We have now started our hero fairly in his profession, and we must refer to the book itself for his adventures in practice. No less than eleven chapters are devoted to this part of his life, and yet the volume before us, although separately published, is only the _first_ volume. We have said and quoted enough to shew that Mr Cox possesses in an eminent degree the versatility of talent so necessary in a literary man of the present day; and we lay down the _Advocate_ with the conviction, that it possesses much that is new, suggestive, wholesome, and instructive, as well as much that is interesting and entertaining. FOOTNOTES: [1] The _Somerset County Gazette_. [2] _The Advocate, his Training, Practice, Rights, and Duties._ By Edward W. Cox, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. London: Law Times Office. 1852. A NIGHT ADVENTURE. I will tell you all about an affair--important as it proved to me; but you must not hurry me. I have never been in a hurry since then, and never will. Up till that time inclusive, I was always in a hurry; my actions always preceded my thoughts; experience was of no use; and anybody would have supposed me destined to carry a young head upon old shoulders to the grave. However, I was brought up at last 'with a round turn.' I was allowed a certain space for reflection, and plenty of materials; and if it did not do me good, it's a pity! My father and mother both died when I was still a great awkward boy; and I, being the only thing they had to bequeath, became the property of a distant relation. I do not know how it happened, but I had no near relations. I was a kind of waif upon the world from the beginning; and I suppose it was owing to my having no family anchorage that I acquired the habit of swaying to and fro, and drifting hither and thither, at the pleasure of wind and tide. Not that my guardian was inattentive or unkind--quite the reverse; but he was indolent and careless, contenting himself with providing abundantly for my schooling and my pocket, and leaving everything else to chance. He would have done the same thing to his own son if he had had one, and he did the same thing to his own daughter. But girls somehow cling wherever they are cast--anything is an anchorage for them; and as Laura grew up, she gave the care she had never found, and was the little mother of the whole house. As for the titular mother, she had not an atom of character of any kind. She might have been a picture, or a vase, or anything else that is useless except to the taste or the affections. But mamma was indispensable. It is a vulgar error to suppose that people who have nothing in them are nobody in a house. Our mamma was the very centre and point of our home feelings; and it was strange to observe the devout care we took of a personage, who had not two ideas in her head.