the young Templar, who has borne away the first
honors of his university, deems himself the object of a compliment on
receiving an invitation to contribute to the columns of a leading review
or daily journal--it is difficult to believe that strong men are still
amongst us who can remember the days when it was the fashion of the bar
to disdain law-students who were suspected of 'writing for hire' and
barristers who 'reported for the papers.' Throughout the opening years
of the present century, and even much later, it was almost universally
held on the circuits and in Westminster Hall, that Inns-of-Court men
lowered the dignity of their order by following those literary
avocations by which some of the brightest ornaments of the law supported
themselves at the outset of their professional careers. Notwithstanding
this prejudice, a few wearers of the long robe, daring by nature, or
rendered bold by necessity, persisted in 'maintaining a connexion with
the press, whilst they sought briefs on the circuit, or waited for
clients in their chambers. Such men as Sergeant Spankie and Lord
Campbell, as Master Stephen and Mr. Justice Talfourd, were reporters for
the press whilst they kept terms; and no sooner had Henry Brougham's
eloquence charmed the public, than it was whispered that for years his
pen, no less ready than his tongue, had found constant employment in
organs of political intelligence.

But though such men were known to exist, they were regarded as the
'black sheep' of the bar by a great majority of their profession. It is
not improbable that this prejudice against gownsmen on the press was
palliated by circumstances that no longer exist. When political writers
were very generally regarded as dangerous members of society, and when
conductors of respectable newspapers were harassed with vexatious
prosecutions and heavy punishments for acts of trivial inadvertence, or
for purely imaginary offences, the average journalist was in many
respects inferior to the average journalist working under the present
more favorable circumstances. Men of culture, honest purpose, and fine
feeling were slow to enrol themselves members of a despised and
proscribed fraternity; and in the dearth of educated gentlemen ready to
accept literary employment, the task of writing for the public papers
too frequently devolved upon very unscrupulous persons, who rendered
their calling as odious as themselves. A shackled and persecuted press
is always