circumstances. During this interval of his life, however, he was absent
from London, and by his brother supposed to have returned to the
Continent; at length, it seems, he profited by a renewal of his
friendship with the young nobleman who had accompanied him abroad,
reappeared in town, and obtained through his noble friend one or two
legal appointments of reputable emolument. Soon afterwards he got a
brief on some cause where a major had been raising a corps to his brother
officer, with the better consent of the brother-officer's wife than of
the brother officer himself. Brandon's abilities here, for the first
time in his profession, found an adequate vent; his reputation seemed
made at once, he rose rapidly in his profession, and, at the time we now
speak of, he was sailing down the full tide of fame and wealth, the envy
and the oracle of all young Templars and barristers, who, having been
starved themselves for ten years, began now to calculate on the
possibility of starving their clients. At an early period in his career
he had, through the good offices of the nobleman we have mentioned,
obtained a seat in the House of Commons; and though his eloquence was
of an order much better suited to the bar than the senate, he had
nevertheless acquired a very considerable reputation in the latter, and
was looked upon by many as likely to win to the same brilliant fortunes
as the courtly Mansfield,--a great man, whose political principles and
urbane address Brandon was supposed especially to affect as his own
model. Of unblemished integrity in public life,--for, as he supported
all things that exist with the most unbending rigidity, he could not be
accused of inconsistency,--William Brandon was (as we have said in a
former place of unhappy memory to our hero) esteemed in private life the
most honourable, the most moral, even the most austere of men; and his
grave and stern repute on this score, joined to the dazzle of his
eloquence and forensic powers, had baffled in great measure the rancour
of party hostility, and obtained for him a character for virtues almost