wardens of companies, heads of firms well known in
every Burse throughout the civilised world, were not well pleased to
see among them in Grocers' Hall a foreign adventurer whose whole capital
consisted in an inventive brain and a persuasive tongue. Some of them
were probably weak enough to dislike him for being a Scot; some were
probably mean enough to be jealous of his parts and knowledge; and even
persons who were not unfavourably disposed to him might have discovered,
before they had known him long, that, with all his cleverness, he was
deficient in common sense; that his mind was full of schemes which,
at the first glance, had a specious aspect, but which, on closer
examination, appeared to be impracticable or pernicious; and that the
benefit which the public had derived from one happy project formed by
him would be very dearly purchased if it were taken for granted that
all his other projects must be equally happy. Disgusted by what he
considered as the ingratitude of the English, he repaired to the
Continent, in the hope that he might be able to interest the traders of
the Hanse Towns and the princes of the German Empire in his plans. From
the Continent he returned unsuccessful to London; and then at length the
thought that he might be more justly appreciated by his countrymen than
by strangers seems to have risen in his mind. Just at this time he
fell in with Fletcher of Saltoun, who happened to be in England. These
eccentric men soon became intimate. Each of them had his monomania; and
the two monomaniac suited each other perfectly. Fletcher's whole soul
was possessed by a sore, jealous, punctilious patriotism. His heart was
ulcerated by the thought of the poverty, the feebleness, the political
insignificance of Scotland, and of the indignities which she had
suffered at the hand of her powerful and opulent neighbour. When he
talked of her wrongs his dark meagre face took its sternest expression;
his habitual frown grew blacker, and his eyes flashed more than their
wonted fire. Paterson, on the other hand, firmly believed himself to
have discovered the means of making any state which would follow his
counsel great and prosperous in a time which, when compared with the
life of an individual, could hardly be called long, and which, in the
life of a nation, was but as a moment. There is not the least reason
to believe that he was dishonest. Indeed he would have found more
difficulty in deceiving others had he not beg