s and
the Chancellor's Medal for English verse twice. He was third in the
Classical Tripos, was elected to a Fellowship at his college in 1827,
and in 1830 obtained the Seatonian Prize with a piece, "The Ascent of
Elijah," which is remarkable for the extraordinary facility with which
it catches the notes of the just published _Christian Year_. He was a
great speaker at the Union, and, as has been hinted, he made a fresh
circle of literary friends for himself, the chief ornaments whereof were
Macaulay and Charles Austin. It was also during his sojourn at Cambridge
that the short-lived but brilliant venture of _Knight's Quarterly_ was
launched. He was about four years resident at Trinity in the first
instance; after which, according to a practice then common enough but
now, I believe, obsolete, he returned to Eton as private and particular
tutor to Lord Ernest Bruce. This employment kept him for two years. He
then read law, was called to the Bar in 1829, and in 1830 was elected to
Parliament for the moribund borough of St. Germans. He was re-elected
next year, contested St. Ives, when St. Germans lost its members, but
was beaten, was elected in 1834 for Great Yarmouth, and in 1837 for
Aylesbury, which last seat he held to his death. During the whole of
this time he sat as a Conservative, becoming a more thorough one as time
went on; and as he had been at Cambridge a very decided Whig, and had
before his actual entrance on public life written many pointed and some
bitter lampoons against the Tories, the change, in the language of his
amiable and partial friend and biographer, "occasioned considerable
surprise." Of this also more presently: for it is well to get merely
biographical details over with as little digression as possible.
Surprise or no surprise, he won good opinions from both sides, acquired
considerable reputation as a debater and a man of business, was in the
confidence both of the Duke of Wellington and of Sir Robert Peel, was
made Secretary of the Board of Control in 1834, married in 1835, was
appointed Deputy-High Steward of his University (a mysterious
appointment, of the duties of which I have no notion), and died of
disease of the lungs on 15th July 1839. Not very much has been published
about Praed personally; but in what has been published, and in what I
have heard, I cannot remember a single unfriendly sentence.

Notwithstanding his reputation as an "inspired schoolboy," I do not know
that sober criti