usly was not
his habitual style; the fierceness of his tone was well known. His
language of Loughborough, who succeeded him, was savagely contemptuous.
On one occasion, when the latter was speaking with considerable effect
on a subject on which Lord Thurlow had an adverse opinion, though he did
not regard himself as sufficiently master of it for direct refutation,
he was heard to mutter, "If I was not as lazy as a toad at the bottom of
a well, I could kick that fellow Loughborough heels over head, any day
in the week."

Thurlow told the Prince that though Loughborough "had the gift of the
gab in a marvellous degree, he was no lawyer;" and added, "in the house
of Lords I get Kenyon or somebody to start some law doctrine, in such a
manner that the, fellow _must_ get up to answer it, and then I
leave the woolsack, and give him such a thump in his bread-basket that
he cannot recover himself."

The solicitor-general was now growing rich, and he purchased for
L.22,000 the manor of Eldon, a property of about 1300 acres in the
county of Durham. He was an "improving landlord," and for several years
he expended the income of the estate on planting--which at once much
increased its value, and added to the beauty of that part of the county
of Durham.

In 1793, he ascended another step in his profession, by his appointment
to the great office of attorney-general, in succession to Sir Archibald
Macdonald, who was made chief baron of the exchequer. The new
attorney-general was soon summoned to the highest exercise of his
abilities, his learning, and his courage; he commenced office in the midst
of national convulsion.

The Revolution of France, which had been growing violence and havoc for
the last four years, had now arrived at its height. The change,
beginning with popular reform in 1789, had, in 1793, been consummated in
regicide. The republic proclaimed in the year before, within three
months had darkened into a democracy. The general alarm of the
continental kings; combined them in an attempt to overthrow a government
which threatened them all; the attempt was found to result only in
consolidating its power; and, in the first year of war, France presented
to the disaffected of all nations, the tempting spectacle of a land in
which the foremost prizes of power had fallen into the hands of men of
the humblest condition; and in which those men humbled to the dust the
proudest diadems of Europe. Obscure pamphleteers, country adv