barrister, as he waits for the briefs which come in so slowly--the
young doctor, hoping for patients--understand them all. Oh what
slight, fanciful things, to such men, appear such disappointments
as that of the wealthy proprietor who fails to carry his county,
or the rich mayor or provost who fails of being knighted!

There is an extraordinary arbitrariness about the way in which great
success is allotted in this world. Who shall say that in one case
out of every two, relative success is in proportion to relative
merit? Nor need this be said in anything of a grumbling or captious
spirit. It is but repeating what a very wise man said long ago,
that 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong.' I suppose no one will say that the bishops are the greatest
men in the Church of England, or that every Chief Justice is a
greater man than every puisne judge. Success is especially arbitrary
in cases where it goes by pure patronage: in many such cases the
patron would smile at your weakness if you fancied that the desire
to find the best man ever entered his head. In the matter of the
bench and bar, where tangible duties are to be performed, a patron
is compelled to a certain amount of decency; for, though he may
not pretend to seek for the fittest man, he must at least profess
to have sought a fit man. No prime minister dare appoint a blockhead
a judge, without at least denying loudly that he is a blockhead.
But the arbitrariness of success is frequently the result of causes
quite apart from any arbitrariness in the intention of the human
disposer of success; a Higher Hand seems to come in here. The
tide of events settles the matter: the arbitrariness is in the way
in which the tide of events sets. Think of that great lawyer and
great man, Sir Samuel Romilly. Through years of his practice at
the bar, he himself, and all who knew him, looked to the woolsack