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These scatterlings of the church, the bar, and the faculty, may be said, indeed, collectively to form a sort of profession of their own, the profession of having no definite calling; and of all vocations it is the most vocal, for the men who have least to do have ever got the most to say. The greatest talkers of all are the ardelios of the bar. The law is a noisy profession when it is followed, but a noisier still when it is professed without being practised. Prolixity is a part of pleading which the young barrister is sure to master, though he may not pick up a grain of law, and when he lacks the legitimate sphere for its exercise, he bestows it on the public at large, with the liberality of Dogberry bestowing all his tediousness" on Leonato. Iron turns not more instinctively to adamant than does this precocious garrulity seek its natural vent in politics. The platform is its magnetic pole. Thither, with one accord, or rather with one voice, or better still, with one bray, rushes the whole Arcadian herd, ambitious to unite their several wordy torrents to the mighty flood of speech and jargon by which the country is at once inundated and deafened; a Deluge and a Babel at the same time. Every one of these gentlemen is a Cicero, a Pericles, a Demosthenes, or an Eschines (at the lowest estimate) in some circle, club, society, or corporation of his own. Each "shakes" his little "arsenal," and fulminates over his shire, or his native borough, or some Musical Hall, or Tavern, at the very least. Is it so very true, after all, that no man is a hero to his valet, or a prophet in his own country? The truth seems rather to be, that in a general sense evey man has a valet to whom he is a hero, and a country where he enjoys prophetic honour and reputation. Every home has its hero; on every hearth-stone some little demigod is adored, nor did Egypt ever raise altars to more prepos terous divinities than are to be found in the family-worship of many a house in this Christian land. We have seen in more than one an ape receiving divine honours; in another a parrot canonized; what sacrifices have we not seen made to a puppy, what incense offered to the "asinus communis" of these islands? Mothers especially have a hankering after strange gods, bowing the knee to the dolls and idols of their own making; the least blind and most orthodox of women will take her donkey for a zebra, and adore him as a saint, if she does not absolutely worship him as a deity.

CHAPTER I.

MR. MEDLICOTT QUARRELS WITH THE CHURCH.

ALTHOUGH Mr. Medlicott quarrelled with his grandfather, it was by no means incumbent on him to quarrel with the Church, but he was not of that opinion. He declared himself disgusted with a career where the roads to eminence were so foul and crooked.

It was to no purpose that his father and others represented the injustice of drawing so sweeping a conclusion from a solitary case,

and pointed to men on the bench of bishops who were not less distinguished by their genius and learning than by their consistency and honour; reason was against Reuben, and Reuben was therefore against reason.

It was a pity that talking was not a profession. Mr. Medlicott would have embraced it with ardour and soon obtained the degree of a doctor. But a man must talk with some authority, or he will not long have an audience to hearken to him; in fact, he must procure a license to talk from one of the learned professions; or, if he desires to talk in Parliament, he must obtain a warrant from some portion of the public, which in Reuben's time was as purchaseable as a horse or a debenture; nor, are we yet grown so desperately virtuous as not to buy and sell the same desirable privilege occasionally.

The first person to put the senate into Mr. Medlicott's head was not his mother, to do her justice; it was Mr. Broad, the cutler, who, being a rapturous admirer of eloquence, as well as an arrant Protestant, had formed such an exalted opinion of Reuben's powers since his speech at the "tremendous demonstration," that he rambled about Chichester all day long, lamenting to everybody he met that such an extraordinary and highly gifted young man was not in the proper place for him, and when people either did not know, or pretended not to know what he meant, then Mr. Broad would twitch up the long skirts of his swallow-tailed blue coat, throw back his head and cry-" Why the House, sir, to be sure, where else? That's the only place for such an extraordinary and highly gifted young man. It's nonsense to talk, but we must get him into Parliament by hook or by crook. I'll subscribe a hundred pounds myself to purchase a borough, if it can be managed in no other way. It's a public duty, sir, and England expects every man to do his duty."

Mr. Broad was indeed so eloquent in extolling Mr. Medlicott's qualifications for the senate, that people used sometimes to laugh and advise him to go into the house himself.

Keep your hundred pounds for your own return, Broad,—if it's talking we want in Parliament, you are just the man that will do it as well as Mr. Medlicott, or any man alive," said Alderman Codd, a member of the corporation of Chichester.

"I never saw that much good came of talking in Parliament, or anywhere else," said Mr. Bliss, another burgess.

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Talking does very well," said a third, "when the man what talks is a squire with ten thousand a year, or when he is a lord or a marquis."

"When squires and lords do talk,” replied Mr. Broad," they talk for themselves and not for us; but how do they talk, sir? We had a specimen of their abilities the other day at our great meeting. Did anybody think the squires and lords worth listening to? Did anybody hear a syllable anybody said, or care sixpence to hear it, until my young friend, (if it is not too great a freedom to call him so,) until young Mr. Medlicott rose and showed us what talking was. I never knew what talking was until that day. As I hope to be saved, I thought my friend the alderman there the greatest orator living, ho, ho, ho; but I don't think so now, for which I hope he wont be very angry, ho, ho, ho."

The alderman was so far from being angry that he laughed as loud as Mr. Broad, modestly admitted the immense superiority of our hero as a public speaker, and promised to subscribe fifty pounds whenever a fair occasion should arise for procuring a seat for the eloquent Mr. Medlicott.

"We'll soon have a handsome fund, I make no doubt," said the zealous cutler; " England expects every man to do his duty." The thing went not much further, however, at that time. Reuben himself affected to ridicule the proposition.

"You must not only get me into the house," he observed, somewhat ostentatiously, "but maintain me in it; for what am I, but the son of a poor country clergyman-with my bread to make, and nothing to depend on but my own exertions?"

It was full time, indeed, to think of that, and think seriously. He was in his five-and-twentieth year, with immense reputation for cleverness of all kinds; but beyond the speech, and the rupture with his grandfather, just when his friendship would have been most valuable, Reuben Medlicott had done absolutely nothing.

There still remained law and physic. To the latter profession Reuben had entertained, since he was a child, a singular aversion, resulting from its association in his mind with Mr. Pigwidgeon; a similar distaste to that which Sir Samuel Romilly early in life had for the law, occasioned by the intimacy of his family with a particularly disagreeable attorney. In fact, if Romilly had not conquered that juvenile repugnance, he would have lived and died a poor goldsmith like his father, instead of becoming one of the foremost men of his age and country.

Few of Reuben's friends harboured a doubt of his brilliant success in whichever of the two professions he should select; but the most ambitious of them advocated the law, as leading to the

highest distinctions, both political and social, besides being the natural theatre for the talents of which he had lately given such extraordinary and decided proofs. Mr. Broad, who thought the bar a very good plan as a subsidiary to the senate, declared, from his experience in the jury-box, that no jury could possibly resist the appeals of such an orator as Master Reuben.

"Jurors are only men, sir : I have sat upon juries for five-andtwenty years, and I know what juries are made of. He would twist them round his finger, sir, as easy as his watch-chain ; make them believe anything he pleased, or nothing at all, if he liked it. I promise him verdicts as plenty as blackberries, at least in this city and county. What juryman, sir, would listen to a prossy old judge, after hearing a spirit-stirring address from an eloquent and handsoine young lawyer? If he chooses the law, sir, he will make a fortune as sure as he earns a guinea; in the mean time, he comes into the house, as a matter of course---there's where the country wants him; the next step makes him his Majesty's Attorney or Solicitor General; and from that it's only a hop, step, and jump, to the bench, sir, and the House of Lords."

Mrs. Medlicott took much the same sober view of the case; but the Vicar, and the more obstinate and wrong-headed of his son's friends, had much less confidence than Mr. Broad both in Reuben's oratorical talents and the susceptibilities of Sussex juries. These considerations, with the obvious pecuniary ones, led them to favour medicine; and thus his friends were divided into two parties, with a little detachment of waverers, as usual, including Mrs. Mountjoy and Mrs. Wyndham, whose ambition sometimes inclined them to side with his mother in behalf of the law; but at other times, when they recollected Reuben's agreeable person, and sweet and engaging manners, and imagined him stepping out of a handsome chariot, in full-dress suit of black, to visit a duchess, as the celebrated Doctor Medlicott, they felt that this was a proud career also, and were very much disposed to concur with the Vicar.

Physic, however, would not have suited Mr. Medlicott. The medical profession is a grave and silent one-too saturnine for mon of mercurial gifts, more is done by wise looks than by fine speeches; the physician, in short, has many more opportunities of seeing the tongues of others, than of exercising and displaying his own.

How the balance of argument really inclined it is of little use to inquire: it probably was against the law, since that was the course which Mrs. Medlicott approved, and upon which her son

ultimately decided. And now, once more, his friends vied with one another to send him on his course with a fair wind in his sails, and a handsome outfit to trade on. Mrs. Mountjoy insisted on paying the rent of his chambers in King's Bench Walk, Mr. Cox presented him with a hundred pounds for the foundation of a library, and Mr. Broad, not to be behind others, travelled up to London expressly, and bought him a set of massive book-cases of richly-carved oak, which had to be cut down considerably to make them suit the chambers, and even then they were not to be got in, except by a machinery of ropes and pulleys, through the windows.

His usual fortune attended him to the Temple. His fame had gone before him like a morning star, and soon he gathered about him another little circle of worshippers, who, captivated by his specious and showy talents, granted him the honours of a triumph on credit, without giving him the trouble of fighting any battle, or winning any victory. Throughout his life it was his fortune to be thought capable of achieving anything, while, in fact, he was achieving nothing but that unsolid praise which is so easily silenced by the simple question, "What has he done?" He was certainly much injured by injudicious friends, but when he had a man of experience and sound judgment to consult, he seldom profited by his advice, when to follow it required a steady course of discipline or distasteful labour. There was something in Mr. Medlicott's nature that was always in revolt against the practical. He had always some views of his own, which wore an imposing and philosophical aspect, while leading to conclusions utterly irreconcileable with common sense. But perhaps his greatest fault of all, was, that he invariably soared too high, when, by attempting a less ambitious flight, he might have risen higher, and sustained himself longer on the wing.

The men who knew him best predicted his failure at his new profession from the beginning; some expressed their conviction that he would never be called to the bar. The same ample, imposing, chiaroscuro discourse, which made fools gape, and think him a prodigy of parts, was the very thing that made his judicious friends despair of him. As to Winning, nothing terrified him so much as Reuben's "broad views," for which shallow people were continually extolling him, until at length he thought himself called on to support a character for "broad views," and take a "broad view" of every question presented to him. He consulted Winning as to the particular line he should take in his