of seclusion, of economy, and of the safety to my morals and
industry, which he wished to attain, by preserving me from the
society of other young people, that, upon my word, I am always
rather astonished how I should have had the impudence to make the
request, than that he should have complied with it.

Then for the object of his solicitude--Do not laugh, or hold up
your hands, my good Darsie; but upon my word I like the
profession to which I am in the course of being educated, and am
serious in prosecuting the preliminary studies. The law is my
vocation--in an especial, and, I may say, in an hereditary way,
my vocation; for although I have not the honour to belong to any
of the great families who form in Scotland, as in France, the
noblesse of the robe, and with us, at least, carry their heads as
high, or rather higher, than the noblesse of the sword,--for the
former consist more frequently of the 'first-born of Egypt,'--yet
my grandfather, who, I dare say, was a most excellent person, had
the honour to sign a bitter protest against the Union, in the
respectable character of town-clerk to the ancient Borough of
Birlthegroat; and there is some reason--shall I say to hope, or
to suspect?--that he may have been a natural son of a first
cousin of the then Fairford of that Ilk, who had been long
numbered among the minor barons. Now my father mounted a step
higher on the ladder of legal promotion, being, as you know as
well as I do, an eminent and respected Writer to his Majesty's
Signet; and I myself am destined to mount a round higher still,
and wear the honoured robe which is sometimes supposed, like
Charity, to cover a multitude of sins. I have, therefore, no
choice but to climb upwards; since we have mounted thus high, or
else to fall down at the imminent risk of my neck. So that I