About the same time this memorable matter may receive a notice. One day at Brodie's chambers we heard a riotous noise in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and running out, I found that the Duke of Wellington, for some political offence, was being mobbed,--and that too on the 18th of June! He was calmly walking his horse, surrounded by roaring roughs,--a groom being behind him at some distance, but otherwise alone. Disgusted at the scene, I jumped on the steps of Surgeon's Hall, and shouted out--Waterloo, Waterloo! That one word turned the tide of execrations into cheers, and the Iron Duke passed me silently with a military salute: as the mob were thus easily converted ("mob" being, as we conveyancers say, a short form for "mobilé", changeable) and escorted our national hero to his home in safety, I really think the little incident worth recording. We are just now in the throes of such a mobocracy,--and know how much one firm policeman can avail to calm a riot. While speaking of the Duke and Apsley House, let me add here another word of some interest. My uncle, Arthur W. Devis, had painted life-sized portraits of Blucher and Gneisenau, which his widow had given to me: and as the Duke had always been my father's friend, I asked his Grace if he would accept them from me; this he declined, but said, "get Colnaghi to value them and I'll buy them"--as accordingly I did, and the pictures are still I presume either at Apsley House or Strathfieldsaye. My small memories of the Great Duke are summed up in these four monosyllables, plain, blunt, firm, kind.
After Brodie's, my liberal father would give for me another hundred pounds, this time to his cousin Mr. Walters of No. 12 in the Square, to make me more learned as a conveyancer: but it was all of no use: "He penned a stanza when he should engross:" however, I ate my terms and was duly called to the Bar. At Walters' my most eminent colleague, amongst others, was Roundel Palmer, now Lord Selborne, who, some time after, when we both had chambers in the Inn, wanted me (but I repudiated the idea) to be proposed as a candidate member for Oxford University, just before Gladstone was induced to stand; I daresay he will remember it. As to M.P.ship I may have had other chances, but I never cared for a position of endless care and toil by night and day, to say nothing of my impediment of speech, and as to the magic letters I rather despised them: this being one reason. Not very many years ago my brother Charles was offered Nottingham if he would pay £3000 for the honour,--and so I failed to appreciate any such distinction. I think too that votes were at one time purchasable even at Guildford, my county town: but that was of course at a less upright and immaculate time of day than this.