which has been unable
to keep the good things of Government in its hands; but he will
recognise without remorse or sorrow the fact that the Ministry to
which he has attached himself must cease to be a Ministry;--and there
will be nothing in his displacement to gall his pride, or to create
that inner feeling of almost insupportable mortification which comes
from the conviction of personal failure. Sir Thomas Underwood had
been Solicitor-General for a few months under a Conservative Prime
Minister; and when the Conservative Minister went out of office, Sir
Thomas Underwood followed him with no feeling of regret that caused
him unhappiness. But when afterwards the same party came back to
power, and he, having lost his election at the borough which he had
represented, was passed over without a word of sympathy or even of
assumed regret from the Minister, then he was wounded. It was true,
he knew, that a man, to be Solicitor-General, should have a seat
in Parliament. The highest legal offices in the country are not to
be attained by any amount of professional excellence, unless the
candidate shall have added to such excellence the power of supporting
a Ministry and a party in the House of Commons. Sir Thomas Underwood
thoroughly understood this;--but he knew also that there are various
ways in which a lame dog may be helped over a stile,--if only the
lame dog be popular among dogs. For another ex-Solicitor-General
a seat would have been found,--or some delay would have been
granted,--or at least there would have been a consultation, with a
suggestion that something should be tried. But in this case a man
four years his junior in age, whom he despised, and who, as he was
informed, had obtained his place in Parliament by gross bribery, was
put into the office without a word of apology to him. Then he was
unhappy, and acknowledged to himself that his spirit was crushed.

But he acknowledged to himself at the same time that he was one
doomed by his nature to such crushing of the spirit if he came out of
the hole of his solitude, and endeavoured to carry on the open fight
of life among his fellow-men. He knew that he was one doomed to
that disappointment, the bitterest of all, which comes from failure
when the prize has been all but reached. It is much to have become
Solicitor-General, and that he had achieved;--but it is worse than
nothing to have been Solicitor-General for four months, and then
to find that all the world arou