the present summer, a fresh attack of his disorder, which in a few weeks proved fatal to him. His death happened at a most unfortunate time for my poor sister, for it was when she had been brought to bed only six weeks of her daughter. Never did any woman adore a husband with more passionate fondness than she did hers; never had anxiety surpassed that with which she had been tortured during the different periods of his long disease; and never was affliction greater than that which she now endured. My father and all our family were very impatient that she should return to us from the strange land in which her melancholy lot had been cast. But with two children, and one of so very tender an age, and with no companion but her maid, it was an alarming journey to undertake. My brother was married, and was entirely occupied by his business. There was no person who could, without the greatest inconvenience, attend her on such a journey but myself, and I therefore undertook it; it was only losing one circuit, and it was rendering a very essential service to all those whom I most loved and valued.

1

Baynes was desirous of seeing Paris, and agreed to be my companion so far on my journey. It was not the most direct road to Lausanne; but it was that by which I was likely to find the best opportunities of conveyance. We, accordingly, proceeded to Paris together; and his good spirits and agreeable society rendered it a very pleasant journey. At Paris I staid only a week, and had little more than time to renew my acquaintance with the connexions I had formed there, parti

cularly with M. Romilly and Made and Mile Delessert. Baynes had a letter of introduction to Dr. Franklin, who was then residing at Passy, and I had the great satisfaction of accompanying him in his visit. Dr. Franklin was indulgent enough to converse a good deal with us, whom he observed to be young men very desirous of improving by his conversation. Of all the celebrated persons whom, in my life, I have chanced to see, Dr. Franklin, both from his appearance and his conversation, seemed to me the most remarkable. His venerable patriarchal appearance, the simplicity of his manner and language, and the novelty of his observations, at least the novelty of them at that time to me, impressed me with an opinion of him as of one of the most extraordinary men that ever existed. The American Constitutions were then very recently published. I remember his reading us some passages out of them, and expressing some surprise that the French government had permitted the publication of them in France. They certainly produced a very great sensation at Paris, the effects of which were probably felt many years afterwards. Diderot was at this time dead; and D'Alembert was in so infirm a state that I thought he would gladly enough dispense with a visit from me.

From Paris I travelled by the direct road to Geneva, in company with a M. Gautier, a Genevese, with whom I had, some years before, made acquaintance in London, a very worthy and friendly man. He, afterwards, married M1le Delessert; and with him and his incomparable

wife I constantly maintained a correspondence by letters. I made but a short stay at Geneva; few of my best friends were then remaining there. The revolution which had taken place had afforded a complete triumph to the aristocratical party; but it had been effected by the interference of France, and by the terror of its arms. I shall never forget the burning indignation which I felt as I looked down upon a French regiment, which was mounting guard in the place of Bel-air, under the windows of my hotel, and as I heard the noise of its military music, which seemed, as it were, to insult the ancient liberties of the republic.

At Lausanne, I met with the Abbé Raynal; but I saw him with no admiration either of his talents or his character. Having read the eloquent passages in his celebrated work with delight, I had formed the highest expectations of him; but those expectations were sadly disappointed. I was filled at this time with horror at West Indian slavery and at the Slave Trade, and Raynal's philosophical history of the two Indies had served to enliven these sentiments; but when I came to talk on these subjects with him, he appeared to me so cold and so indifferent about them, that I conceived a very unfavourable opinion of him.* His conversation was certainly so inferior to his celebrated work, as to give much countenance to the report,

* I brought with me from Lausanne, on my former visit to it, a little tract on West Indian Slavery, which the Marquis de Condorcet had had printed there, and had written under the pretended name of Schwartz, a Swiss clergyman. I translated it into English; but upon offering it to a bookseller, I found that he would not undertake the printing. I laid it aside, therefore; and it never appeared.

which has been very common, that the most splendid passages in it were not his own.

My return to England with my sister and her two children was but a melancholy journey. We put ourselves under the care of a Swiss voiturier; and, for the sake, I think, of avoiding any of the places through which my sister had passed with her husband when she left her country, and which she thought would be attended with remembrances too painful for her to endure, we made rather a circuitous journey. We passed through Soleure, Berne, Basle, Louvain, Malines, Antwerp, Breda, and Rotterdam, to Helvoetsluys, whence we crossed to Harwich. At Helvoetsluys we arrived just after the packet had sailed; and as four days would elapse before the next, and we were unwilling to venture in any other vessel, I took advantage of this delay to make a little excursion to the Hague, and I returned time enough to accompany my sister in her passage across the sea.

By

Thus was my first long vacation passed. Michaelmas term I had returned to business, or rather to attend the courts, and to receive such business as accident might throw in my way. I had endeavoured to draw Chancery pleadings before I was called to the bar, as an introduction to business when I should be called. In that way, however, the occupation I got under the bar was very inconsiderable; but soon after I was admitted to the bar, I was employed to draw pleadings in several cases. This species of employment went on very gradually increasing for several years; during which, though I was occupied in the way of my

profession, I had scarcely once occasion to open my lips in court.

In the spring of 1784, I first went upon the circuit. All circuits were indifferent to me, for I had no friends or connexions on any one of them; and my choice fell upon the Midland, because there appeared to be fewer men of considerable talents or of high character as advocates upon it than upon any other, and consequently a greater opening for me than elsewhere. It was, besides, shorter than some other circuits, and would, therefore, take me for a less time from the Court of Chancery; and, what was no unimportant consideration, my travelling expenses upon it would be less. The circuit did not, indeed, when I joined it, appear to be overstocked with talent. At the head of it, in point of rank, though with very little business, was Serjeant Hill; a lawyer of very profound and extensive learning, but with a very small portion of judgment, and without the faculty of making his great knowledge useful. On any subject on which you consulted him, he would pour forth the treasures of his legal science without order or discrimination. He seemed to be of the order of lawyers of Lord Coke's time, and he was the last of that race. For modern law he had supreme contempt; and I have heard him observe, that the greatest service that could be rendered the country would be to repeal all the statutes, and burn all the reports which were of a later date than the Revolution. Next to him in rank, but far before him in business, and, indeed, completely at the head of the circuit, stood * ***; who, without talents, without learning, without any one qualification for his