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A Sketch of the Life and Character of Sir Robert Peel
A Sketch of the Life and Character of Sir Robert Peel Author:Lawrence Peel Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OXFORD. 53 judic;al, precedents in favour of a flirtation with the Muses, and the authority of Lord Coke to boot, he was sure, in my younger days, to be prosc... more »ribed as no lawyer. Woe betide him if he sang or danced well, or excelled in any one of those graces which of old were thought to sit as well on the lawyer as on the courtier or the gentleman. Dull envy shook her head; you are an admirable singer, but you will never be Lord Chancellor; you dance like Sir Christopher Hutton, but you will never win the seals. So dulness speaks, and so I suppose she will speak to the end of the chapter, for it is a consoling, a comforting doctrine to those who utter it, full of comfort as the tenets of a narrow school are and always will be to the contracted mind. There was not, however, any affectation in his case, nor is there in it anything to be wondered at. Peel had no need of cramming; he had been well fed with learning from the cradle. He brought to college with him more than the ordinary school learning. He was always a diligent and a regular student, he had no fits and starts of application, and required no midnight hours of study. A portion of his time sufficed amply for the studies of the place. A portion of his time might then be devoted safely to the ordinary business of the little worldaround him. The result proved the wisdom of his course. In a remarkably good year, in which were found the names of Gilbert, Hampden, Whately, he took a double first class. He was the first man so distinguished. At the preceding examinations under the then new system, no one had gained the first class in mathematics. I have now described fully his early life, and have brought him on to the time when it most concerned the public that he should do well. So far he has done his duty, and his life h...« less