l, except
that it gave me some familiarity with deeds and abstracts. My tutor was
a pure conveyancer; so I saw nothing of equity drafting. I worked very
hard with him, however, but I was incapable of being taught and he of
teaching.' The year 1852 was memorable for the Act which altered the old
system of special pleading. 'The new system was by no means a bad
one.... I never learnt it, at least not properly, and while I ought to
have been learning, I was still under the spell of an unpractical frame
of mind which inclined me to generalities and vagueness, and had in it a
vast deal of laziness. When I look back on these times, I feel as if I
had been only half awake or had not come to my full growth, though I was
just under twenty-five when I was called. How I ever came to be a
moderately successful advocate, still more to be a rather distinguished
judge, is to me a mystery. I managed, however, to get used to legal ways
of looking at things and to the form and method of legal arguments.' He
was at the same time going through an apprenticeship to journalism, of
which it will be more convenient to speak in the next chapter. It is
enough to say for the present that his first efforts were awkward and
unsuccessful. After he was called to the bar, he read for the LL.B.
examination of the University of London; and not only obtained the
degree but enjoyed his only University success by winning a scholarship.
One of his competitors was the present Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. This
performance is connected with some very important passages in his
development.

He had made some intimate friendships beyond the apostolic circle, of
whom Grant Duff was one of the first. They had already met at the rooms
of Charles Henry Pearson, one of my brother's King's College
friends.[60] Grant Duff was for a long time in very close intimacy, and
the friendship lasted for their lives, uninterrupted by political
differences. They were fellow-pupils in Field's chambers, were on
circuit together for a short time till Grant Duff gave up the
profession; and their marriages only brought new members into the
alliance. I must confine myself to saying that my brother's frequent
allusions prove that he fully appreciated the value of this friendship.
Another equally intimate friendship of the same date was with Henry John
Stephen Smith.[61] Smith was a godson of my uncle, Henry John Stephen.
He and his sister had been from very early years on terms of especia