however, his apprentice habits were exposed to
a new danger; and from that date I believe them to have undergone a
considerable change. He was then sent to attend the lectures of the
Professor of Civil Law in the University, this course forming part of
the usual professional education of Writers to the Signet, as well as
of Advocates. For some time his companions, when in Edinburgh, had
been chiefly, almost solely, his brother-apprentices and the clerks in
his father's office. He had latterly seen comparatively little even of
the better of his old High School friends, such as Ferguson and
Irving--for though both of these also were writer's apprentices, they
had been indentured to other masters, and each had naturally formed
new intimacies within his own chamber. The Civil Law class brought him
again into daily contact with both Irving and Ferguson, as well as
others of his earlier acquaintance of the higher ranks; but it also
led him into the society of some young gentlemen previously unknown to
him, who had from the outset been destined for the Bar, and whose
conversation, tinctured with certain prejudices natural to scions of
what he calls in Redgauntlet _the Scottish noblesse de la robe_, soon
banished from his mind every {p.129} thought of ultimately adhering
to the secondary branch of the law. He found these future barristers
cultivating general literature, without the least apprehension that
such elegant pursuits could be regarded by any one as interfering with
the proper studies of their professional career; justly believing, on
the contrary, that for the higher class of forensic exertion some
acquaintance with almost every branch of science and letters is a
necessary preparative. He contrasted their liberal aspirations, and
the encouragement which these received in their domestic circles, with
the narrower views which predominated in his own home; and resolved to
gratify his ambition by adopting a most precarious walk in life,
instead of adhering to that in which he might have counted with
perfect security on the early attainment of pecuniary independence.
This resolution appears to have been foreseen by his father, long
before it was announced in terms; and the handsome manner in which the
old gentleman conducted himself upon the occasion is remembered with
dutiful gratitude in the preceding Autobiography.

The most important of these new alliances was the intimate friendship
which he now formed with Mr. John I