lege of wearing a silk gown and a Queen's
Counsel wig.

There was, however, this difference between a Queen's Counsel and
the holder of a Patent of Precedence: that the former, having been
appointed one of her Majesty's Counsel, could not thenceforth appear
without special licence under the sign-manual of the Queen to defend a
prisoner upon a criminal charge. The Serjeant-at-Law is as rare now as
a bustard.

I mention these old-fashioned times and studies, not because of their
interest at the present day, but because they produced such men as
Littledale, Bayley, Parke (afterwards Lord Wensleydale), Alderson,
Tindal, Patteson, Wightman, Crompton, Vaughan Williams, James, Willes,
and, later, Blackburn.

The contemplation of these legal giants, amongst whom my career
commenced, somewhat checked the buoyant impulse which had urged me
onward at Quarter Sessions, but at the same time imparted a little
modest desire to imitate such incomparable models. Those of them who
were selected from the junior Bar were good examples of men whose vast
knowledge of law was acquired in the way I have indicated, and who
were chosen on their merits alone.

But even these successful examples, however encouraging to the
student, were, nevertheless, not ill-calculated to make a young
barrister whose income was small, and sometimes, as in my case, by no
means _assured_ to him, sicken at the thought that, study as he liked,
years might pass, and probably would, before a remunerative practice
came to cheer him. Perhaps it would never come at all, and he would
become, like so many hundreds of others of his day and ours, a
hopeless failure. All were competitors for the briefs and even the
smiles of solicitors; for without their favour none could succeed,
although he might unite in himself all the qualities of lawyer and
advocate.

The prospect was not exhilarating for any one who had to perform the
drudgery of the first few years of a junior's life; nevertheless,
I was not cast down by the mere apprehension, or rather the mere
possibility of failure, for when I looked round on my competitors I
was encouraged by the thought that dear old Woollet knew more about a
rate appeal than Littledale himself, while old Peter Ryland, with his
inimitable Saxon, was quite as good at the irremovability of a pauper
as Codd was in accounting for the illegal removal of a duck, and both
in their several branches of knowledge more learned than Alderson or
Bayley