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276 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
pretensions of his boyish days, when he and other solemn young
epicures used to sit down to elaborate tavern banquets, and pretend
to criticise vintages, and sauces, and turtle. As yet there was not
only content with his dinner, but plenty therewith ; and I do not
wish to alarm you by supposing that Philip will ever have to
encounter any dreadful extremities of poverty or hunger in the
course of his history. The wine in the jug was very low at times,
but it never was quite empty. This lamb was shorn, but the wind
was tempered to him.
So Philip took possession of his rooms in the Temple, and began
actually to reside there just as the long vacation commenced, which
he intended to devote to a course of serious study of the law and
private preparation, before he should venture on the great business
of circuits and the bar. Nothing is more necessary for desk-men
than exercise, so Philip took a good deal ; especially on the water,
where he pulled a famous oar. Nothing is more natural after
exercise than refreshment; and Mr. Firmin, now he was too
poor for claret, showed a great capacity for beer. After beer and
bodily labour, rest, of course, is necessary ; and Firmin slept nine
hours, and looked as rosy as a girl in her first season. Then such
a man, with such a frame and health, must have a good appetite
for breakfast. And then every man who wishes to succeed at the
bar, in the senate, on the bench, in the House of Peers, on the
Woolsack, must know the quotidian history of his country ; so, of
course, Philip read the newspaper. Thus, you see, his hours of
study were perforce curtailed by the necessary duties which distracted
him from his labours.
It has been said that Mr. Firmin's companion in chambers,
Mr. Cassidy, was a native of the neighbouring kingdom of Ireland,
and engaged in literary pursuits in this country. A merry, shrewd,
silent, observant little man, he, unlike some of his compatriots,
always knew how to make both ends meet ; feared no man alive
in the character of a dun ; and out of small earnings managed to
transmit no small comforts and subsidies to old parents living
somewhere in Munster. Of Cassidy's friends was Finucane, now
editor of the Pall Mall Gazette; he married the widow of the
late eccentric and gifted Captain Shandon, and Cass himself was
the fashionable correspondent of the Gazette, chronicling the
marriages, deaths, births, dinner-parties of the nobility. These
Irish gentlemen knew other Irish gentlemen, connected with
other newspapers, who formed a little literary society. They
assembled at each other's rooms, and at haunts where social
pleasure was to be purchased at no dear rate. Philip Firmin
was known to many of them before his misfortunes occurred, and