Here begins the long, unbroken series of his labors in literature and philology, running side by side with the daily, untiring business of his profession. It is easy to believe, that, notwithstanding his undissembled predilection for jurisprudence as a _science_, he was drawn towards its _practice_ by the compulsion of duty rather than by any attraction it possessed for him. Not removed by fortune from the necessity, to which Dr. Johnson so pathetically alludes, of providing for the day that was passing over him, he could indulge his taste for study only in hours secured by diligence from the inroads of business or refused to the seductions of pleasure. Since the oration for Archias, perhaps no lawyer ever lived who could have uttered with greater truth the inspiring words with which, in that remarkable production, the Roman orator confessed and vindicated the cultivation of letters: "Me autem quid pudeat, qui tot annos ita vivo, judices, ut ab nullius unquam me tempore aut commodo aut otium meum abstraxerit, aut voluptas avocârit, aut denique somnus retardârit? Quare quis tandem me reprehendat, aut quis mihi jure succenseat, si, quantum cæteris ad suas res obeundas, quantum ad festos dies ludorum celebrandos, quantum ad alias voluptates, et ad ipsam requiem animi et corporis conceditur temporum, quantum alii tribuunt tempestivis conviviis, quantum denique aleæ, quantum pilæ, tantum mihi egomet ad hæc studia recolenda sumpsero?"[143] [143] Pro Archia, c. 6. In his life may be seen two streams flowing side by side, as through a long tract of country: one fed by the fresh fountains high up in the mountain-tops, whose waters leap with delight on their journey to the sea; while the other, having its sources low down in the valleys, among the haunts of men, moves with reluctant, though steady, current onward. Mr Pickering's days were passed in the performance of all the duties of a wide and various practice, first at Salem, and afterwards at Boston. He resided at the former place till 1827, when he removed to the metropolis, where two years afterwards he became City Solicitor, an office whose arduous labors he continued to discharge until within a few months of his death. There is little worthy of notice in the ordinary incidents of professional life. What Blackstone aptly calls "the pert dispute" renews itself in infinitely varying form. Some new turn of litigation calls forth some new effort of learning or skill, calculated to serve its temporary purpose, and, like the manna which fell in the desert, perishing on the day that beholds it. The unambitious labors of which the world knows nothing, the advice to clients, the drawing of contracts, the perplexities of conveyancing furnish still less of interest than ephemeral displays of the court-room.