at
appealing to the feelings, or offering spiritual comfort, or attracting
the sympathies of the poor and ignorant. Substantially I think that he
was perfectly right not only in the conclusion but in the grounds upon
which it was based. He was a lawyer by nature, and would have been a
most awkward and cross-grained piece of timber to convert into a
priest. He points himself to such cases as Swift, Warburton, and Sydney
Smith to show the disadvantage of a secular man in a priest's vestments.

When his mind was made up, Fitzjames communicated his decision to his
father. The dangerous illness of 1850 had thrown his father into a
nervous condition which made him unable to read the quaint treatise I
have described. He appears, however, to have argued that a man might
fairly take orders with a view to literary work in the line of his
profession. Fitzjames yielded this ground but still held to the main
point. His father, though troubled, made no serious objection, and only
asked him to reconsider his decision and to consult Henry Venn. Henry
Venn wrote a letter, some extracts from which are appended to the volume
with characteristic comments. Venn was too sensible a man not to see
that Fitzjames had practically made up his mind. I need only observe
that Fitzjames, in reply to some hints in his uncle's letter, observes
very emphatically that a man may be serving God at the bar as in the
pulpit. His career was now fixed. 'I never did a wiser thing in my
life,' says 1865, 'than when I determined not to be a clergyman.'
'Amen!' says 1880, and I am sure that no other year in the calendar
would have given a different answer. 'If anyone should ever care to know
what sort of man I was then,' says Fitzjames in 1887, 'and, _mutatis
mutandis_, am still, that paper ought to be embodied by reference in
their recollections.'

Fitzjames took a lodging in London, for a year or so, and then joined my
father at Westbourne Terrace. He entered at the Inner Temple, and was
duly called to the bar on January 26, 1854. His legal education, he
says, was very bad. He was for a time in the chambers of Mr. (now Lord)
Field, then the leading junior on the Midland Circuit, but it was on the
distinct understanding that he was to receive no direct instruction
from his tutor. He was also in the chambers of a conveyancer. I learnt,
he says, 'a certain amount of conveyancing, but in a most mechanical,
laborious, wooden kind of way, which had no advantage at al