about twenty-five years old), and sought assiduously his society and
conversation. Already a highly instructed man, he was yet, by the side
of my father, a tyro in the great subjects of human opinion; but he
rapidly seized on my father's best ideas; and in the department of
political opinion he made himself known as early as 1820, by a
pamphlet in defence of Radical Reform, in reply to a celebrated
article by Sir James Mackintosh, then lately published in he
_Edinburgh Review_. Mr. Grote's father, the banker, was, I believe,
a thorough Tory, and his mother intensely Evangelical; so that for
his liberal opinions he was in no way indebted to home influences.
But, unlike most persons who have the prospect of being rich by
inheritance, he had, though actively engaged in the business of
banking, devoted a great portion of time to philosophic studies; and
his intimacy with my father did much to decide the character of the
next stage in his mental progress. Him I often visited, and my
conversations with him on political, moral, and philosophical subjects
gave me, in addition to much valuable instruction, all the pleasure
and benefit of sympathetic communion with a man of the high
intellectual and moral eminence which his life and writings have since
manifested to the world.

Mr. Austin, who was four or five years older than Mr. Grote, was the
eldest son of a retired miller in Suffolk, who had made money by
contracts during the war, and who must have been a man of remarkable
qualities, as I infer from the fact that all his sons were of more
than common ability and all eminently gentlemen. The one with whom we
are now concerned, and whose writings on jurisprudence have made him
celebrated, was for some time in the army, and served in Sicily under
Lord William Bentinck. After the Peace he sold his commission and
studied for the bar, to which he had been called for some time before