with all my might; nor was the study distasteful. I was learning something which would be useful to me in after-life. Moreover, being endowed with pluck and energy, I wanted to show that my uncles—for the godfather warned me as well—and my father were false prophets. So I gave myself up entirely to the acquisition of knowledge, this being absolutely necessary if I was to make anything of my future career. "Sink or swim," my father said, was the alternative, so I was resolved to keep my head above water if possible.

After being at Thompson's my allotted period, I next went to Mr. George Butt, a very able and learned man, who afterwards became a Queen's Counsel, but never an advocate. I acquired while with him a good deal of knowledge that was invaluable, became his favourite pupil, and was in due course entrusted with papers of great responsibility, so that in time it came to pass that Mr. Butt would send off my opinions without any correction.

These are small things to talk of now, but they were great then, and the foundation of what, to me, were great things to come, although I little suspected any of them at that time; and as I look back over that long stretch of years, I have the satisfaction of feeling that I did not enter upon my precarious career without doing my utmost to fit myself for it.

In those early days of the century prize-fights were very common in England. The noble art of self-defence was patronized by the greatest in the land. Society loved a prize-fight, and always went to see it, as Society went to any other fashionable function. Magistrates went, and even clerical members of that august body. As magistrates it may have been their duty to discountenance, but as county gentlemen it was their privilege to support, the noble champions of the art, especially when they had their money on the event.

The magistrates, if their presence was ever discovered, said they went to prevent a breach of the peace, but if they were unable to effect this laudable object, they looked on quietly so as to prevent any one committing a breach of the peace on themselves. Their individual heads were worth something.

It was to one of these exhibitions of valour, between Owen Swift and Brighton Bill, that a reverend and sporting magistrate took my brother John, a nice good schoolboy, in a tall hat. He thought it was the right thing that the boy should see the world. I thought also that what was good for John, as prescribed by his clerical adviser, would not be bad for me, so I went as well.

There was a great crowd, of course, but I kept my eye on John's tall chimney-pot hat, knowing that while I saw that I should not lose John.

Presently there was a stir, for Brighton Bill had landed a tremendous blow on the cheek of Owen Swift, and while we were applauding, as is the custom at prize-fights and public dinners, a cunning pickpocket standing immediately behind John pushed the tall chimney-pot hat tightly down over the boy's eyes.

His little hands, which had been in his pockets, went up in a moment to raise his hat, so that he might see the world, the big object he had come to see; and immediately in went two other hands, and out came the savings of John's life—two precious half-crowns, which he had shown to me with great pride that very morning! When he saw the world again the rogue had disappeared.

The famous place for these pugilistic encounters, or one of the famous places, was a spot called Noon's Folly, which was within a very few miles of Royston, where the counties of Cambridge, Suffolk, Essex, and Hertfordshire meet, or most of them. That was the scene of many a stiff encounter; and although, of course, there were both magisterial and police interference when the knowledge reached them that a fight was about to take place within their particular jurisdiction, by some singular misadventure the knowledge never reached them until their worships were returning from the battle. All was over before any official communication was made.

* * * * *

I was entered of the Middle Temple on April 16, 1839, and remained with Mr. Butt until I had kept sufficient terms to qualify me to take out a licence to plead on my own account, which I did at the earliest possible date. This was a great step in my career, although, of course, the licence did not enable me to plead in court, as I was not called to the Bar.

If work came I should now be in a fair way to attain independence. But the prospect was by no means flattering; it was, in fact, all but hopeless while the position of a special pleader was not my ambition. The lookout, in fact, was anything but encouraging from the fifth floor of No. 3 Elm Court—I mean prospectively. It was a region not inaccessible, of course, but it looked on to a landscape of chimney-pots, not one of which was likely to attract attorneys; it was cheap and lonely, dull and miserable—a melancholy altitude beyond the world and its companionship. Had I been of a melancholy disposition I might have gone mad, for hope surely never came to a fifth floor. But there I sat day by day, week by week, and month by month, waiting for the knock that never came, hoping for the business that might never come.

Hundreds of times did I listen with vain expectations to the footsteps on the stairs below—footsteps of attorneys and clerks, messengers and office-boys. I knew them all, and that was all I knew of them. Down below at the bottom flight they tramped, and there they mostly stopped. The ground floor was evidently the best for business; but some came higher, to the first floor. That was a good position; there were plenty of footsteps, and I could tell they were the footsteps of clients. A few came a little higher still, and then my hopes rose with the footsteps. Now some one had come up to the third floor: he stopped! Alas! there was the knock, one single hard knock: it was a junior clerk. The sound came all too soon for me, and I turned from my own door to my little den and looked out of my window up into the sky, from whence it seemed I might just as well expect a brief as from the regions below.

This was not quite true. On another occasion some bold adventurer ascended with asthmatical energy to the fourth floor, and I thought as I heard him wheeze he would never have breath enough to get down again, and wondered if the good-natured attorneys kept these wheezy old gentlemen out of charity. But it was rare indeed that the climber, unless it was the rent collector, reached that floor.

The fifth landing was too remote for the postman, for I never got a letter—at least so it seemed; and no squirrel watching from the topmost bough of the tallest pine could be more lonely than I.

At last I thought a step had passed even the fourth landing, and was approaching mine; but I would not think too fast, and damped my hopes a little on purpose lest they should burn too brightly and too fast. I was not mistaken: there was a footstep on my landing, and I listened for the one heavy knock. It seemed to me I waited about an hour and a half, judging by the palpitations of my heart, and wished the man had knocked as vigorously. But I was rewarded: the knocker fell, and as my boy was away with the toothache, I opened the door myself. He was the same wheezy man I had heard below some time before; and I really seem to have liked asthmatical people ever since—except when I became a judge and they disturbed me in court.

"Papers!"

That is enough to say to any one who understands the situation. You may be sure I gave them my best attention, that they were finished promptly, and, as I hoped, in the best style. If I had required any additional incentive to keep me to my daily task of watching, this would