By this time he had given up the idea of qualifying himself to purchase one of the clerkships in chancery, and determined to join the bar. On May 3, 1778, he was enrolled a member of Gray's Inn; and a year afterwards he thus wrote of his purpose and ambition: "The business of my life will be to render service to my country and my fellow-citizens; it is my duty, however fruitless my efforts should prove, not to lose courage, but constantly to aspire to a degree of eminence which will give a large field to my industry." He adds: "This would, I know, with the world pass for a philosophic apology for vanity and ambition, but I hope from you I am not to expect the judgment of the world." 1

In the meantime he continued his reading and literary exercises more enthusiastically than ever; his aim was to acquire a wide general knowledge, and for this purpose he made excellent and systematic use of a commonplace-book. He did his utmost to form a correct, clear, precise, elegant style. He persevered in his translations from Latin authors; wrote, anonymously, political essays for the press; and to gain facility of oral utterance he expressed to himself in the best language possible whatever he had been reading, and whilst walking or riding composed replies to speeches he had heard in the Houses of Parliament. What with the arduous application to his studies and much anxiety due to extraneous sources his health was impaired; and so, in 1780, he went to Bath for the "cure," which left him worse. After his return to London, the Gordon riots broke out. "The Inns of Court," he says, "were marked out objects of destruction; and Gray's Inn, in which many Catholics resided, was particularly obnoxious. . . . The barristers and students of the different Inns of Court determined to arm themselves in their own defence." 2 Illness and a delicate constitution notwithstanding, he remained a whole night in arms, and for several hours stood as a sentry at the Holborn gate. His bad health became worse through the exposure and the excitement; and the whole of the following winter he was in a feeble condition. During his convalescence he applied himself to the study of Italian, as his doctor forbade him to read any books but such as were merely amusing, and soon afterwards was able to read some of the works of Machiavelli, whose black picture of human nature he deprecated and ascribed to the author's 1 From a letter, dated June 17, 1779, quoted by Sir William Collins, The Life and Work of Sir Samuel Romilly, pp. 20, 21.

ย Memoirs, vol. i, p. 51.

insufficient experience of men, and also the treatise of Beccaria, which opened his eyes to the necessity of criminal law reform. In a letter to Roget, March 1, 1782, he points out some of the shortcomings of the Italian criminal law reformer: "I have lately read a second time Beccaria on Crimes and Punishments, a favourite book, I know, of yours, and I think deservedly. But does not the author too often reason by analogy to his favourite mathematics? Are not his observations sometimes too subtle? And what do you think of the principle on which he relies so much, that crimes are to be measured by the injury they do to the state, without regard to the malignity of the will?"1 Romilly's mind was at this time brooding over this question of ameliorating the penal system, which was ere long to provide him with the grand occupation of his life. To the same correspondent he wrote, May 22, 1781, in admiration of the noble work of Howard, which offered him an additional stimulus: "Have you ever heard of a book published here some time since by a Mr. Howard, on the state of the prisons in England and in several other countries of Europe? You may conjecture from the subject that it is not a book of great literary merit; but it has a merit infinitely superior. It is one of those works which have been rare in all ages of the world; it is written with a view only to the good of mankind. The author was some time ago a sheriff in the country; in the execution of that office, a number of instances of abuses practised in the prisons came under his observation. Shocked with what he saw, he began to inquire whether the prisons in the adjacent counties were on a better footing. Finding everywhere the same injustice prevail, he resolved-a private individual-to attempt to reform abuses which he found were as general as they were shocking to humanity. Accordingly he made a visit to every prison and house of correction in England with invincible perseverance and courage; for some of the prisons were so infected with diseases and putrid air, that he was obliged to hold a cloth steeped in vinegar to his nostrils during the whole time he remained in them, and to change his clothes the moment he returned. After having devoted so much time to this painful employment here, he set out on a tour through a great part of Holland, Germany, and Switzerland 2 to visit their prisons. What a singular journey!

1 Speeches, Introductory Memoir, p. xxix.

'Howard had already visited also Austria, Italy, France; and at the very time Romilly was writing, the great philanthropist was on a tour of inspection in Denmark, Sweden, and Russia.

not to admire the wonders of art and nature, not to visit courts and ape their manners, but to dive into dungeons, to compare the misery of men in different countries, to study the arts of mitigating the torment of mankind! What a contrast might be drawn between the painful labour of this man, and the ostentatious sensibility which turns aside from scenes of misery, and with the mockery of a few barren tears, leaves it to seek comfort in its own distresses!" 1

In the meantime Romilly spent the long vacation of the year 1781 on the Continent. In Switzerland he met Dumont, who was then a Protestant parson championing the cause of the popular party in Geneva as against the aristocratic section, and who was later to achieve European fame as a publicist. In Paris Romilly made the acquaintance of many people, notably D'Alembert and Diderot. Diderot talked to him on politics, on religion, ostentatiously avowing a disbelief in the existence of a Supreme Being, and spoke bitterly of Rousseau and of the expected Confessions. D'Alembert he describes as cold and reserved. Romilly-a young man of twenty-four-does not appear to have been favourably impressed by the communications and attitude of these veteran Encyclopædists. But his recollections of Madame Delessert, a friend of Rousseau, were very pleasant. Thinking of her kindness to him, he wrote thirty years later (after fifteen years of a supremely happy married life): "There is nothing, indeed, by which I have through life more profited than by the just observations, the good opinion, the sincere and gentle encouragement of amiable and sensible women." At the end of the vacation he was back in London; and in a letter to his friends at Lausanne he dwelt enthusiastically on the scenes he had visited and his delightful experiences, on Geneva, Lausanne, Vevey and the Grande Chartreuse, on being "sprinkled with the dews of the waterfall near Chamberry," on "leaning over the parapet mentioned by Rousseau, and gazing at the torrent which tumbles at a prodigious depth amidst the rocks below, and, like him, throwing down stones, to see them beat against the sides of the mountains and dash in the water." His account of what he observed in Paris throws an interesting sidelight on the development of his mind at this time, apart from furnishing valuable evidence as to the condition of affairs in France: "In › Memoirs, vol. i, pp. 169, 170. • Ibid., p. 63. As to these and their colleagues, see supra, on Beccaria, chap. ii. Memoirs, vol. i, p. 66.

the little I have seen of the French, I have found them to be much less gay than they are commonly said to be. They are merry and serious by starts, but they are strangers to cheerfulness, and still more to serenity of temper." From the assertions as to the greater mirth and gaiety appearing on their countenances than on those of the English, one is to conclude that the French are a happier nation than the English, and consequently that a despotic government is preferable to a free one. I greatly doubt the happiness of the French; but if they are happy, they are more to be pitied than if they had been discontented, because, in their situation, it is not possible they can be happy till their souls are debased to a level with their condition. Slaves must be insensible indeed to the misery and ignominy of their state, when they can hug the chains that dishonour them, and lick the feet by which they are trampled on. Such men can never taste of real happiness; to them all its genuine sources are dried up. It is ever the policy of a tyrant to enervate the minds of his subjects, and to give them a fondness for false grandeur and empty pleasures. When he has once wrought this change in their dispositions, he may at an easy price glut them with all that they are greedy after. They will never feel the want of pleasure which they no longer have souls to enjoy. So it was in the worse days of the Roman Empire; its tyrants fed a populace, whom they had rendered stupid and sensual, with offals and gaudy shows. . . . At Versailles I assisted at the Mass. The service was very short, though it was on a Sunday; for kings are so highly respected in France, that even religion appoints for them less tedious ceremonies than what it enjoins the people to observe. The moment his majesty appeared, the drums beat and shook the temple, as if they had been to announce the approach of a conqueror. During the whole time of saying Mass, the choristers sung, sometimes in chorus, sometimes in single parts. In the front seats of the galleries were ranged the ladies of the court, glowing with rouge and gorgeously apparelled, to enjoy and form a part of the showy spectacle. The king laughed and spied at the ladies. Every eye was fixed on the personages of the court, every ear was attentive to the notes of the singers, while the priest, who in the meantime went on with the exercise of his office, was unheeded by all. Even when the Host was lifted up, none observed it; and if the people knelt, it was because they were admonished by the ringing of the bell; and

even in that attitude all were endeavouring to get a glimpse of the king."1

Romilly's interest in his own country-its laws, institutions, government, social conditions, foreign relations-was of course pre-eminent. He frequently attended the debates in parliament, and sent his friends in Switzerland summaries of the arguments, descriptions of the leading members and of the state of political parties, accounts of the affairs of our Indian empire, of the origin, progress, and conclusion of the American, French, and Dutch wars, and details of other events.

On the last day of Easter term, 1783, he was called to the bar. The feelings with which he approached his chosen profession are expressed in some of his private letters written at this time. In one of these he writes that he is beginning his career with diffidence, with the consciousness that his friends have formed too high an opinion of him. "I have taught myself, however, a very useful lesson of practical philosophy, which is, not to suffer my happiness to depend on my success. Should my wishes be gratified, I promise myself to employ all the talents, and all the authority I may acquire, for the public good-patriæ impendere vitam.' Should I fail in my pursuit, I console myself with thinking that the humblest situation of life has its duties, which one must feel a satisfaction in discharging, that at least my conscience will bear me the pleasing testimony of having intended well, and that, after all, true happiness is much less likely to be found in the high walks of ambition, than in the 'secretum iter et fallentis semita vitæ."" a

In the summer of 1783 his highly esteemed brother-in-law, Roget, died. His consolatory letters to his sister show a brother's tender solicitude, and a youth's noble aspirations tinged with sad, though calm and trustful, resignation. "It is we," he writes, "who are deprived of the society and friendship of the tenderest, the most amiable, the most virtuous of men; but our friend is happy, which in this life he never could have been; he was too good, too tender, too affectionate for this life. It could not but be a source of misery to him as long as there were men in it who were unjust, and others who were unfortunate. Dissolution of life is not, in truth, a misfortune to any man who has lived well. . . . Hitherto your life has been most unfortunate; what remains of it you have the prospect of spending, not indeed joy1 Speeches, Intro. Memoir, pp. xvi-xviii. Ibid., pp. xxiv, xxv.