lected
on law papers, and with furniture that had been brown always, and had
become browner with years, were perhaps as unattractive to the eye of
a young pupil as any rooms which were ever entered. And the study of
the Chancery law itself is not an alluring pursuit till the mind has
come to have some insight into the beauty of its ultimate object.
Phineas, during his three years' course of reasoning on these things,
had taught himself to believe that things ugly on the outside might
be very beautiful within; and had therefore come to prefer crossing
Poland Street and Soho Square, and so continuing his travels by the
Seven Dials and Long Acre. His morning walk was of a piece with his
morning studies, and he took pleasure in the gloom of both. But now
the taste of his palate had been already changed by the glare of
the lamps in and about palatial Westminster, and he found that St.
Giles's was disagreeable. The ways about Pall Mall and across the
Park to Parliament Street, or to the Treasury, were much pleasanter,
and the new offices in Downing Street, already half built, absorbed
all that interest which he had hitherto been able to take in
the suggested but uncommenced erection of new Law Courts in the
neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn. As he made his way to the porter's
lodge under the great gateway of Lincoln's Inn, he told himself that
he was glad that he had escaped, at any rate for a while, from a life
so dull and dreary. If he could only sit in chambers at the Treasury
instead of chambers in that old court, how much pleasanter it would
be! After all, as regarded that question of income, it might well be
that the Treasury chambers should be the more remunerative, and the
more quickly remunerative, of the two. And, as he thought, Lady Laura
might be compatible with the Treasury chambers and Parliament, but
could not possibly be made compatible with Old Square, Lincoln's Inn.

But nevertheless there came upon him a feeling of sorrow when the
old man at the lodge seemed to be rather glad than otherwise that
he did not want the chambers. "Then Mr. Green can have them," said
the porter; "that'll be good news for Mr. Green. I don't know what
the gen'lemen 'll do for chambers if things goes on as they're
going." Mr. Green was welcome to the chambers as far as Phineas was
concerned; but Phineas felt nevertheless a certain amount of regret
that he should have been compelled to abandon a thing which was
regarded both by the por