was very well for you when you
talked of being a clergyman, or an author, or a painter. One allows
outsiders any amount of nonsense in their criticism, as a matter
of course. But it won't do now, Bertram. If you mean to put your
shoulders to the wheel in the only profession which, to my mind,
is worthy of an educated man's energies, you must get rid of those
cobwebs."

"Upon my word, Harcourt, when you hit on a subject you like, your
eloquence is wonderful. Sir Ricketty Giggs himself could hardly say
more to defend his sins of forty years' endurance."

Harcourt had spoken in earnest. Such milk-and-water, unpractical
scruples were disgusting to his very soul. In thinking of them to
himself, he would call them unmanly. What! was such a fellow as
Bertram, a boy just fresh from college, to animadvert upon and
condemn the practice of the whole bar of England? He had, too, a
conviction, clearly fixed in his own mind, though he could hardly
explain the grounds of it in words, that in the long run the cause of
justice would be better served by the present practice of allowing
wrong and right to fight on equal terms; by giving to wrong the same
privilege that is given to right; by giving to wrong even a wider
privilege, seeing that, being in itself necessarily weak, it needs
the more protection. He would declare that you were trampling on the
fallen if you told him that wrong could be entitled to no privilege,
no protection whatever--to no protection, till it was admitted by
itself, admitted by all, to be wrong.

Bertram had now to establish himself in London; and he was also, as
he thought, under the necessity of seeing two persons, his uncle and
Miss Waddington. He could not settle himself well to work before he
had done both. One preliminary business he did settle for himself, in
order that his uncle, when he saw him, might know that his choice for
the bar was made up and past recalling. He selected that great and
enduring Chancery barrister, Mr. Neversaye Die, as the Gamaliel at
whose feet he would sit; as the fountain from whence he would draw
the coming waters of his own eloquence; as the instructor of his
legal infancy and guide of his legal youth. Harcourt was at the
Common Law bar, and therefore he recommended the other branch of the
profession to his friend. "The Common Law," said he, "may have the
most dash about it; but Chancery has the substance." George, after
thinking over the matter for some days, gave it as