or the time, without some assurance of a judgeship. The
Chancellor thereupon wrote a letter, which, though an explicit promise
could not be made, virtually amounted to a promise. In accordance with
this he was appointed on January 3, 1879, to a judgeship which had
become vacant by the resignation of Sir Anthony Cleasby. A notorious
journalist asserted that the promise had been made on consideration of
his writing in the papers on behalf of the Indian Government. The
statement is only worth notice as an ingenious inversion of the truth.
So far from requiring any external impulse to write on Lytton's behalf,
Fitzjames could hardly refrain from writing when its expediency was
doubtful. When the occasion for a word in season offered itself, hardly
any threats or promises could have induced him to keep silence. 'Judge
or no judge,' he observes more than once, 'I shall be forced to write'
if certain contingencies present themselves.

I give the letter in which he announced his appointment to his
sister-in-law (January 4, 1879):--'My dearest Emily, I write to tell you
that I am out of all my troubles. Cleasby has unexpectedly resigned, and
I am to succeed him. I know how this news will delight you, and I hasten
to send it, though I hope to see you to-morrow. It gives me a strange,
satisfied, and yet half-pathetic feeling. One great battle is won, and
one great object obtained; and now I am free to turn my mind to objects
which have long occupied a great part of it, so far as my leisure will
allow. I hope I have not been anxious to any unworthy or unmanly extent
about the various trials which are now over.

'In such moments as this, one's heart turns to those one loves. Dearest
Emily, may all good attend you, and may I and mine be able to do our
shares towards getting you the happiness you so pre-eminently deserve. I
don't know what to wish for; but I wish for all that is best and most
for your good in the widest sense which the word can have. Ever your
loving brother, J. F. S.'

* * * * *

In giving the news to Lord Lytton, he observes that he feels like a man
who has got into a comfortable carriage on a turnpike road after
scrambling over pathless mountain ranges. His business since his return
has been too irregular and capricious to allow him to feel himself at
his ease. That being over, he is resolved to make the bench a 'base of
operations' and 'not a mere shelf.'

The hint about 'leisur