whether he thinks I even understand them.


COURTS AND COURT LIFE.

We then talked over Cheltenham and our way of life, and then ran
into discourse upon Courts and Court life in general. I frankly
said I liked them not, and that, if I had the direction of any
young person's destination, I would never risk them into such a
mode of living; for, though Vices may be as well avoided there as
anywhere 'and in this Court particularly, there were mischiefs of
a smaller kind, extremely pernicious to all nobleness of
character, to which this Court, with all its really bright
examples, was as liable as any other,--the mischiefs of jealousy,
narrowness, and selfishness.

He did not see, he said, when there was a place of settled income
and appropriated business why it might not be filled both with
integrity and content in a Court as well as elsewhere. Ambition,
the desire of rising, those, he said, were the motives that envy
which set such little passions in motion. One situation,
however, there was, he said, which he looked upon as truly
dangerous, and as almost certain to pervert the fairest
disposition- it was one in which he would not place any person
for whom he had the smallest regard, as he looked upon it to

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be the greatest hazard a character could run. This was, being
maid of honour.