es to the poor. My
performance was entirely argumentative, without any of the declamation
which the subject would admit of, and might be expected to suggest to
a young writer. In that department, however, I was, and remained, very
inapt. Dry argument was the only thing I could, manage, or willingly
attempted; though passively I was very susceptible to the effect of
all composition, whether in the form of poetry or oratory, which
appealed to the feelings on any basis of reason. My father, who knew
nothing of this essay until it was finished, was well satisfied, and,
as I learnt from others, even pleased with it; but, perhaps from a
desire to promote the exercise of other mental faculties than the
purely logical, he advised me to make my next exercise in composition
one of the oratorical kind; on which suggestion, availing myself of
my familiarity with Greek history and ideas, and with the Athenian
orators, I wrote two speeches, one an accusation, the other a defence
of Pericles, on a supposed impeachment for not marching out to fight
the Lacedemonians on their invasion of Attica. After this I continued
to write papers on subjects often very much beyond my capacity, but
with great benefit both from the exercise itself, and from the
discussions which it led to with my father.

I had now also begun to converse, on general subjects, with the
instructed men with whom I came in contact: and the opportunities of
such contact naturally became more numerous. The two friends of my
father from whom I derived most, and with whom I most associated, were
Mr. Grote and Mr. John Austin. The acquaintance of both with my father
was recent, but had ripened rapidly into intimacy. Mr. Grote was
introduced to my father by Mr. Ricardo, I think in 1819 (being then
about twenty-five years old), and sought assiduously his society and
conversation. Already a highly instructed man, he was yet, by the side
of my father, a tyro in the great subjects of human opinion; but he
rapidly seized on my father's best ideas; and in the department of
political opinion he made himself known as early as 1820, by a
pamphlet in defence of Radical Reform, in reply to a celebrated
article by Sir James Mackintosh, then lately published in he
_Edinburgh Review_. Mr. Grote's father, the banker, was, I believe,
a thorough Tory, and his mother intensely Evangelical; so that for
his liberal opinions he was in no way indebted to home influences.
But, unlike most persons wh