of my ancestor. From this moment his ambition expanded, his views
enlarged in proportion to his means, and his contemplations on the
subject of his great floating capital became more profound and
philosophical. A man of my ancestor's native sagacity, whose whole
soul was absorbed in the pursuit of gain, who had so long been
forming his mind, by dealing as it were with the elements of human
weaknesses, and who already possessed four hundred thousand pounds,
was very likely to strike out for himself some higher road to
eminence, than that in which he had been laboriously journeying,
during the years of painful probation. The property of my mother had
been chiefly invested in good bonds and mortgages; her protector,
patron, benefactor, and legalized father, having an unconquerable
repugnance to confiding in that soulless, conventional, nondescript
body corporate, the public. The first indication that was given by
my ancestor of a change of purpose in the direction of his energies,
was by calling in the whole of his outstanding debts, and adopting
the Napoleon plan of operations, by concentrating his forces on a
particular point, in order that he might operate in masses. About
this time, too, he suddenly ceased railing at taxation. This change
may be likened to that which occurs in the language of the
ministerial journals, when they cease abusing any foreign state with
whom the nation has been carrying on a war, that it is, at length,
believed politic to terminate; and for much the same reason, as it
was the intention of my thrifty ancestor to make an ally of a power
that he had hitherto always treated as an enemy. The whole of the
four hundred thousand pounds were liberally intrusted to the
country, the former fancy-dealer's apprentice entering the arena of
virtuous and patriotic speculation, as a bull; and, if with more
caution, with at least some portion of the energy and obstinacy of
the desperate animal that gives title to this class of adventurers.