name had been entered at the Middle Temple, and after taking his
degree, he prepared to go to England to pursue the ordinary course of
a lawyer's studies. He arrived in London in the early part of 1750.

A period of nine years followed, in which the circumstances of Burke's
life are enveloped in nearly complete obscurity. He seems to have kept
his terms in the regular way at the Temple, and from the mastery
of legal principles and methods which he afterwards showed in some
important transactions, we might infer that he did more to qualify
himself for practice than merely dine in the hall of his inn. For law,
alike as a profession and an instrument of mental discipline, he had
always the profound respect that it so amply deserves, though he saw
that it was not without drawbacks of its own. The law, he said, in
his fine description of George Grenville, in words that all who think
about schemes of education ought to ponder, "is, in my opinion, one of
the first and noblest of human sciences; _a science which does more to
quicken and invigorate the understanding than all the other kinds of
learning put together_; but it is not apt, except in persons very
happily born, to open and to liberalise the mind exactly in the
same proportion."[1] Burke was never called to the bar, and the
circumstance that, about the time when he ought to have been looking
for his first guinea, he published a couple of books which had as
little as possible to do with either law or equity, is a tolerably
sure sign that he had followed the same desultory courses at the
Temple as he had followed at Trinity College. We have only to tell
over again a very old story. The vague attractions of literature
prevailed over the duty of taking up a serious profession. His father,
who had set his heart on having a son in the rank of a barrister, was
first suspicious, then extremely indignant, and at last he withdrew
his son's allowance, or else reduced it so low that the recipient