and, absolutely speechless, putting the letter into his hands.  He read it with much emotion, and returned it to me, saying ’Your father has had great trials, obloquy, bad health, many anxieties.  One must feel as if Tom were given him for a recompense.’  He was silent for a moment, and then his mobile face lighted up, and he clapped his hand to his ear, and cried:  ’Ah!  I hear that shout again.  Hear!  Hear!  What a life it was!’”

And so, on the eve of the most momentous conflict that ever was fought out by speech and vote within the walls of a senate-house, the young recruit went gaily to his post in the ranks of that party whose coming fortunes he was prepared loyally to follow, and the history of whose past he was destined eloquently, and perhaps imperishably, to record.

York:  April 2, 1826.

My dear Father,—­I am sorry that I have been unable to avail myself of the letters of introduction which you forwarded to me.  Since I received them I have been confined to the house with a cold; and, now that I am pretty well recovered, I must take my departure for Pontefract.  But, if it had been otherwise, I could not have presented these recommendations.  Letters of this sort may be of great service to a barrister; but the barrister himself must not be the bearer of them.  On this subject the rule is most strict, at least on our circuit.  The hugging of the Bar, like the Simony of the Church, must be altogether carried on by the intervention of third persons.  We are sensible of our dependence on the attorneys, and proportioned to that sense of dependence is our affectation of superiority.  Even to take a meal with an attorney is a high misdemeanour.  One of the most eminent men among us brought himself into a serious scrape by doing so.  But to carry a letter of introduction, to wait in the outer room while it is being read, to be then ushered into the presence, to receive courtesies which can only be considered as the condescensions of a patron, to return courtesies which are little else than the blessings of a beggar, would be an infinitely more terrible violation of our professional code.  Every barrister to whom I have applied for advice has most earnestly exhorted me on no account whatever to present the letters myself.  I should perhaps add that my advisers have been persons who cannot by any possibility feel jealous of me.

In default of anything better I will eke out my paper with some lines which I made in bed last night,—­an inscription for a picture of Voltaire.

 If thou would’st view one more than man and less,
 Made up of mean and great, of foul and fair,
 Stop here; and weep and laugh, and curse and bless,
 And spurn and worship; for thou seest Voltaire. 
 That flashing eye blasted the conqueror’s spear,
 The monarch’s sceptre, and the Jesuit’s beads
 And every wrinkle in that haggard sneer
 Hath been the grave of Dynasties and Creeds. 
 In very wantonness of childish mirth
 He puffed Bastilles, and thrones, and shrines away,
 Insulted Heaven, and liberated earth. 
 Was it for good or evil?  Who shall say?