They have no speculation
in their eyes." For them, my dear Jack, you must have messuages and
tenements, and outhouses, townlands, and turbaries; corn, cattle, and
cottages; pigs, potatoes, and peasantry. They love to let their eyes
range over a rich and swelling scene of woodland and prairie; for
they are the landscape-gardeners of usury--they are the Hobbimas and
Berghems of the law.

'Others again, of smaller range and humbler practice, there are,
to whom, upon occasion, you assign your grandfather's plate and the
pictures of your grand-aunts for certain monied conveniences you stand
in need of. These are a kind of Brobdingnag pawnbrokers, who have fine
houses, the furniture of which is everlastingly changing, each creditor
sending his representative, like a minister to a foreign court; with
them, also, I have nothing to do. The family have had so little to eat
for the last two generations that they trouble themselves but slightly
on the score of silver dishes; and as to pictures, I possess but one
in the world--a portrait of my father in his wig and robes. This,
independent of other reasons, I couldn't part with, as it is one of the
only means I possess of controlling Corny when his temper becomes more
than usually untractable. Upon these occasions, I hang up the "jidge"
over the chimney-piece, and the talisman has never failed yet.

'Now, Jack, my constituency live about fleet Street, and those small,
obscure, dingy-looking passages that branch from it on either side. Here
live a class of men who, having begun life as our servants or valets,
are in perfect possession of all our habits of life, our wants, and our
necessities. Having amassed enough by retail robbery of us while in our
service, to establish some petty tavern, or some low livery-stable, they
end by cheating us wholesale, for the loan of our own money, at their
rate of interest. Well aware that, however deferred, we must pay
eventually, they are satisfied--good, easy souls!--to renew and renew
bills, whose current percentage varies from five-and-twenty to forty.
And even, notwithstanding all this, Jack, they are difficult devils
to deal with, any appearance of being hard up, any show of being
out-at-elbows, rendering a negotiation as difficult as the assurance of
a condemned ship for a China voyage. No, my boy; though your house be
besieged by duns, though in every passenger you see a bailiff, and never
nap after dinner without dreaming of the Marshalse