change in the arrangements of Edmond. But having now none whose wishes it was necessary to consult, or whose opinions carried control, he seems to have contemplated withdrawal from the Bar, and the adoption of a more quiet and studious career.
The turmoil of contentious life, the power to bait or to endure daily baiting in the courts, was probably not to his taste. It was provoking to take the side he was paid for, not that which he preferred—to enter for hours on a warfare of words which should endeavour to make that right which he could not but suspect or know to be wrong. He had not yet, perhaps, arrived at the conviction, that those were mere tricks of trade, of being to the ear what conjuring is to the eye, efforts to make things appear as they are not; and therefore adverse to the taste of a straightforward man. The state of his heart—that impressible and unsophisticated organ as it proved to be—no doubt had its weight; and when these were balanced against London society, authors, letters, libraries, and repositories of every learned pursuit for learned or studious men, we cannot wonder at the preference at length given to the English metropolis.
Of his early attachment to the literature of the stage we are left in no doubt. During his visits to
priority of birth and seniority of age.” These estates, all acquired by the practice of law, have become largely the prey of law. Richard (Lord Sunderlin afterward) did not strictly fulfil his uncle’s injunction. Upon his death in 1816, his sisters claimed the estates. Their right became contested; and when 10,000l. had been spent in legal proceedings, a compromise gave them 3,000l. a year for life, upon surrendering the estates. Further litigation ensued, as successive deaths occurred, between claimants legitimate and illegitimate; and the estates have been at intervals, and are still (1859), before Parliament and the courts of law.
