their charms for me. Trevanion's prophecy about himself seemed about to
be fulfilled. There were rumors of changes in the Cabinet. Trevanion's
name was bandied to and fro, struck from praise to blame, high and low,
as a shuttlecock. Still the changes were not made, and the Cabinet held
firm. Not a word in the "Morning Post," under the head of "fashionable
intelligence," as to rumors that would have agitated me more than the
rise and fall of governments; no hint of "the speedy nuptials of the
daughter and sole heiress of a distinguished and wealthy commoner:" only
now and then, in enumerating the circle of brilliant guests at the house
of some party chief, I gulped back the heart that rushed to my lips when
I saw the names of Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion.

But amongst all that prolific progeny of the periodical Press, remote
offspring of my great namesake and ancestor (for I hold the faith of my
father), where was the "Literary Times"? What had so long retarded its
promised blossoms? Not a leaf in the shape of advertisements had yet
emerged from its mother earth. I hoped from my heart that the whole
thing was abandoned, and would not mention it in my letters home, lest I
should revive the mere idea of it. But in default of the "Literary
Times" there did appear a new journal, a daily journal too,--a tall,
slender, and meagre stripling, with a vast head, by way of prospectus,
which protruded itself for three weeks successively at the top of the
leading article, with a fine and subtle body of paragraphs, and the
smallest legs, in the way of advertisements, that any poor newspaper
ever stood upon! And yet this attenuated journal had a plump and
plethoric title,--a title that smacked of turtle and venison; an
aldermanic, portly, grandiose, Falstaflian title: it was called The
Capitalist. And all those fine, subtle paragraphs were larded out with
recipes how to make money. There was an El Dorado in every sentence.
To believe that paper, you would think no man had ever yet found a