Mr. Ferrars toiled and flourished. He was exactly the man they liked;
unwearied, vigilant, clear and cold; with a dash of natural sarcasm
developed by a sharp and varied experience. He disappeared from the
active world in the latter years of the Liverpool reign, when a newer
generation and more bustling ideas successfully asserted their
claims; but he retired with the solace of a sinecure, a pension, and
a privy-councillorship. The Cabinet he had never entered, nor dared to
hope to enter. It was the privilege of an inner circle even in our then
contracted public life. It was the dream of Ferrars to revenge in
this respect his fate in the person of his son, and only child. He
was resolved that his offspring should enjoy all those advantages
of education and breeding and society of which he himself had been
deprived. For him was to be reserved a full initiation in those costly
ceremonies which, under the names of Eton and Christ Church, in his time
fascinated and dazzled mankind. His son, William Pitt Ferrars, realised
even more than his father's hopes. Extremely good-looking, he was gifted
with a precocity of talent. He was the marvel of Eton and the hope
of Oxford. As a boy, his Latin verses threw enraptured tutors into
paroxysms of praise, while debating societies hailed with acclamation
clearly another heaven-born minister. He went up to Oxford about the
time that the examinations were reformed and rendered really efficient.
This only increased his renown, for the name of Ferrars figured among
the earliest double-firsts. Those were days when a crack university
reputation often opened the doors of the House of Commons to a young
aspirant; at least, after a season. But Ferrars had not to wait. His
father, who watched his career with the passionate interest with which a
Newmarket man watches the development of some gifted yearling, took care
that all the odds should be in his favour in the race of life. An old
colleague of the elder Mr. Ferrars, a worthy peer with many boroughs,
placed a seat at the disposal of the youthful hero, the moment he was