by his esteemed guests to be of any consequence, and what he used to
think with the ardour of conviction he now hardly ever expresses. He is
transplanted, and the sap within him has long been diverted into other
than the old lines of vigorous growth. How could he speak to the artist
Crespi or to Sir Hong Kong Bantam about the enlarged doctrine of Mr
Apollos? How could he mention to them his former efforts towards
evangelising the inhabitants of the X. alleys? And his references to his
historical and geographical studies towards a survey of possible markets
for English products are received with an air of ironical suspicion by
many of his political friends, who take his pretension to give advice
concerning the Amazon, the Euphrates, and the Niger as equivalent to the
currier's wide views on the applicability of leather. He can only make a
figure through his genial hospitality. It is in vain that he buys the
best pictures and statues of the best artists. Nobody will call him a
judge in art. If his pictures and statues are well chosen it is
generally thought that Scintilla told him what to buy; and yet Scintilla
in other connections is spoken of as having only a superficial and
often questionable taste. Mixtus, it is decided, is a good fellow, not
ignorant--no, really having a good deal of knowledge as well as sense,
but not easy to classify otherwise than as a rich man. He has
consequently become a little uncertain as to his own point of view, and
in his most unreserved moments of friendly intercourse, even when
speaking to listeners whom he thinks likely to sympathise with the
earlier part of his career, he presents himself in all his various
aspects and feels himself in turn what he has been, what he is, and what
others take him to be (for this last status is what we must all more or
less accept). He will recover with some glow of enthusiasm the vision of
his old associates, the particular limit he was once accustomed to trace
of freedom in religious speculation, and his old ideal of a worthy life;
but he will presently pass to the argument that money is the only means