Lord Kingsdowns Recollections of His Life At the Bar And in Parliament

n, a n d f o r faciliity of reading, I have caused a fm copies on of the following pages to 6e printed and I intreat those who receive them to consider them confidential. TORR H Y I LL A , pril, 1868. Tmy Hill, 25th May, 1857. HAVE often regretted never having kept a journal in the course of my long life. During the greater portion of it, indeed, I was too much occupied to allow time for the purpose but when I left the Bar, at Christmas, I 843y I might have begun to do so, and have set down the recollections of an earlier period. It is now too late to repair the neglect but it may amuse my old agey and form some instruction for any member of my family who may hereafter engage in the same profession with my own, if I note some of the circumstances which have attended a life-for many years-of more uninterrupted prosperity than has often fallkn to the lot of man. B 2 L o r d J i gsdow z R e s c ollections. Its dawn was far from prohising so bright a day. My father, who was at the Chancery Bar, died in I 804, at a time when he had attained to very considerable business, but before he had been able to lay by any large sum. I collect from his fee-books that he must have been making about g2000 a year-3 good professional income for a junior in Chancery in those days, when fees seem to have been at least a third less in amount than they were in my time. My mother was left with fire children, three sons and two daughters, with not more than 35500 a year for their support and education, though her income received an augmentation of about g 2 0 0 a year in I 806, on the death of her parents my grandmother surviving her husband only a few months. My father by his will appointed Mr. Cooke who had married my mothers sister, together with my mother, guardians of his children. I was eleven years old at L OF d Kingsdowns RecoZZections. 3 his death, and had been sent before I was seven to a large school at Chiswick, kept by Dr. Horne, who had above a hundred scholars, with a view of being transferred to Westminster, and afterwards to Oxford. My mothers scanty income prevented this plan from being carried out. I remained at Chiswick till I was removed from school altogether, at Easter, I 809, when I was but just sixteen. Mr. Farrer, a very old friend of our family, took me into his office for twelve months, at the expiration of which time I went as pupil to my uncle, Mr. Cooke, in whose chambers I remained for five years. I have frequently considered with myself whether this change in my education tended to my ultimate success or otherwise. At that time nothing but classical literature was taught at public schools for this I had always a liking. Mr. Horne, who succeeded his father at Chiswick, was a very good scholar, with the talent, and, unfortunately, with the temper of his family. I had gone through something more than the usual routine of schoolbooks before I left his charge and when I was my own master, knowing that from my defective education any blunders I might commit would be the more rigorously marked, and my ignorance be held to be even greater than it was, I devoted myself with some assiduity to the study of Greek and Latin authors... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.