Advocate. His preparatory studies are severe; they require his deepest and most persevering attention. His chambers must be for him a monastery, in which he is to live secluded for years from the distractions of society. Upon his entrance into the arena, which is to yield him a series of successes or disappointments, his pretensions are scrutinized by a thousand eyes. The ordeal which he undergoes is hostile to the acquisition of that self possession, without which he cannot deserve, or obtain, the confidence of suitors; and as he must get on solely by the exhibition of

superior talents, learning and skill, he is much more likely to fail in his first efforts, than to succeed. Failure is followed by disgust, and disgust by retirement from a contest, in which fortune always has her favourites; and thus it happens that for one advocate who triumphs over the early obstacles with which his career is beset, there are hundreds who, after having been called to the Bar, attend court for a term or two, and then are heard of no more. Any work, therefore, which like the one now before us, is calculated to cheer the brow of despair, and to shed a gleam of hope upon the heart of the labouring and unrewarded student, must be admitted to be productive of good, even though it should not in all its parts bear the probe of criticism.

It was necessary, of course, to the moral of the present tale, that the hero of it should have been born in indigence and obscurity. He does not forget to tell us that at all times he was of a mild and peaceful temperament, and that his dispositions were obliging; indeed, it is wonderful how far these qualifications generally contribute to the prosperity of those, who have to make a name and a fortune by their own exertions. After picking up some little crumbs of education, such as he could be supposed to find in the petty school of a petty village, he assisted in a seed and fruit shop, at Winchester, belonging to his uncle, the only relation he had at the age of four years--a circumstance, which he the rather mentions to show that he had no friends of his own blood to assist him in his struggles through this world. His business was to sweep the shop in the morning, and to serve customers with small articles during the day. His attachment to this small description of commerce, was overturned by the first assize week, which he witnessed at Winchester. • How well,' he naturally exclaims, I remember all connected with it! The procession to meet the judges, their solemn entry, and the pomp of opening the commission, all sunk deep in my mind. I watched every person about the court; the faces of the javelin-men were eagerly gazed upon and examined: it was my greatest pleasure to meet any of the barristers strolling about the town, in which case I invariably took off my cap, and, if I received any recognition in return, I was happy for the rest of the day. In the evenings I lingered about the doors of the Black Lion, the inn at which the counsel dined together, and listened with eager attention to the merriment of their carousal!' Henceforth his nights and days were filled with dreams of ambition, which illuminated his little shop with their splendour, and soon induced him to exchange his dealings in seeds and flowers, for a situation as clerk in a country attorney's office. Here he was an attentive observer of every thing that passed; he particularly noticed the routine of the office; he fagged hard at the rate of twelve hours a-day, and acquired habits of industry which were afterwards to be of so much value in the higher duties that awaited him. The whole description of this part of his career has about it a certain air of reality.

I worked on in this way for nearly two years, gaining some knowledge, but not nearly so much as might be expected; having no one to guide me in the labyrinth of technicalities in which I was placed, and my duties being entirely confined to the mechanical part of the profession.

But even here I was not without my enjoyments. Perhaps one of my greatest, at this time, was when I was entrusted, at assize-times, with a brief to deliver to counsel, and sometimes with the fee marked upon it. I had great delight in seeing the benign and gracious air assumed by the barrister, to whom I was thus commissioned, when I unfolded the nature of my message, and I felt gratified by the condescension with which he would often talk to me about the matter.'-pp. 7, 8.

The failure of his employers drove him of necessity to the great mart of the metropolis; he had already acquired a little Latin through the kindness of a clergyman, who now furnished him with a letter of recommendation to a barrister, one of his quondam pupils. Our adventurer's proceedings on this occasion, are related with a particularity that puts us in mind of Gil Blas.

'I was just entering my seventeeth year when I arrived in London. I thought it proper to remain at the inn where the stage coach stopped (which was one of the long row of coach-inns in Holborn), until I had found Mr. St. Leger, the gentleman to whom I had been recommended by Mr. Wadsworth.

He lived in the New-square of Lincoln's-inn, No. 10, and was a chancery barrister and conveyancer, so that I had no difficulty in finding him out however, I remained half an hour walking round the square, before I could summon up courage enough to mount to the second floor, where his chambers were situated. At last, however, I found sufficient resolution, and, on knocking at the door, I was told that Mr. St. Leger was not at home, but was expected every minute. I stationed myself therefore within sight of the entrance, with the intention of waiting his arrival, and remained there in great anxiety for about an hour and a half. At last a gentleman drove up in a gig, entered No. 10, and proceeded to the chambers of Mr. St. Leger. I could hardly fancy that this was the barrister, so gay was his dress and equipage: however, I thought it better to enquire, and I was admitted. My doubts were groundless, as it was indeed the gentleman I wanted. I sent in my letter, and in about half an hour afterwards was told to come in.

'I was received with no very great kindness by Mr. St. Leger. He recollected "old Wadsworth," as he called him, very well. He said he did happen to want a clerk himself, and begged me to remember he was dismissing his present one for impertinence. He supposed I could write, "and all that," but he asked me more particularly as to my talents in getting up suppers, or any little thing of that sort which he might choose to have in chambers.

I professed my willingness to endeavour to please him; and after a little more hectoring, he informed me he would take me on trial, and that I might come to him on the morrow.

'Mr. St. Leger was by no means an uncommon character in the profession. He was a well-dispositioned young man, and of rather superior talents; but he had none of the patient assiduity which the profession of

the law demands, and most of all that branch of the profession to which he had attached himself. His thoughts were wholly occupied by the gaieties and pleasures of high life; his great wish was to make a figure at the west end; to be the best-dressed man, and to drive the best gig and the best horse about town. He had rather an exaggerated notion of his own abilities, from having taken a high degree at Oxford, where perhaps he really had worked: he was well connected both with the rich and the great, and also with the solicitors, so that he had a good deal of business. If he had only paid reasonable attention, he must have got on; but he was rarely at chambers till twelve or one o'clock in the day, and then two or three parties in the evening, and all the numerous engagements that the variety of the town and his numerous friends put at his command, completely unfitted him for the demands which his profession made on him. Now and then he would come down early, and work hard all day and night, but this was of very little service; there was no steady or regular attention, and he was sure to relapse again into his former carelessness in three or four days.

This was my master. The dismissal of the former clerk was completed, and I was regularly installed. Thus good fortune attended me as she had hitherto done; but I feel pleasure in thinking it was in some measure owing to myself. I was removed from a state of doubt to one of great comfort; for I was very well paid, and had a place of some importance; and my obtaining it so easily was a strong proof of the disposition of Mr. St. Leger.'—pp. 10—13.

Here the young clerk found himself in a capital library, and met with every facility for studying the great profession of the law-a pursuit for which, he says, he had always an unspeakable love and affection. The technicalities in which he had been hitherto employed, and which he did not understand, now became intelligible to him by the aid of the books with which he was surrounded. He shone already in conveyancing, and on one occasion had the good fortune to correct an opinion which had been hastily written by his gay master. In this situation, he went pleasantly on for two years, when Mr. St. Leger was appointed an Indian judge, and our adventurer was once more thrown on the kindness of fortune. His plan was to article himself to an attorney, when an unexpected legacy of some fifteen hundred pounds, enabled him to sing a higher strain, and straight he became a student of Lincoln's Inn. This step was not taken without due consideration. The arguments, pro and con, were well stated by his quondam tutor.

'I met the kindest and most valuable treatment from Mr. Wadsworth. Although a man of good family himself, he never discouraged me on ac count. of my mean birth and parentage: he said he highly approved of what he considered a laudable ambition; he rejoiced in my good fortune, which, he said, was mainly owing to my own good conduct: he applauded. the spirit which made me seek to profit to the utmost by it, and rise above that state in which I had originally been placed; and he pointed out to me the long roll of illustrious men who, in this country, had gained all I could hope for by their own unassisted exertions. At the same time he represented to me the dangers and difficulties which would necessarily at

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tend my path he kindly suggested how utterly friendless I was, and how necessary connexions were in the profession of my choice; he reminded me of the men with whom I should have to contend-men of great talents, of unwearied industry, and of fortune and figure in the country; he said, that although the prizes were great, yet they were attained with infinite difficulty: he urged upon me the necessary expense that I must incur, first, in preparing myself for the bar, and then in keeping up the appearance of respectability that the station required. "I am now in the church," he said, "but I first sounded the depths and shallows of the law, and I abandoned it in despair. To obtain distinguished success at the bar, a man must possess great and varied qualifications. He must not only be able in his closet to grapple with and conquer the most abstruse, fatiguing, and inexhaustible of studies, but he must also be thoroughly acquainted with the subtle mysteries of human nature: he must be able to penetrate with equal facility into the researches of the dead, and the motives and actions of the living: he must be able to wield at his pleasure all the splendours of rhetoric and eloquence, and to descend in a moment into minute and trifling technicalities; he must be able to adapt his feelings, language, and ideas to the highest or the lowest level; he must be endowed by nature with a frame and constitution capable of enduring fatigue and anxiety, the most constant and enthralling; he must not only have commanding talents, but both energy to rouse and keep them constantly alive, and judgment and discretion to direct them. Having all these qualities, he must be full of honourable feeling, and be blest by good fortune, or he will never succeed at the bar." Having said this, Mr. Wadsworth assured me that he had great confidence in my own judgment, advised me to think on all he had said, and whichever path I should conclude to follow, all the assistance that he could give should be fully at my command.'-pp. 24—26.

Having made up his mind upon the subject, our student, with more of a disposition towards liberal accomplishments than characterizes most of our legal aspirants, devoted a year to general literature, and then placed himself under the tutelage of a Chancery Barrister, who upon his first introduction, placed before him ten manuscript volumes of "Equity Precedents," which he would have to copy for his peculiar edification and delight. In the same chambers were several other pupils, who thought infinitely more of balls and flirtations, than of bills in Chancery. Our hero was prone to very different habits, and whether he be a hero of fiction, or of reality, he could not in his then state of initiation, have adopted a better rule than the following one :

I always came early to chambers, before any of my fellow pupils arrived, and stayed after they had gone; and by this attention, I not only saw all the business that passed through the chambers, but avoided the interruption which the different pursuits of my companions occasioned.' -p. 32.

Having fagged for the due number of years, and descended from the attics to the second floor in Fig-tree Court; having moreover hired a boy to open the door and to attend chambers, when he was away, our student for a while sought practice under the Bar. In the

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