Still pressed, as indeed he was, his spirit had by no means lost its elasticity, supported as he was by a powerful, an unconquerable WILL--and also by a devout reliance upon the protection of Providence. Though law is indeed an exhausting and absorbing study, and it was pursued by Mr. Aubrey with unflagging energy, yet he found time (those who choose may find time enough for everything) to contribute sensibly to the support of himself and his family by literary labors, expended principally upon compositions of an historical and political character, and which were forwarded from time to time to the distinguished Review which has been already mentioned. To produce, as he produced, articles of this description--of considerable length and frequency--requiring ready, extensive, and accurate knowledge, and careful composition; original and vigorous in their conception and their execution, and by their intrinsic merit arresting, immediately on their appearance, the attention of the public; I say, to do such things--and only in those precious intervals which ought to have been given to the relaxation of his strained mental and physical powers--and under the pressure, too, of such overpowering anxieties as were his--argued surely the possession of superior energies--of an indomitable resolution. All this while, moreover, he contrived to preserve an unruffled _temper_--which, with a man of such sensibilities as his, afforded indeed a signal instance of self-control; and in short, on all these grounds, Mr. Aubrey appears really entitled to our deepest sympathy and respect. I spoke of his anxieties. Suppose, thought he, health should fail him, what was to become of him, and of those absolutely dependent upon him? Suppose illness should invade the dear members of his family, what was in prospect but destitution--or surrendering them up--bitter and heart-breaking contingency!--to the precarious _charity_ of others. What would avail all his exhausting labors in the acquisition of professional knowledge, while his liberty was entirely at the command of Mr. Titmouse, and Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, who might, at any moment, actuated by mercenary motives, or impelled by caprice, blight all his prospects, and incarcerate him in a prison! Yet, under this burden--to adopt the language of Sir Henry Spelman on an analogous occasion, "_non ingentem solum, sed perpetuis humeris sustinendum_"--Mr. Aubrey stood firmly. He felt that he was called upon to sustain it; a blessed spirit ever, as it were, beside him, whispering the consolatory assurance, that all this was ordered and designed by the Supreme Disposer of events, as a _trial_ of his constancy, and of his faith, and that the _issue_ was with HIM. It is mercifully ordained, that "hope springs eternal in the human breast," and that, too, in every turn and variety of mortal misery. It was so with Aubrey. So long as he felt his health unimpaired,