that he set up no monopoly, himself, in being unjustly treated by this monstrous system.
" There again ! " said Mr. Gridley, with no diminution of his rage, " The system ! I am told, on all hands, it's the system. I mustn't look to individuals. It's the system. I mustn't go into Court,—and say, ' My Lord, I beg to know this from you—is this right or wrong ? Have you the face to tell me I have received justice, and therefore am dismissed ? ' My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there, to administer the system. I mustn't go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious, by being so cool and satisfied—as they all do ; for I know they gain by it while I lose, don't I ?—I mustn't say to him, I will have something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul ! He is not responsible. It's the system. But, if I do no violence to any of them, here—I may ! I don't know what may happen if I am carried beyond myself at last !—I will accuse the individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar ! "
His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage without seeing it.
" I have done ! " he said, sitting down and wiping his face. " Mr. Jarndyce, I have done ! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I have been in prison for contempt of Court. I have been in prison for threatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I sometimes go beyond amusing them—though they have found it amusing, too, to see me committed into custody, and brought up in custody, and all that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained myself. I tell them, that if I did restrain myself, I should become imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in my part of the country, say, they remember me so ; but, now, I must have this vent under my sense of injury, or nothing could hold my wits together. ' It would be far better for you, Mr. Gridley,' the Lord Chancellor told me last week, ' not to waste your time here, and to stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.' ' My Lord, my Lord, I know it would,' said I to him, ' and it would have been far better for me never to have heard the name of your high office ; but, unhappily for me, I can't undo the past, and the past drives me here ! '—Besides," he added, breaking fiercely out, " I'll shame them. To the last, I'll shew myself in that court to its shame. If I knew when I was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to speak with, I would die there, saying, ' You have brought me here, and sent me from here, many and many a time. Now send me out, feet foremost ! ' "
His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was quiet.
" I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour," he said, going to them again, " and let them play about. I didn't mean to say all this, but it don't much signify. You're not afraid of me, Tom; are you? "
" No ! " said Tom. " You ain't angry with me."
" You are right, my child. You're going back, Charley ? Aye ? Come then, little one I " He took the youngest child on his arm, where she
