After taking a “Nobleman’s Degree,” Frederick Leveson spent an instructive year in France, admitted, by virtue of his father’s position, to the society of such men as Talleyrand and Thiers, Guizot and Mole, Berryer and Eugene Sue; and then he returned to England with the laudable, though uninspiring, intention of reading for the Bar.  His profession was chosen for him by his father, and the choice was determined by a civil speech of George Canning, who, staying at the British Embassy at Paris, noticed little Freddy, and pleasantly said to Lord Granville, “Bring that boy up as a lawyer, and he will one day become Lord Chancellor.”  As a first step towards that elevation, Frederick Leveson entered the chambers of an eminent conveyancer called Plunkett, where he had for his fellow-pupils the men who became Lord Iddesleigh and Lord Farrer.  Thence he went to a Special Pleader, and lastly to a leading member of the Oxford Circuit.  As Marshal to Lord Denman and to Baron Parke, he acquired some knowledge of the art of carving; but with regard to the total result of his legal training, he remarked, with characteristic simplicity, “I cannot say I learnt much law.”  When living in lodgings in Charles Street, and eating his dinners at Lincoln’s Inn, Frederick Leveson experienced to the full the advantage of having been born a Whig.  His uncle, the sixth Duke of Devonshire, a benevolent magnifico, if ever there was one, treated him like a son, giving him the run of Devonshire House and Chiswick; while Lady Holland, the most imperious of social dames, let him make a second home of Holland House.

“I dined with her whenever I liked.  I had only to send word in the morning that I would do so.  Of course, I never uttered a word at dinner, but listened with delight to the brilliant talk—­to Macaulay’s eloquence and varied information, to Sydney Smith’s exquisite joke which made me die of laughing, to Roger’s sarcasms and Luttrell’s repartees.”

Frederick Leveson was called to the Bar in 1843, and went the Oxford Circuit in the strangely-assorted company of G. S. Venables, J. G. Phillimore, and E. V. Kenealy.  This proved to be his last stage in the anticipated progress towards the Woolsack.  Lord Granville died at the beginning of 1846, and the change which this event produced in Frederick Leveson’s position can best be described in his own quaint words: 

“My father was greatly beloved by us all, and was the most indulgent parent—­possibly too indulgent.  Himself a younger son, although I cannot say that his own case was a hard one, he sympathized with me for being one of that unfortunate class.  It may have been this feeling, combined with much affection, that made him leave me well provided for.  I much question whether, if I had been left to earn my own bread by my own exertions as a lawyer, I should have succeeded.”