happiness; our foes, our friends, are ready to eat us with envy,--
yet what is so little enviable as our station? Have we not both our
common vexations and our mutual disquietudes? Do we not both bribe
[Nabbem shook his head and buttoned his waistcoat] our enemies,
cajole our partisans, bully our dependants, and quarrel with our
only friends,--namely, ourselves? Is not the secret question with
each, 'It is all confoundedly fine; but how long will it last?'
Now, Mr. Nabbem, note me,--reverse the portrait: we are fallen, our
career is over,--the road is shut to us, and new plunderers are
robbing the carriages that once we robbed. Is not this the lot of--
No, no! I deceive myself! Your ministers, your jobmen, for the
most part milk the popular cow while there's a drop in the udder.
Your chancellor declines on a pension; your minister attenuates on a
grant; the feet of your great rogues may be gone from the treasury
benches, but they have their little fingers in the treasury. Their
past services are remembered by his Majesty; ours only noted by the
Recorder. They save themselves, for they hang by one another; we go
to the devil, for we hang by ourselves. We have our little day of
the public, and all is over; but it is never over with them. We
both hunt the same fox; but we are your fair riders, they are your
knowing ones,--we take the leap, and our necks are broken; they
sneak through the gates, and keep it up to the last!"


As he concluded, Tomlinson's head dropped on his bosom, and it was easy
to see that painful comparisons, mingled perhaps with secret murmurs at
the injustice of fortune, were rankling in his breast. Long Ned sat in
gloomy silence; and even the hard heart of the severe Mr. Nabbem was
softened by the affecting parallel to which he had listened. They had
proceeded without speaking for two or three miles, when Long Ned, fixing