Tales of the Great St Bernard Author:George Croly Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 9 solicitor hinted at the advantage of securing his services in clerkships and so forth, when in the fulness of my honours I should be on the Bench. The wi... more »sest of us all are sometimes dreamers, and I will own that I thought those solicitors by much the most sagacious of their profession. To sit on hot pillows nine hours a day for nine months of the year, in air saturated with law and lawyers—to hear no sound from one end of life to the other but the brawling of barristers, witnesses, and culprits—and to secure a splendid reversion of gout, with my whole soul immersed in the revilings and rogueries of every offender that justice could fish np from the great sewer of English iniquity, rose before my eys with the brightness of a vision. There were times when even the highest grade of the profession, the keeping of the King's cousei- finee, seemed scarcely beyond my grasp; when, to the occupation of the courts, I rejoicingly added the occupation of the cabinet, and contemplated the delight of'flying full speed from the chancery seat to the throne of the Lords, bringing an ear still tingling with the squabbles of counsel, to hear the squabbles repeated in the shape of appeals; and then finishing the day by superintending a debate till midnight, on corn laws, reform, and the Catholic Question. But the race is not always to the swift. In the same midsummer circuit when I saw six king's counsel and two judges give way to the respective demands of gout, dropsy, and asthma, the natural fruit of success in their trade, I was seized at Lincoln by the fen-fever, which, after chaining me to my bed for six months, left me in such a state of debility that, on taking the advice of my pillow against the advice of all " my friends," I abandoned the hope of ever dying lord chancellor. ...« less