_Suppose_, therefore, good and gentle reader, a schoolmaster, established in a country town of no great celebrity, but which still furnished him with so much employment, that attention to his business enabled him to educate his two sons at a public school. Suppose this good man to die, and his widow again to marry respectably, and settle finally in the metropolis. Suppose the elder son, though of infirm health, to marry a woman of large fortune, a valetudinarian like himself.—It is no extravagant effort of imagination to conceive both of these personages to pay the debt of nature, and the surviving brother to become the inheritor of the possessions of them both. Here we appear to have advanced a few steps up the ladder. Now then, let us suppose the surviving brother called to the bar, and, by abilities and assiduity to which the bar has affixed a jocular name, to obtain progressively a considerable practice.—Are we not mounting still higher? Now, then, let us picture to ourselves a great, a very great man, possessing the disposal of seats in a certain assembly, usually understood to display the most inviting avenues to fame and fortune. Fancy this great man, in perplexity from some unexpected accident how to supply the loss of a _friend_, vacating one of these seats, with an individual, who by no means must be inferior to his predecessor in obsequious attention to his patron’s political interests, his intentions, and injunctions. Accident, the veriest accident, might introduce the practitioner of the law to _huggery_ of another kind.—What think you now, good people? are we not in a fair way to get to the top of the ladder? Conceive us, then, permanently fixed in this same honourable assembly; and a combination of talent and diligence, a proper degree of well-timed flexibility, with a due proportion of smiles and bows, may easily be supposed to accomplish all the rest. But that which is to succeed can surely never be _supposed_. Can it be _supposed_, that one so favoured by a concurrence of fortunate events, should treat with neglect those to whose interposition and recommendation, he immediately owed his greatness? Can it be _supposed_, that he was detested by his dependants, for the most unrestrained insolence and intolerable arrogance? Can it be believed, that the friends and play-mates of his boyish days, equals to him in ability, far, very far superior in merit, should be contumeliously kept at an awful distance, sometimes oppressed with an assumed condescension, at others disgusted at unconcealed haughtiness? Can it be imagined, that when local circumstances assigned to him a division of influence and authority, in conjunction with individuals of high hereditary rank, he should proudly assume a pre-eminence; should direct, dictate, issue his imperial fiats, mandates, and decrees, and make all bow before his golden image?