four
monosyllables, plain, blunt, firm, kind.

After Brodie's, my liberal father would give for me another hundred
pounds, this time to his cousin Mr. Walters of No. 12 in the Square, to
make me more learned as a conveyancer: but it was all of no use: "He
penned a stanza when he should engross:" however, I ate my terms and was
duly called to the Bar. At Walters' my most eminent colleague, amongst
others, was Roundel Palmer, now Lord Selborne, who, some time after,
when we both had chambers in the Inn, wanted me (but I repudiated the
idea) to be proposed as a candidate member for Oxford University, just
before Gladstone was induced to stand; I daresay he will remember it. As
to M.P.ship I may have had other chances, but I never cared for a
position of endless care and toil by night and day, to say nothing of my
impediment of speech, and as to the magic letters I rather despised
them: this being one reason. Not very many years ago my brother Charles
was offered Nottingham if he would pay L3000 for the honour,--and so I
failed to appreciate any such distinction. I think too that votes were
at one time purchasable even at Guildford, my county town: but that was
of course at a less upright and immaculate time of day than this.

At Walters' were also three of my cotemporaries,--De Morgan, who had the
business after decease of our principal, and whose brother is or was the
famous psychological philosopher; Domville, since Sir Charles, I
believe; and Gunn, a West Indian, of whom the jest was to inquire of
Walters, a very nervous man, if he liked us to have a gun in chambers:
all these, and there were more, were clever men and worthy, but as the
tide of life flows on I have lost sight of them.

* * * * *

I have just found an old letter of my own, dated December 28, 1839,
which (with my own permission asked and granted) I will give as to a
matter quite forgotten by me, viz., that Lady Spencer promised my
father to get me an Indian Writership,--as also that previously I had
once hopes of the Registrarship from Lord John Russell, afterwards given
to Mr. Lyster. The letter proves how much my no-speech hindered both my
good father's efforts and my own;--and explains itself. In those days it
cost 9d. between Albury and London.

My Dearest Father,--I can fully, though not perhaps so
fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five
great boys, and actuated by this sym