the fore-finger of his right hand on his forehead, suddenly exclaimed

"I have it-the very thing!-it will not only make your fortune but Lady Florinda's.'

"Oh! my dear Titaniferous!" (without the Sir) said she, clasping her hands in a sort of ecstasy meant to express both hope and gratitude, as she arose, and, with her own fair hands, let down the portière lest they should be overheard, "what do you mean?"

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Why, look here," said he, making, with a pencil, some hasty and purely mythological sums of addition on the back of a letter, "Lady Florinda's twenty thousand pounds, in four months, with the interest and compound interest, will just produce, if invested in this enterprise, forty thousand two hundred pounds."

"Oh! but it is Flo's fortune, you know, and I have no right to speculate with her money," said the mother, drawing back with a sort of instinctive horror.

"My dear Lady de Baskerville, I never speculate," said the nephew, with a contemptuous shrug, as he hastily replunged the letter, with the chimerical thousands on it, into his waistcoat pocket.

"Well, but," rejoined the aunt, deliberating previous to being lost, "let us consult Florinda; she may be very glad to get such immense interest for her money."

"Hush! not for the world!" said he, first raising the fore-finger of his right hand to the side of his nose, and then hastily buttoning up both his trouser-pockets, as if they already contained, not only the open sesame,' but the actual wealth, of this golden enterprise. 'Not for the world; young persons are not to be trusted with such matters; and, indeed, in confiding it to your ladyship, I have been guilty of an indiscretion which, if known to the other directors, might be my ruin; but my anxiety to serve you, got the better of my prudence, and you must give me your solemn word of honor that you will not breath this matter to mortal?”

"You are very safe, for I don't yet know what it is."

"Ah! true," smiled the millionaire, as if apparently recovering his serenity with his security; and then, knowing from experience that in angling for gudgeons, when you have baited the hook, the best way is to go away and leave it to be nibbled at, without, from being over anxious, casting your own shadow on the water, he looked at the time-piece, and exclaimed, suddenly rising, "Bless me! I shall be late, it wants a quarter to three, and I was to have met Mr. Jericho Jabber at a political meeting of our joint constituents in the Borough."

"But-but"-hesitated Lady de Baskerville, replying to her own thoughts, "I have no right to invest Flo's money without consulting her."

"As her guardian, you have not only a right, but are in duty

bound to do what is most advantageous for her; and as she will not be of age for six months, only think what a thing it will be to double-nay, to more than double-her capital in four!"

"Ah! but

"Well, I must be off," said the nephew, affecting express-train haste, as he held out one finger to his lady aunt, as other great people were in the habit of doing to him; and still Lady de Baskerville mused, till he had reached the door, when she said—

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Stay one moment; are you quite sure that the capital will be doubled?"

"My dear aunt, am I quite sure that your name is Dora? and that you are the Countess de Baskerville?"

She herself was so sure of both these facts, that she arrived at the conclusion that the monetary sequence was equally indisputable; and, moreover, Titaniferous never speculated! And yet, how Titaniferous had got on in the world! and when that is the case, one must be safe in embarking in the same boat with a person, even if that boat were steered by Charon, and being ferried across the Styx. And so the die was cast, and poor Florinda's all staked! -with a swindler-who had been so VERY SUCCESSFUL!

"Then if I make up my mind to follow your advice, can you conclude the matter to-morrow, Sir Titaniferous?" said she, a shade paler than usual.

To-day. Now, my dear Lady de Baskerville," said the obliging baronet, returning, "if you will give me an order on your broker to sell out Lady Flo's twenty thousand

And as her ladyship turned to a little sèvre and marquetrie cabinet, which she unlocked, and from which she took a chequebook, Sir Titaniferous drew from his pocket a sheaf of shares, and prospectuses, of the grand Duchy of Swillandsmokem Lead Mines, which most fortunately! and unaccountably (?) he happened to have with him. When Lady de Baskerville had filled in the required number, which was to put her and Florinda in possession of such fabulous wealth, the benevolent being, who was helping them to it, said

"Pon honor I have done rather an unfair thing, my dear aunt; for those shares that I have let you have-strictly speaking-belong to Lord Daventry; but blood is thicker than water, so he must only wait a little longer for his."

And so saying, and generously to avoid any expression of his relative's gratitude for thus favouring her, he made a precipitate retreat, ostensibly to reach in time the political meeting in the Borough; and as the parvenu M. P. descended the parvenu peeress's Axminster-carpeted stairs to the clanging of the silversounding bell that announced his departure, once more his head was in the air, and Sir Titaniferous Thompson strutted, every inch a senator!-since of such materials our senators are now com

posed. And yet one Père Millot-erst of the Academy of Dijonexpresses himself to the following effect, touching Montesquieu "'Those rules of conduct, those maxims of government, which should be engraved on the thrones of kings, and on the hearts of every one invested with authority; is it not to a close study of men we owe them? Witness that illustrious patriot, that interpreter, that judge of the laws on whose tomb France, and all Europe, shed tears, but whose genius will ever be seen to instruct nations, tracing the plan of public happiness; that immortal writer, who abridged everything, who was for putting us upon thinking, as what we stand more in want of than reading. With what sagacity he had studied human nature! Travelling like Solon, meditating like Pythagoras, conversing like Plato, reading like Cicero, writing like Tacitus; his continued object was man. Men he studied and

knew. The fertile seeds already are seen to germinate which he cast into the minds of the chiefs of nations and the rulers of empires. Let us gratefully reap the fruits." And after refuting a dangerous paradox of Bayle, does he not also add-"The principles of Christianity, well engraved on the heart, would be infinitely stronger than the false honor of monarchies, the human virtues of republics, and the servile fear of despotic states, which is stronger than the three principles of political government laid down in the spirit of the laws."

But what have we now of all this? Utilitarianism has converted all that is high, pure, good, and noble in human nature-all that might have been great-into a social, politico-commercial guano, for producing the greatest possible quantities of everything, without the slightest reference to quality; and to obtain this statistical guano, there has been entailed upon us an interminable Chancery

suit of

Mammon versus Merit;

The infallible results of which are John Sadleirs, John Dean Pauls, William Palmers, Jericho Jabbers, Janus Allpuffs, and Titaniferous Thompsons; for as long as men can, with impunity, (as they now do,) violate every private virtue, they may, to forward their worldly ends, assume, but can never be capable of any public virtue; though this is only an additional reason, under our present system of private vice, and public clap-trap, why such men are all, and always, VERY SUCCESSFUL!

CHAPTER XXXII.

IN WHICH THE FAST MR. MONTAGUE SEDGEMORE ASTONISHES THE SLOW MR. TOM LEVENS, THE MORE SO, PERHAPS, BY CONVINCING HIM THAT AN APPARENT SLIGHT MAY OFTEN BE AN ACT OF REAL KINDNESS. MR. PHIPPEN LOSES A KEY, AND GAINS A WRINKLE.

HE! he he! tittered Mr. Sedgemore. Hi! hi! hi! falsettoed Mr. Jones. Ha! ha! ha! contra-bassoed Mr. Smith, as the former, perched on his high office-stool within his desk, was, with one pen behind his ear, and another in hand, doing croquis of Miss Susannah Simmons upon a fly leaf of his ledger, while Messieurs Smith and Jones, in no way proud (though they did dine at Sir Titaniferous Thompson's, and figured at what they denominated "the West End") were 66 assisting" him by giggling at his performance. At an opposite desk sat Tom Levens making double entries, but neither of Simmons's, nor Susannah's, but of pounds, shillings, and pence, three per cent. consols, Russia, India, and Spanish bonds, with variations on other "fugitive pieces;" but, every now and then, he was obliged to have recourse to his pen. knife, from having made some slight error in his entry, evidently disturbed by the giggling going on opposite; and then, all in making the necessary erasures, he would suddenly knit his brow, as if, like poor Master Simeon, the second usher, in James White's rare merry story of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, he thought "that of all inferior noises, tittering was the most offensive;" for, as in the case of Simeon, his nerves were unequal to it, and he also opined that it "undermined that importance and respectability which were the corner-stones of his calling, and disconcerted the grave deportment which he thought it becoming to assume, and was altogether more than a man of his beard could well put up with." But Messieurs Smith and Jones prepared to depart, after a great deal of whispering had been added to the giggling, in which the words "Golden Pippin "-"leave it at the White Hart"-" Monday night," and "Cremorne" escaped, and flew over as far as Mr. Levens's desk; and there being no pen behind his ear to bayonet them back, they entered, and he distinctly heard them, but concluded that they merely referred to one of those frequent "larks," as Mr. Sedgemore called them (no doubt with reference to their nocturnal attributes), in which he was in the habit of indulging; and having found it impossible either to ensnare, or engage, his colleague to join in them, he had left off announcing any of his projects of pleasure to him. Messieurs

Smith and Jones, "the two West End gents," as Mr. Sedgemore denominated them, having taken their departure, after having made Mr. Levens a bow that almost amounted to impertinence from its mock respect, the latter quietly resumed his writing, and, for a few seconds, a profound silence reigned unbroken, save by the scratching of his pen, when all of a sudden Mr. Sedgemore, with his right hand to the side of his mouth, called out, in a stentorian voice, as if he had been hailing a man-of-war on the high seas

"Hallo! Levens, my boy, now be sociable for once; and, as you seem to be so thick with him, and in his confidence, do unlock, and tell us what the guv'nor does so often down at Brentford-that is, who he goes to see there."

"I fear you must have a very low opinion of me, Sedgemore, to suppose that, even if I were cognizant of Mr. Phippen's movements, I should repay his great kindness to me by becoming a spy upon his actions. I leave spying and every other species of blackguardism to 'gentlemen.' Such practices do not become men of my humble position; and, moreover, you go to Brentford quite as often as I do, and therefore are likely to know as much of what goes on there as me, as I understand you are constantly giving dinners at the White Hart.'”

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"Oh! I understand," said Mr. Sedgemore, winking his right eye, and spreading his hand out over his heart like " Browne," you are wounded in the tenderest pint, eh?-'case as how the dinners ain't given at the Four Alls." Well, I'm free to confess, as they say in Parliament, when they are going to conceal the truth in the best manner they can, that it don't look friendly that I should patronise the White Hart' when the 'Four Alls' is so near; but you, Levens, who have been a literary cove, and accustomed to do the articles in the moral and magnanimous line,-you ought to know better than to judge by appearances; and though you're not a fellow that one ever gets on with, on account of a sort of fivebarred-gate grandity kind of manner that you have, yet, having a great respect for virtue and all that sort of thing, it is on account of the regard I have for you that I did not go to the Four Alls.' Tom Levens raised his eyes, and looked a note of interrogation, but did not condescend to utter it.

6

"Ah! I see that confounded dot and carry one has dulled your capacity for figurative eloquence; but," added he, drawing a long narrow slip of blueish ruled paper out of his pocket, about a yard in length, and holding it up, "it is a true bill, for all that. Ahem! Montagu Sedgemore, Esq.;' that reads devilish well. Montague Sedgemore, Esq., debtor to John Newcome' -ahem! Well, I needn't read you the items. Dinners are always cold on paper, and wines flat. Total £16 8s. 4d.' Now do you take?"

6

Why, yes; that you must have been a very profitable customer

to Mr. Newcome."