II.1

NOTHING that has passed, my dear C., since I last wrote to you, has at all weakened my expectation of seeing you one day in that high station to which I then so anxiously encouraged you to aspire. I do not wish to divert you from such anticipations; nay, on the contrary, I would have you entertain and dwell on them. If, indeed, I could suppose that, in such reveries, the circumstances on which your imagination dwelt with most pleasure were the splendour and magnificence which attend so high an office; the homage which is always paid to the man, be he who he may, before whom the mace and the great seal are borne; the advantage of appearing with high distinction in the brilliant circle of a court; of living in habits of familiarity with those to whom the vulgar look up with awe and veneration; the pride of transmitting a title to your posterity; or even the satisfaction of thinking that it is your own exertions alone which have raised you to such an eminence,-I should fear the indulgence of them would be attended with consequences the most pernicious. Men with whom such things are objects of ambition are seldom very scrupulous about the means by which their ambitious ends may be accomplished; and if they happen to fail of success, the dreams of greatness which they had

There is no date to this letter in the original. — ED.

cherished serve only to mortify their pride, and to embitter their chagrin and disappointment. But he who sees principally in a high office the enlarged means of doing good, and the exquisite satisfaction of discharging well the most important duties; who dwells on the delightful vision of a highly improved state of society, in which the evils inseparable from the human condition are mitigated, and the errors, the follies, and the vices of mankind are corrected, tempered, and repressed; and who can, in these waking dreams, connect himself with the improvements he contemplates, as being in some degree the cause and author of them; — to such a man, the very reveries which he has entertained are a real good. If ever they should be realized, he will come into office having well considered, and being matured, and, as it were, exercised for, its important functions, and ready to improve and make the most of every moment of his public life. His enjoyments will be multiplied beyond what is the common lot even of the most upright magistrates; for he will have enjoyed in hope and in expectation all that it will be his great good fortune to accomplish. The period of his remaining in office, considering the brevity of human life, and the late stage of it at which such promotions ever are attained, cannot be of long duration; and the time which may elapse after his magistracy is at an end, the season of reflection on his past life, cannot, in the nature of things, be long attended with unimpaired faculties, or with any capacity of such enjoyments; but, by anticipating in his reflections the good which he is to do, he will have en

larged the period of a happy and an honoured

existence.

If, on the other hand, his expectations never should be realized if his honest projects should be disappointed without any fault of his, and he should remain to his death in privacy and obscurity, yet the hopes which he has nourished, and the dreams in which he has indulged, have gilded and enlivened that season of life which, without them, would have been comparatively dull and insipid; they have in his own eyes ennobled his existence, and enlarged and elevated his views and his habits of thinking. He was in an error; but it has been a salutary error. He has amused himself with a fiction; but that fiction has produced substantial benefits. His mind, occupied with such noble subjects of contemplation, has not been so accessible to mean and little and selfish consideration as it would have been if he had been engrossed by frivolous or inferior pursuits.

III.

Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, Sept. 1807.

It is now just six years since I found myself, at the same season of the year, in a situation much resembling that which I am in at present. After very close application to the severe labours of my profession, I had retired for the long vacation to Tenby, in Pembrokeshire, and was indulging myself in the enjoyment of the refreshing breezes of the sea, the beautiful scenery around me, and the perfect quiet and undisturbed leisure which formed so striking a contrast with the course of life from which I had just escaped. Such an interruption of my usual occupations and fatigues led me, at that time, naturally enough, to reflect on my situation, and to meditate on my future prospects. I could not bring to mind the progress which I had made in my profession, and observe the then state of political parties, without thinking it possible that I might, at some time or other, be raised to the highest office of judicature; and I could not, without forgetting all that I had heard from my friends and my acquaintance, but suppose that such an event was even probable. Recollect

ing what duties that high station would bring with it, and fully sensible of my own inability adequately to discharge them, I applied myself to the consideration of what a Chancellor of Great Britain

ought to be; of what extensive means he has of improving the condition of his fellow-creatures; and how anxious he should be not to suffer opportunities of beneficence, which are afforded to so few, to pass unimproved. I endeavoured to familiarize myself with ideas which would become such a station; and, while still in privacy and obscurity, and possessed of the leisure which is requisite for such undertakings, to prepare myself with the system of conduct which I ought to adopt, and to mature plans of reform which I should be desirous to establish. That I might derive the more profit from these meditations, I thought of committing them to writing. When I set about this task, however, it appeared to me so ridiculous that a private individual, a mere advocate, distinguished by no honour in his profession except that of being King's Counsel, a person not in Parliament, and not connected with any political party, should amuse himself with the idea of becoming a Lord Chancellor, that I could not trust the thought to paper, even though it was to be seen by no eyes but my own. To accomplish, therefore, my object, and yet escape this ridicule, I began a series of letters, supposed to be addressed by some intimate friend to a barrister, who might form expectations of rising to the highest eminence in his profession, suggesting to him reflections which I wished myself to indulge, and giving as advice what I intended to prescribe to myself as laws. I had not prosecuted this idea very far when my leisure was broken in upon by some avocation or other, and the season of business too speedily