o give up politics and take to the
Bar as the means of earning his livelihood. "You would have uphill
work at first, as a matter of course," said Mr. Low.

"But it might be done, I suppose. To have been in office would not be
fatal to me?"

"No, not fatal, Nothing of the kind need be fatal. Men have
succeeded, and have sat on the bench afterwards, who did not begin
till they were past forty. You would have to live down a prejudice
created against yourself; that is all. The attorneys do not like
barristers who are anything else but barristers."

"The attorneys are very arbitrary, I know," said Phineas.

"Yes;--and there would be this against you--that it is so difficult
for a man to go back to the verdure and malleability of pupildom,
who has once escaped from the necessary humility of its conditions.
You will find it difficult to sit and wait for business in a
Vice-Chancellor's Court, after having had Vice-Chancellors, or men
as big as Vice-Chancellors, to wait upon you."

"I do not think much of that."

"But others would think of it, and you would find that there were
difficulties. But you are not thinking of it in earnest?"

"Yes, in earnest."

"Why so? I should have thought that every day had removed you
further and further from any such idea."

"The ground I'm on at present is so slippery."

"Well, yes. I can understand that. But yet it is less slippery than
it used to be."

"Ah;--you do not exactly see. What if I were to lose my seat?"

"You are safe at least for the next four years, I should say."

"Ah;--no one can tell. And suppose I took it into my head to differ
from the Government?"

"You must not do that. You have put yourself into a boat with these
men, and you must remain in the boat. I should have thought all that
was easy to you."

"It is not so easy as it seems. The very necessity of sitting still
in the boat is in itself irksome,--very irksome. And then there comes
some crisis in which a man cannot sit still."

"Is there any such crisis at hand now?"

"I cannot say that;--but I am beginning to find that sitting still is
very disagreeable to me. When I hear those fellows below having their
own way, and saying just what they like, it makes me furious. There
is Robson. He tried office for a couple of years, and has broken
away; and now, by George, there is no man they think so much of as
they do of Robson. He is twice the man he was when he sat on the
Treasury Bench."

"He is a man