he had had enough of law, when the bills
connected with his recent suit began to come in,
not to speak of the costs and other trifles which
fell to his share. Mr. Grampus was in no
condition to deal with these little matters; the
withdrawal of Mr. Green from the list of art-
patrons having made a great deal of difference
to him, and so it ended in the whole of these
liabilities being paid off by that despised financier
old Mr. Brogg; and I do believe that Grampus,
in his secret heart, thought that the good man
was only doing his duty, and that to be allowed
to assist a genius like himself was quite a
distinguished privilege for a City man.

But the most remarkable result of that Grampus
trial—for I can attribute the phenomenon I am
about to speak of directly to nothing else—was
its effect upon the conduct of the illustrious
person the incidents of whose earlier life I am
now, as it were, touching upon. He seemed to
be both moody and thoughtful, appeared little
among us, and when he did, wore the air of one
who is revolving some important matter in his
head. We used to think that he had been so
disturbed by the insolence of the disgusting cross-
examiner Screw, as to be unable to recover
himself. The painful light in which this wretched
mountebank had managed to exhibit our noble
and respected friend was preying, we thought, on
that friend's mind. Of course we never spoke of
these things—never alluded to the trial, or to
anything connected with it, though we could
none of us help feeling that it was in a great
degree accountable for the change which we
observed. How I got to detest that trial, and
everything connected with it; the obstinate
neighbour, who, by-the-by, wore an expression
which was simply infernal when he heard the
nature of the verdict; the dog, the judge, the
jury, the counsel on both sides; the one was a
brute, and the other an incapable; nay, I think
I almost hated Grampus himself. "After all," I
thought, "a man has no right to let himself get
into that state of sensitiveness; it's morbid, to
say the least of it."

The alteration in our revered friend appeared
in many ways, but in none more remarkably than
in his withdrawal of himself, to a great extent,
from the society which still held its gatherings
at Poets' Corner. Rarely did we see him there.
He lived now almost entirely at his chambers in
the Temple; and perhaps this was one reason
why we saw so much less of him, but it was not
all. He seemed to have conceived—incredible
as it seems—a distaste for the society of our little
knot of geniuses; and when he did come to the
house, it was simply to see his father and mother,
and not to receive the adulation which was ready
for him if he had happened to want it.

"Want it?" He wouldn't have it. On one
occasion, when he did favour us with a visit, and
Mr. Smear made bold to ask him to read us one
of his favourite poems, he became quite excited:
"My dear Christopher," he said, "you've heard
that poem, and indeed every one of the lot, quite
as often as is good for you. I've been looking
through the whole set of them lately, and I'm
not at all sure but that the entire collection ought
to find its way into the fire; for the courtesy
with which you have, all of you, borne the
infliction of those precious rhymes over and over
again, I am really very much obliged to you, but
your patience shall be rewarded, and you shan't
be troubled with them again, if I can help it."
Here was a state of things. Poor Smear looked
as if the crisis of an earthquake were at hand,
and Mr. Brogg whispered to me that of a surety
that "horrid trial had turned his brain." And
so it had in one way, at any rate. He was a
changed man.

And now, more wonderful than all, our friend,
so far from eschewing society, as from his so
rarely showing himself among us might have
been expected, began, on the contrary, to take
every opportunity of going into what I should
have been disposed to call the outer world—the
world beyond our limits. He joined the crowd—
the giddy, frivolous crowd. He got into a club,
and who—who—does the reader think proposed
him? Heaven and earth! Surprise of
surprises! It was no other than his cousin,
between whom and himself there had heretofore
been nothing but misunderstanding and
uncongeniality. Yes, it was H. K. who proposed him,
and brought him through; and when I heard of
this, I confess that my spirit did fail me, for I
felt that all was indeed altered now, and that
C. J. was but too certainly gone from among us.

"What," I said, "fraternise with H. K.?
Join a club of which he is a member; nay, even in
some sort through his instrumentality? Have
you not already our own debating club—the
'Mutual?' Or, if you need one of another kind,
Grampus would have got you into the
'Hermits.'"

"We have been playing at 'Hermits' too long
already," my friend replied. "It won't do.
Hermits don't see the world, and I must see it,
mix in it, try to get a place in it. Time enough,
to be a Hermit when I fail. And as to H. K.
whom we have been in the habit of despising as
a worldling, it really seems to me that he has, all
this time, while we have been patting each other
on the back—that he has, I say, been pursuing a
very sensible course, and on the whole has the
laugh on his side."

I saw now that the time had come for me to
say what little I had to say about recent events,
and I spoke:

"My dear friend," I said, "you are much
changed of late. So much changed, indeed, and
so quickly, that I can hardly recognise you or
myself as the same people. I know that that
horrid trial has been the immediate cause of all
this, but I think even before that you were
getting unsettled in your opinions. You come
less to our Mutual Union than you used, and, when
you do come, you are far from taking the place
there which I always expected and intended that
you should take. You allow yourself to be contradicted