the attempt to account for the phenomenon.
A man incapable of seeing things in the proper light was hardly worth
considering at all. Fitzjames was therefore not sympathetic in the sense
of having an imagination ready to place him at other men's point of
view. In another sense his sympathies were exceedingly powerful. No man
had stronger or more lasting affections. Once attached to a man, he
believed in him with extraordinary tenacity and would defend him
uncompromisingly through thick and thin. If, like Johnson, he was a
little too contemptuous of the sufferings of the over-sensitive, and put
them down to mere affectation or feeblemindedness, he could sympathise
most strongly with any of the serious sorrows and anxieties of those
whom he loved, and was easily roused to stern indignation where he saw
sorrow caused by injustice. I shall mention here one instance, to which,
for obvious reasons, I can only refer obscurely; though it occupied him
at intervals during many years. Shortly after being called to the bar he
had agreed to take the place of a friend as trustee for a lady, to whom
he was then personally unknown. A year or two later he discovered that
she and her husband were the objects of a strange persecution from a man
in a respectable position who conceived himself to have a certain hold
over them. Fitzjames's first action was to write a letter to the
persecutor expressing in the most forcible English the opinion that the
gentleman's proper position was not among the respectable but at one of
her Majesty's penal settlements. His opinion was carefully justified by
a legal statement of the facts upon which it rested, and the effect was
like the discharge of the broadside of an old ship of the line upon a
hostile frigate. The persecutor was silenced at once and for life.
Fitzjames, meanwhile, found that the money affairs of the pair whose
champion he had become were deeply embarrassed. He took measures, which
were ultimately successful, for extricating them from their
difficulties; and until the lady's death, which took place only a year
or two before his own, was her unwearied counsellor and protector in
many subsequent difficulties. Though I can give no details, I may add
that he was repaid by the warm gratitude of the persons concerned, and
certainly never grudged the thought and labour which he had bestowed
upon the case.

Fitzjames having made up his mind that he was a 'lawyer by nature,' had
become a lawyer b