I should like to say a word or two about those times and the necessary studies to be undergone by those who aspired to eminence.

In the days of my earliest acquaintance with the law, an ancient order of men, now almost, if not quite, extinct, called Special Pleaders, existed, who, after having kept the usual number of terms—­that is to say, eaten the prescribed number of dinners in the Inn of Court to which they belonged—­became qualified, on payment of a fee of L12, to take out a Crown licence to plead under the Bar.  This enabled them to do all things which a barrister could do that did not require to be transacted in court.  They drew pleadings, advised and took pupils.

Some of them practised in this way all their lives and were never called.  Others grew tired of the drudgery, and were called to the Bar, where they remained junior barristers as long as they lived, old age having no effect upon their status.  Some were promoted to the ancient order of Serjeants-at-Law, or were appointed her Majesty’s Counsel, while some of the Serjeants received from the Crown patents of precedence with priority over all Queen’s Counsel appointed after them, and with the privilege of wearing a silk gown and a Queen’s Counsel wig.

There was, however, this difference between a Queen’s Counsel and the holder of a Patent of Precedence:  that the former, having been appointed one of her Majesty’s Counsel, could not thenceforth appear without special licence under the sign-manual of the Queen to defend a prisoner upon a criminal charge.  The Serjeant-at-Law is as rare now as a bustard.

I mention these old-fashioned times and studies, not because of their interest at the present day, but because they produced such men as Littledale, Bayley, Parke (afterwards Lord Wensleydale), Alderson, Tindal, Patteson, Wightman, Crompton, Vaughan Williams, James, Willes, and, later, Blackburn.

The contemplation of these legal giants, amongst whom my career commenced, somewhat checked the buoyant impulse which had urged me onward at Quarter Sessions, but at the same time imparted a little modest desire to imitate such incomparable models.  Those of them who were selected from the junior Bar were good examples of men whose vast knowledge of law was acquired in the way I have indicated, and who were chosen on their merits alone.

But even these successful examples, however encouraging to the student, were, nevertheless, not ill-calculated to make a young barrister whose income was small, and sometimes, as in my case, by no means assured to him, sicken at the thought that, study as he liked, years might pass, and probably would, before a remunerative practice came to cheer him.  Perhaps it would never come at all, and he would become, like so many hundreds of others of his day and ours, a hopeless failure.  All were competitors for the briefs and even the smiles of solicitors; for without their favour none could succeed, although he might unite in himself all the qualities of lawyer and advocate.