An analysis of the opinions of my eccentric friend would be an entertaining thing. “The best situation in town” has been found successively in nearly every street between the Regent’s Park and St. James’s Square; “the best carriage for a bachelor” has gone to-day on two wheels and to-morrow on four; “the best servant in Christendom” has been turned off, within my own knowledge, for insolence, for intoxication, for riding his master’s horse, and for riding his master’s inexplicables; and “the best fellow in the world” has been at various periods deep in philosophy and deep in debt--a frequenter of the Fives Court and a dancer of quadrilles--a Tory and a Republican--a prebendary and a Papist--a drawer of dry pleadings and a singer of sentimental serenades. If I had acted upon Volant’s advice, I should have been to-day subscribing to every club and taking in every newspaper; I should have been imbibing the fluids of nine wine merchants, and covering my outward man with the broadcloth of thirteen tailors. It is a pity that Volant has been prevented by indolence, a doting mother, and four thousand a year, from applying his energies to the attainment of any professional distinction. In a variety of courses he might have commanded success. A cause might have come into court stained and spotted with every conceivable infamy, with effrontery for its crest, falsehood for its arms, and perjuries for its supporters; but if Volant had been charged with the advocacy of it, his delighted eye would have winked at every deficiency, and slumbered at every fault; in his sight weakness would have sprung up into strength, deformity would have faded into beauty, impossibility would have been sobered into fact. Every plaintiff, in his showing, would have been wronged irreparably; every defendant would have been as unsullied as snow. His would have been the most irreproachable of declarations, his the most impregnable of pleas. The reporters might have tittered, the bar might have smiled, the bench might have shaken its heads; nothing would have persuaded him that he was beaten. He would have thought the battle won, when his lines were forced at all points; he would have deemed the house secure, when the timbers were creaking under his feet. It would have been delicious, when his strongest objection had been overruled, when his clearest argument had been stopped, when his stoutest witness had broken down, to see him adjusting his gown with a self-satisfied air, and concluding with all the emphasis of anticipated triumph, “That is _my_ case, my Lord!”