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I.

THE LORD CHANCELLORS.

WE

CHAPTER I.

ELL planned and well written, the story of the
Great Seal would be a rare story.

It calls up the dead of eight silent centuries, placing before the mind much of that which is most beautiful and noble, and not a little of that which is most to be deplored in the growth of England's greatness. The poet's song and the soldier's fame give music and brightness to the atmosphere that covers and surrounds the mystic emblem of sovereign will. For seven-and-twenty generations fair women and brave men have submitted meekly to its influence and bowed before it reverentially. More than a mere symbol of the ruler's power, it has been honored as the power itself by the flatteries of pliant courtiers, the prayers of wretched supplicants, the hopes of ambition, and the fears of cowardice.

For twice four hundred years it has witnessed the most stirring scenes, held parley with the most famous personages, and been an actor in the grandest episodes of history. The right to guard it from danger has been placed amongst the chief honors of a highly-civilized people; and to win that honor, and wear it for a few brief days, accomplished, resolute, and brilliant men have in each generation striven with fierce rivalry and

heroic steadfastness. Through days of toil and nights of study; through long years of exertion, disappointment, and despair; against the difficulties of debt, and mental distress, and feeble health; with an ascetic abstinence from pleasure, and with a terrible concentration of all their powers upon the one desired object, they have striven for that prize, and striven in vain. Bootless their perseverence and self-denial, their learning and integrity, their sacrifices and unconquerable will! Vanquished by the intensity of their own exertions, or worsted by some of those many circumstances and adverse influences which at times stay the speed of the swift and defeat the strong, they failed to achieve their purpose. They "dropped under," and the mighty tide of life which rolled over them is their nameless grave.

Many are the times that Fortune has wrenched the Seal from a firm grasp and dropped it into a feeble hand; many a time has she led a knave to the Marble Chair, and cast a smile of derision on men too honest to woo her with falsehood; anon she has turned her back on the entire crowd of eager aspirants, and with beautiful malice in her eyes has thrown the prize into the lap of a simpleton who had never expected to touch it, had never even asked for it.

Scarcely less startling than the most striking phenomena of science are the diverse effects which have been wrought in Keepers of the Great Seal by the mere custody of that royal property, To some its acquisition has been admission to new life, to others the first triumph of office has been followed by speedy death.

It might be told how men, still in the middle term of life-still in the sunshine of younger manhood—have snatched the coveted prize ere care had plowed furrows in their faces, or time had placed frost upon their heads. It might be told how these singularly lucky and

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