Ralph the Heir

ver risen to high office,--how, indeed, he could have thriven at his profession. But in such matters we are, all of us, too apt to form confident opinions on apparent causes which are near the surface, but which, as guides to character, are fallacious. Perhaps in all London there was no better lawyer, in his branch of law, than Sir Thomas Underwood. He had worked with great diligence; and though he was shy to a degree quite unintelligible to men in general in the ordinary intercourse of life, he had no feeling of diffidence when upon his legs in Court or in the House of Commons. With the Lord Chancellor's wife or daughters he could not exchange five words with comfort to himself,--nor with his lordship himself in a drawing-room; but in Court the Lord Chancellor was no more to him than another lawyer whom he believed to be not so good a lawyer as himself. No man had ever succeeded in browbeating him when panoplied in his wig and gown; nor had words ever been wanting to him when so arrayed. It had been suggeste