The failure to obtain a fellowship broke off any design which may have been entertained of an academic career, and Maitland, following the family example, returned to London to try his fortune at the bar. Men of high academic achievement sometimes fail in the practical professions, by reason of a certain abstract habit of mind or from an engrained unsociability of temperament. Neither of these disadvantages affected Maitland. A combined training in philosophy and law had given him just that capacity for deriving principles from the facts of experience, and of using the facts of experience as the touchstone of principles, which is essential to the adroit and intelligent use of legal science; and for all his learning and zeal there was nothing harsh and unsocial about him. On the other hand he was completely deficient in the moral alloy which appears to be an essential element in the fabric of most successful careers. He was entirely destitute of the arts of "push" or advertisement, and so disinterested and self-effacing that a world which is accustomed to take men at their own valuation was not likely to seize his measure. Maitland entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1872 and was called to the bar in 1876, reading first with Mr Upton and afterwards with Mr B. B. Rogers, the brilliant translator and editor of Aristophanes. "I had only one vacancy," writes Mr Rogers, "in my pupil room and that was about to be filled by a very distinguished young Cambridge scholar. But he was anxious--stipulated I think--that I should also take his friend Maitland. I did not much like doing so, for I considered four pupils as many as I could properly take, and I knew nothing of Maitland and supposed that he would prove the crude and awkward person that a new pupil usually is, however capable he may be, and however distinguished he may become in later life. However, I agreed to take him as a fifth pupil, and he had not been with me a week before I found that I had in my chambers such a lawyer as I had never met before. I have forgotten, if I ever knew, where and how he acquired his mastery of law; he certainly did not acquire it in my chambers: he was a consummate lawyer when he entered them. Every opinion that he gave was a complete legal essay, starting from first principles, showing how the question agreed with one, and disagreed with another, series of decisions and finally coming to a conclusion with the clearest grasp of legal points and the utmost lucidity of expression. I may add (and though this is a small point it is of importance in a barrister's chambers) that it was given in a handwriting which it was always a pleasure to read. He must have left me in 1877, and towards the end of 1879, my health being in a somewhat precarious state, and my medical advisers insisting on my lessening the strain of my work, I at once asked Maitland to come in and superintend my business. He gave up his own chambers and took a