e
applications of their inferiors. While he held you in converse, you
felt strained to the height in the colloquy. The conference over,
you were at leisure to smile at the comparative insignificance of
the pretensions which had just awed you. His intellect was of the
shallowest order. It did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was
in its original state of white paper. A sucking babe might have posed
him. What was it then? Was he rich? Alas, no! Thomas Tame was very
poor. Both he and his wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear
all was not well at all times within. She had a neat meagre person,
which it was evident she had not sinned in over-pampering; but in
its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by some labyrinth
of relationship, which I never thoroughly understood,--much less can
explain with any heraldic certainty at this time of day,--to the
illustrious, but unfortunate house of Derwentwater. This was the
secret of Thomas's stoop. This was the thought--the sentiment--the
bright solitary star of your lives,--ye mild and happy pair,--which
cheered you in the night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your
station! This was to you instead of riches, instead of rank, instead
of glittering attainments: and it was worth them altogether. You
insulted none with it; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive
armour only, no insult likewise could reach you through it. _Decus et
solamen._

Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John Tipp. He neither
pretended to high blood, nor in good truth cared one fig about the
matter. He "thought an accountant the greatest character in the world,
and himself the greatest accountant in it." Yet John was not without
his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly,
with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, indeed, scream
and scrape most abominably. His fine suite of official rooms in
Threadneedle-street, which, without any thing very substantial
appended to them, were enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself
that lived in them, (I know not who is the occupier of them now)
resounded fortnightly to the notes of a concert of "sweet breasts,"
as our ancestors would have called them, culled from club-rooms and
orchestras--chorus singers--first and second violoncellos--double
basses--and clarionets--who ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch,
and praised his ear. He sate like Lord Midas among them. But at the
desk Tipp was