on. There was a singular coincidence in the fortune of the late
Lord Chatham and Erskine: the former was sent into parliament and driven
into violent opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, because that minister had
deprived him of a company of horse, and dismissed him the service, an act
of which the minister had reason to repent. He was like the emblem of
envy with the recoiled dart in his own bosom; except Charles I., who
stopped Hampden and Cromwell from embarking upon the Thames to follow
liberty into the wilderness of America, no man had ever so much reason to
curse himself for his own acts. In the same manner a slight of Erskine's
claims to promotion sent him to display an eloquence that had never yet
been heard at the English bar. His fame as an advocate, drew the notice
of the Whig party on him; he was enlisted in their ranks and added an
importance to the opposition, which not unfrequently increased the
embarrassment of the minister. While he was held in suspense by those
who had the disposal of commissions, he was quartered at Maidstone, and
entering the court during the assizes there, was placed in his military
uniform upon the bench, beside the great Lord Mansfield, to whom he was
distantly related, and who at intervals of business, conversed with him
on the proposed change of arms for the gown. This was another of the
accidents which, by minds of a certain frame would be regarded as an
omen. After relating this anecdote, he added, "Only four years from that
time, I was at the place in the lead of that very circuit." All his
hopes of promotion at an end, the commission so unequal to the demands
for subsistance upon it, was disposed of, and he was at once entered a
student of the Law Society of Lincoln's Inn, and a Commoner at ---
College, Cambridge

* * * * *

A few days before he was called to the bar, a friend came and invited him
to accompany him to dine at the villa of a wine merchant, a few miles
from London. The allurements were a good dinner, and wine not to be
procured but by a dealer, who could cull his own stock from thousands of
pipes, and they were not to be resisted by a young man fond of pleasure,
to whom such luxuries must come gratuitously, if they come at all.
Economy, which was important to Erskine, was not quite beneath the regard
of his friend, and after many proposals of several modes of conveyance,
which were all rejected, either for their expense, or their humbleness,
they agreed