the counsel’s name appears in the papers, but it is the country solicitor who has prepared everything for him, and who has marshalled that regiment of witnesses from remote hamlets of the earth.  His widening circle of landlord clients have each their attendant circles of tenants, who feel confidence in their leader’s legal adviser.  Parochial officers come to him; overseer, rate-collector, church warden, tithing-man.  The all-important work of registering voters fills up the space between one election and another.  At the election his offices are like the head-quarters of an army.  He may represent some ancient college, or corporation with lands of vast extent.  Ladies with a little capital go home content when he has invested their money in mortgage of real property.  Still the work goes on increasing; additional clerks have to be employed; a fresh wing has to be built to the old house.  He has, too, his social duties; he is, perhaps, the head or mainspring of a church movement—­this is not for profit, but from conviction.  His lady is carried to and fro in the brougham, making social visits.  He promotes athletic clubs, reading-rooms, shows, exhibitions.  He is eagerly seized upon by promoters of all kinds, because he possesses the gift of organisation.  It becomes a labour merely to catalogue his engagements like this.  Let the rain rain, or the sun shine, the pen never stays work.

Personally he is the very antithesis is of what might be predicated of the slow, comfortable, old-fashioned lawyer.  He is in the prime of life, physically full of vigour, mentally persevering with untiring perseverance, the embodiment of energy, ever anxious to act, to do rather than to delay.  As you talk with him you find his leading idea seems to be to arrange your own half-formed views for you; in short, to show you what you really do want, to put your desire into shape.  He interprets you.  Many of the clients who come to him are the most impracticable men in the world.  A farmer, for instance, with a little money, is in search of a farm.  Find him twenty farms just the size for his capital, he will visit them all and discover a fault in each, and waver and waver till the proper season for entering on possession is past.  The great problem with country people is how to bring them to the point.  You may think you have got all your witnesses ready for the train for London, and, as the bell rings, find that one has slipped away half a mile to talk with the blacksmith about the shoeing of his mare.  Even the squire is trying when, he talks of this or that settlement.  Of course, as he is educated, no lengthy and oft-repeated explanations are needed; but the squire forgets that time is valuable, and lingers merely to chat.  He has so much time to spare, he is apt to overlook that the solicitor has none.  The clergyman will talk, talk, talk in rounded periods, and nothing will stop him; very often he drives his wife in with him from the village, and the wife must have her say.  As for Hodge and his mortgage, ten years would not suffice for his business, were he allowed to wander on.  The problem is to bring these impracticable people to the point with perfect courtesy.  As you talk with him yourself, you feel tempted to prolong the interview—­so lucid an intellect exercises an indefinable charm.