now brushed by me as if there was infection in my touch. The seniors, some of whom had occasionally condescended to take my arm in the Hall, and treat me to prosing details of their adventures at the Temple, held themselves sullenly aloof; and if our glances encountered, petrified me with looks of established order. In whatever direction I cast my eyes, I met signs of anger or estrangement, or what was still less welcome, of pure commiseration. Such were the first fruits of my "grand and elegant speech," which had combined (O'Connell, may Heaven forgive you !) the spirit of a Washington with the genius of a Grattan." I must, however, in fairness state, that I was not utterly "left alone with my glory." The Catholics certainly crowded round me and extolled me to the skies. One eulogized my simile of the eagle; another swore that the corporation would never recover from the last hit I gave them; a third that my fortune at the bar was made. I was invited to all their dinner-parties, and as far as "lots" of white soup and Spanish flummery went, had unquestionably no cause to complain. The attorneys both in public and private were loudest in their admiration of my rare qualifications for success in my profession, but though they took every occasion, for weeks and months after, to recur to the splendour of my eloquence, it still somehow happened that not one of them sent me a guinea.

I was beginning to charge the whole body with ingratitude, when I was agreeably induced to change my opinion, at least for a while. One of the most rising among them was an old schoolfellow of mine named Shanahan. He might have been of infinite service to me, but he had never employed me, even in the most trivial matter. We were still, however, on terms of, to me, rather unpleasant familiarity; for he affected in his language and manners a certain waggish slang from which my classical sensibilities revolted. One day as I was going my usual rounds in the Hall, Shanahan, who held a bundle of briefs under his arm, came up and drew me aside towards one of the recesses. Ned, my boy," said he, for that was his customary style of addressing me, "I just want to tell you that I have a sporting record now at issue, and which I'm to bring down to for trial at the next assizes. It's an action against a magistrate and a bible-distributor into the bargain, for the seduction of a farmer's daughter. You are to be in it-I have taken care of that;—and I just want to know if you'd like to state the case, for, if you do, it can be managed." My heart palpitated with gratitude, but it would have been unprofessional to give it utterance; so I simply expressed my readiness to undertake the office. "Consider yourself, then, retained as stating counsel," said he, but without handing me any fee. "All you want is an opportunity of shewing what you can do with a jury, and never was there a finer one than this. It was just such another that first brought that lad there into notice," (pointing to one of the serjeants that rustled by us.) You shall have your instructions in full time to be prepared. Only hit the bible-boy in the way I know you can, and your name will be up on the circuit."

The next day Shanahan called me aside again. In the interval, I had composed a striking exordium and peroration, with several powerful passages of general application, to be interspersed according as the facts should turn out, through the body of the statement. "Ned,"

said the attorney to me as soon as we had reached a part of the Hall where there was no risk of being overheard, "I now want to consult you upon"-here he rather hesitated" in fact, upon a little case of my own. After a short pause he proceeded, "You know a young lady from your country, Miss Dickson ?" Harriet Dickson ?" "The very one.”—“Intimately well; she 's now in town with her cousins in Harcourt-street; I see her almost every day." She has a very pretty property too, they say, under her father's will, a lease for lives renewable for ever."- "So I have always understood." "In fact Ned," he continued, looking somewhat foolish, and in a toné half slang, half sentiment, "I am rather inclined to think-as at present advised—that she has partly my gained affections. Come, come, my boy, no laughing; upon my faith and soul I'm serious-and what's more, I have reason to think that she 'll have no objection to my telling her so; but with those devils of cousins at her elbow, there 's no getting her into a corner with one's-self for an instant; so what I want you to do for me, Ned, is this-just to throw your eye over a wide-line copy of a little notice to that effect I have been thinking of serving her with." Here he extracted from a mass of law-documents a paper endorsed "Draft letter to Miss D-," and folded up and tied with red tape like the rest. The matter corresponded with the exterior. I contrived, but not without an effort, to preserve my countenance as I perused this singular production, in which sighs, aud vows were embodied in the language of an affidavit to hold to bail. Amidst the manifold vagaries of Cupid, it was the first time I had seen him exchanging his ordinary dart for an Attorney's office-pen. When I came to the end, he asked if I thought it might be improved. I candidly answered that it would, in my opinion, admit of change and correction. Then," said he, "I shall be eternally obliged if you 'll just do the needful with it. You perceive that I have not been too explicit, for, between ourselves, I have one or two points to ascertain about the state of the property before I think it prudent to commit myself on paper. It would never do, you know, to be brought into court for a breach of promise of marriage; so you'll keep this in view, and before you begin, just cast a glance over the Statute of Frauds." Before I eould answer, he was called away to attend a motion.

The office thus flung upon me was not of the most dignified kind, but the seduction-case was too valuable to be risked; so pitting my ambition against my pride, I found the latter soon give way, and on the following day I presented the lover with a declaratory effusion at once so glowing and so cautious, so impassioned as to matters of sentiment, but withal so guarded in point of law, that he did not hesitate to pronounce it a masterpiece of literary composition and forensic skill. He overwhelmed me with thanks, and went home to copy and despatch it. I now come to the most whimsical part of the transaction. With Miss Dickson, as I had stated to her admirer, I was extremely intimate. We had known each other from childhood, and conversed with the familiarity rather of cousins than mere acquaintances. When she was in town, I saw her almost daily, talked to her of myself and my prospects, lectured her on her love of dress, and in return was always at her command for any small service of gallantry or friendship that she might require. The next time I called, I could perceive that I was unusually

welcome. Her cousins were with her, but they quickly retired and left us together. As soon as we were alone, Harriet announced to me "that she had a favour--a very great one indeed-to ask of me." She proceeded, and with infinite command of countenance. "There was a friend of hers-one for whom she was deeply interested-in fact it was but no-she must not betray a secret-and this friend had the day before received a letter containing something like, but still not exactly a proposition of-in short-of a most interesting nature; and her friend was terribly perplexed how to reply to it, for she was very young and inexperienced, and all that; and she had tried two or three times and had failed-and then she had consulted her (Harriet), and she (Harriet) had also been puzzled-for the letter in question was in fact, as far as it was intelligible, so uncommonly well written both in style and sentiment, that her friend was of course particularly anxious to send a suitable reply-and this was Harriet's own feelingand she had therefore taken a copy of it (omitting names), for the purpose of shewing it to me, and getting me I was so qualified, and so clever at my pen, and all that sort of thing-just to undertake-if I only would, to throw upon paper just the kind of sketch of the kind of answer that ought to be returned." The preface over, she opened her reticule, and handed me a copy of my own composition. I would have declined the task, but every excuse I suggested was overruled. The principal objection-my previous retainer on the other side, I could not in honour reveal; and I was accordingly installed in the rather ludicrous office of conducting counsel to both parties in the suit. I shall not weary the reader with a technical detail of the pleadings, all of which I drew. They proceeded, if I remember right, as far as a surrebutter rather an unusual thing in modern practice. Each of the parties throughout the correspondence was charmed with the elegance and correctness of the other's style. Shanahan frequently observed to me, "what a singular thing it was that Miss Dickson was so much cleverer at her pen than her tongue ;" and once upon handing me a letter, of which the eloquence was, perhaps, a little too masculine, he protested "that he was almost afraid to go farther in the business, for he suspected that a girl who could express herself so powerfully on paper, would one day or other prove too much for him when she became his wife." But to conclude, Shanahan cbtained the lady, and the lease for lives renewable for ever. The seduction-case (as I afterwards discovered), had been compromised the day before he offered me the statement; and from that day to this, though his business increased with his marriage, he never sent me a single brief.

Finding that nothing was to be got by making public speeches, or writing love-letters for attorneys, and having now idled away some valuable years, I began to think of attending sedulously to my profession; and with a view to the regulation of my exertions, lost no opportunity of inquiring into the nature of the particular qualifications by which the men whom I saw eminent or rising around me, had originally outstripped their competitors. In the course of these inquiries I discovered that there was a newly invented method of getting rapidly into business, of which I had never heard before. The secret was communicated to me by a friend, a king's counsel, who is no longer at the Irish bar. When I asked him for his opinion as to the course of study and conduct most advisable to be pursued, and at the same time

sketched the general plan which had presented itself to me, "Has it never struck you," said he, "since you have walked this Hall, that there is a shorter and a far niore certain road to professional success ?" I professed my ignorance of the particular method to which he alluded. "It requires," he continued, "some peculiar qualifications: have you an ear for music ?"—Surprised at the question, I answered that I had. "And a good voice ?"—"A tolerable one."—" Then my advice to you is, to take a few lessons in psalm-singing; attend the Bethesda regularly; take a part in the anthem, and the louder the better; turn up as much of the white of your eyes as possible, and in less than six months you'll find business pouring in upon you. You smile, I see, at this advice, but I have never known the plan to fail, except where the party has sung incurably out of tune. Don't you perceive that we are once more becoming an Island of Saints, and that half the business of these Courts passes through their hands. When I came to the bar a man's success depended upon his exertions during the six workingdays of the week; but now, he that has the dexterity to turn the sabbath to account, is the surest to prosper-and

"Why should not piety be made,

As well as equity, a trade,
And men get money by devotion

As well as making of a motion ?"

These hints, though thrown out with an air of jest, made some impression on me, but after reflecting for some time upon the subject, and taking an impartial view of my powers in that way, I despaired of having hypocrisy enough for the speculation-so I gave it up. Nothing, therefore, remaining, but a more direct and laborious scheme, I now planned a course of study in which I made a solemn vow to myself to persevere. Besides attending the courts and taking notes of the proceedings, I studied at home, at an average of eight hours a-day. I never looked into any but a law-book. Even a newspaper I seldom took up. Every thing that could touch my feelings or my imagination I excluded from my thoughts, as inimical to the habits of mind I now was anxious to acquire. My circle of private acquaintances was extensive, but I manfully resisted every invitation to their houses. I had assigned myself a daily task to perform, and to perform it I wa mined. I persevered for two years with exemplary courage. Neither the constant, unvarying, unrewarded labours of the day, nor the cheerless solitude of the evenings, could induce me to relax my efforts. I was not, however, insensible to the disheartening change, both physical and moral, that was going on within me. All the generous emotions of my youth, my sympathies with the rights and interests of the human race, my taste for letters, even my social sensibilities, were perceptibly wasting away from want of exercise and from the hostile influence of an exclusive and chilling occupation. It fared still worse with my health: I lost my appetite and rest, and of course, my strength; a deadly pallor overcast my features, black circles formed round my eyes, my cheeks sank in; the tones of my voice became feeble and melancholy; the slightest exercise exhausted me almost to fainting; at night I was tortured by head-aches, palpitations, and frightful dreams; my waking reflections were equally harassing. I now deplored the sinister ambition that had propelled me into a scene for which, in spite of all my self-love, I began to suspect that I was utterly

unfitted. I recalled the bright prospects under which I had entered life, and passed in review the various modes in which I might have turned my resources to honourable and profitable account. The contrast was fraught with anguish and mortification. As I daily returned from the Courts, scarcely able to drag my wearied limbs along, but still attempting to look as alert and cheerful as if my success was certain, I frequently came across some of my college contemporaries. Such meetings always gave me pain. Some of them were rising in the army, others in the church; others, by a well-timed exercise of their talents, were acquiring a fair portion of pecuniary competence and literary fame. They all seemed happy and thriving, contented with themselves and with all around them; while here was 1, wearing myself down to a phantom in a dreary and profitless pursuit, the best years of my youth already gone, absolutely gone for nothing, and the prospect overshadowed by a deeper gloom with every step that I advanced. The friends whom I thus met, inquired with good-nature after my concerns; but I had no longer the heart to talk of myself. I broke abruptly from them, and hurried home to picture to my now morbid imagination the forlorn condition of the evening of life to a briefless barrister. How often, at this period, I regretted that I had not chosen the English Bar, as I had more than once been advised. There, if I had not prospered, my want of success would have been comparatively unobserved. In London I should, at the worst, have enjoyed the immunities of obscurity; but here my failure would be exposed to the most humiliating publicity. Here I was to be doomed, day after day, and year after year, to exhibit myself in places of public resort, and advertise, in my own person, the disappointment of all my hopes.

These gloomy reflections were occasionally relieved by others of a more soothing and philosophic cast. The catastrophe, at the prospect of which I shuddered, it was still in my own power to avert. The sufferings that I endured were, after all, the factitious growth of an unwise ambition. I was still young and independent, and might, by one manly effort, sever myself for ever from the spell that bound me; I might transport myself to some distant scene, and find in tranquillity and letters an asylum from the feverish cares that now bore me down. The thought was full of comfort, and I loved to return to it. I reviewed the different countries in which such a resting-place might best be found, and was not long in making a selection. Swtizerland, with her lakes and hills, and moral and poetic associations, rose before me: there inhabiting a delightful cottage on the margin of one of her lakes, and emancipated from the conventional inquietudes that now oppressed me, I should find my health and my healthy sympathies revive.

In my present frame of mind the charms of such a philosophical retreat was irresistible. I determined to bid an eternal adieu to demurrers and special contracts, and had already fixed upon the time for executing my project, when an unexpected obstacle interposed. My sole means of support was the profit rent of which I have already spoken. The land out of which it arose, lay in one of the insurrectionary districts; and a letter from my agent in the country announced that not a shilling of it could be collected. In the state of nervous exhaustion to which the "blue books" and the blue devils had reduced me, I had no strength to meet this unexpected blow. To the pangs of disappointed ambition were now added the horrors of sudden and hopeless poverty.