post. He held it for several years, giving unmixed satisfaction to all
parties, until precluded from further retaining it, in reference, I
believe, to a rule of etiquette respecting seniority, prevailing at the
bar of the Oxford circuit.

I recollect that, on one occasion, while he was waiting, apparently in
vain, for the chance of professional employment, and not long before the
occurrence of that moment of despondency already mentioned, when he
contemplated quitting the profession, he and I were walking in the
Temple Gardens, and he said, "Now, if I were to choose my future life at
the bar, I should, of all things, like to have, and should be delighted
with, a first-rate pleading business; not made up of many petty things,
but of a few very important cases,--of 'heavy business,' in short. I
feel that I could get on very well with it, and that it is just the
thing suited to me. It would exercise my mind, and also secure me a
handsome income, and, before long, an independence. What I should do
_then_ I don't know." His wishes were amply gratified a few years
afterwards, as the reader must have already seen. So rapidly, indeed,
did the calls of private practice increase upon him, that he was forced,
early in 1843, to resign his lectureship at the Law Institution, having,
in fact, got fairly into the stream of his desired "first-rate pleading
business" to an extent which heavily taxed both his physical and mental
energies. Whatever was brought to him, he attended to thoroughly, never
resting till he had completely exhausted the subject, and contemplated
it from every point of view. Even at this time, however, it would be
incredible to what an extent he obliged his friends at the bar,
principally by preparing for them arguments, and sketching for them
"opinions" on their cases, and these, too, generally of special
difficulty and importance. Some of the most admirable arguments
delivered by others of late, at the bar of the House of Lords, had been