in the Church, he appropriately selected the next best profession
for a lazy man in England--the Bar. Although the Benchers of the
Inns of Court have lately abandoned their good old principles, and
oblige their students to make some show of studying, in Mr. Idle's
time no such innovation as this existed. Young men who aspired to
the honourable title of barrister were, very properly, not asked to
learn anything of the law, but were merely required to eat a
certain number of dinners at the table of their Hall, and to pay a
certain sum of money; and were called to the Bar as soon as they
could prove that they had sufficiently complied with these
extremely sensible regulations. Never did Thomas move more
harmoniously in concert with his elders and betters than when he
was qualifying himself for admission among the barristers of his
native country. Never did he feel more deeply what real laziness
was in all the serene majesty of its nature, than on the memorable
day when he was called to the Bar, after having carefully abstained
from opening his law-books during his period of probation, except
to fall asleep over them. How he could ever again have become
industrious, even for the shortest period, after that great reward
conferred upon his idleness, quite passes his comprehension. The
kind Benchers did everything they could to show him the folly of
exerting himself. They wrote out his probationary exercise for
him, and never expected him even to take the trouble of reading it
through when it was written. They invited him, with seven other
choice spirits as lazy as himself, to come and be called to the
Bar, while they were sitting over their wine and fruit after
dinner. They put his oaths of allegiance, and his dreadful
official denunciations of the Pope and the Pretender, so gently
into his mouth, that he hardly knew how the words got there. They
wheeled all their chairs softly round from the table, and sat