The boyhood and youth of the Advertising Barrister will have been passed in comparative obscurity. The merchant who relieved the monotony of a large and profitable wholesale business by treating him as a son, impressed upon him at an early age the necessity of making the family history illustrious by soaring beyond commerce to professional distinction and a fixed income. In furtherance of this scheme the son was sent to pick up a precarious education at a neighbouring day-school, where he astonished his companions by his ease in mastering the polite literature of the ancients and the vulgar fractions of Mr. BARNARD SMITH, and delighted his masters by the zeal with which he generally took his stand on the side of authority. Having, however, in the course of a school examination been detected in the illicit use of a volume of Bohn's Library, he was called upon for an explanation, and, after failing to satisfy his examiners that he meant only to reflect credit upon the school by the accuracy of his translations, he was advised to leave at the end of the term. After a short interval spent in the society of a coach, he entered a fast College at one of our ancient Universities, and, being possessed of a fairly comfortable allowance, soon distinguished himself by the calculating ardour with which he affected the acquaintance of young men of rank, and shared in the fashionable pleasures of the place. Recognising that amidst the careless and easy-going generosity of undergraduate society, he who has a cool and scheming head is usually able to tip the balance of good luck in his own favour, he lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself with those who might be of service to him. He cultivated a fluent style of platitudes and claptrap at his college debating society, and at the Union, to the committee of which he was elected after prolonged and assiduous canvassing. Having managed to be proctorised in company with the eldest son of a peer, whom he delighted by the studied impertinence of his answers to the Proctor, he eventually went down with a pass degree and a mixed reputation, and, after the orthodox number of dinners, and the regulation examination, had the satisfaction of seeing his name published in the list of those who, having acquired a smattering of Roman and English law, were entitled, for a consideration, to aid litigants with their counsel.